Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change

TLDR

Climate change policy is often framed as a global collective action problem driven by free‑riding concerns, yet without an empirically grounded model, responses risk targeting the wrong dilemma. The authors review empirical evidence for the collective‑action model and find it weak, urging scholars to intensify empirical analysis of domestic and international factors to ground global climate politics theories. The study finds that collective‑action claims are largely unsubstantiated, are observationally equivalent to distributive‑conflict theories, and that governments implement climate policies regardless of other countries’ actions or free‑riding treaties.

Abstract

Abstract Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collective action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics cases. Second, collective action claims—whether in their strongest or in more nuanced versions—appear observationally equivalent to alternative theories focused on distributive conflict within countries. We argue that extant patterns of climate policy making can be explained without invoking free-riding. Governments implement climate policies regardless of what other countries do, and they do so whether a climate treaty dealing with free-riding has been in place or not. Without an empirically grounded model for global climate policy making, institutional and political responses to climate change may ineffectively target the wrong policy-making dilemma. We urge scholars to redouble their efforts to analyze the empirical linkages between domestic and international factors shaping climate policy making in an effort to empirically ground theories of global climate politics. Such analysis is, in turn, the topic of this issue’s special section.