Strategic State Capacity: How States Overcome Organized Opposition in Climate Politics

• In Event: The Politics of Green Industrial Policy: Lessons for a Green New Deal

Abstract

Political science has long examined the conditions under which states can implement political goals against the opposition from powerful organized interests. In the Weberian tradition, research on state capacity has centered on institutional and bureaucratic sources of capacity, leaving a central puzzle unexplained: Why do advanced industrialized countries with similar levels of
bureaucratic capacity vary significantly in their level of goal attainment? Here, we introduce the notion of strategic state capacity to help explain this puzzle. Strategic state capacity refers to the ability of the state to mobilize or de-mobilize interest groups in pursuit of policy goals. We identify
four general types of strategies: recruiting allies, limiting access, aligning interests, and quieting interests. We examine these strategies in cases on climate policy-making in Europe and the United States, an increasingly important field of distributive politics. We thus advance ongoing efforts to reassess state capacity in advanced industrialized countries.

Authors

• Jonas Meckling, University of California, Berkeley

• Jonas M. Nahm, Johns Hopkins University