Pathways to Policy: Partisanship and Bipartisanship in Renewable Energy Legislation

• In Event: 261 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Partisanship and Polarization

Abstract

In some countries the effort to transition energy sources away from dependence on fossil fuels has become highly divided along partisan lines, but the social science literature has not yet caught up with this important problem. Policy adoption studies do not address the specific problem of polarization and gridlock, and the literature on gridlock does not examine conditions for breaking gridlock for renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE) policy. Qualitative research can help to fill the void by identifying strategies that legislators use for achieving support for REEE policy where there is gridlock, polarization, and/or strong opposition. Interview data from a stratified sample of U.S. states reveals three strategies that state-government legislators use to enhance REEE policy development under these conditions: bring to the process countervailing industrial interests to align REEE with business, transfer decision-making to public service commissions, and use extra-legislative consultation processes to develop stakeholder consensus.

Authors

• Kate Pride Brown, Georgia Institute of Technology

• David J. Hess, Vanderbilt University