Climate Change Litigation Networks in the US

• In Event: Policy Networks

Abstract

Scholars in the U.S. have rigorously studied the rulemaking process, and the behavior of stakeholders seeking to influence how federal agencies design and implement rules, yet evidence of how stakeholders partake in coalitions throughout the different stages of the rulemaking process is generally lacking. Coalition activity can be one of the most important signals of potential support -or opposition- to rules that policy makers and bureaucracies design and allows stakeholders to pursue strategic goals at reduced costs, shape public debate by influencing a broader platform, gather information, and receive symbolic benefits (Hula, 1999). In this paper, we examine the comprehensive network of stakeholder involvement and their self-organization in coalitions in the litigation process challenging a set of rules developed during the Obama administration to tackle climate change: 1) the VOC and Methane Standards for Oil and Gas Facilities; 2) the Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards and Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, 3) and the Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units (a.k.a. the Clean Power Plan). Together, these three regulations constituted the core set of policies developed to address anthropogenic climate change mitigation at a federal level, and are currently being rolled back by the Trump Administration.
To recreate the coalitions in dispute over these rules, we utilize data from the court Dockets related to the cases challenging each rule. Specifically, we extract the information contained in the dockets and created two-mode networks of participation where one mode is composed by actors and the second mode is composed by the legal documents submitted to the court. Our database consists of 488 actors participating in over 500 court documents, across the span of 8 federal cases. In addition to node covariates such as position regarding the rule and organizational type, we analyze how pro and anti-regulation coalition members structure their interactions based on two main variables of interest: the geographical scope of the actor’s operations (local v. supralocal) and the level of specificity of their interests (solely based on energy production v. interests exceeding the narrow topic of energy policy). We describe differences at the nodal and coalitional level, and discuss the implications of the differences between pro and anti-rule coalitions for our understanding of how brokerage works in the increasingly important arena of litigation over environmental regulations in the United States.

Authors

• Federico Holm, The Ohio State University

• Ramiro Berardo, The Ohio State University