Climate policy costs, regional politics and backlash against international cooperation

Journal article

Abstract:: This paper investigates the conditions under which subnational concerns shape public assessments of international climate governance. In line with existing literature, we maintain that costly policy adjustments fuel negative views of international co-operation in policy-exposed regions. At the same time, we argue that the more resentful relations are with the national center of politics, the more sympathetic these regions are to international institutions and global governance. Based on geographically targeted survey data from the United Kingdom, we find that fossil fuel-intensive regions with strong, institutionalized regional politics have more positive assessments of international climate co-operation than structurally similar regions where regional political institutions are less pronounced. The findings show that regional politics characteristics are key for understanding climate policy beliefs among citizens that bear the brunt of adjustments to international climate agreements.

Files:: Bayer_and_Genovese_2025_Climate_policy_costs.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: climate policy

regional politics

international governance

political backlash

public opinion
Pubs id:: 2130362
Local pid:: pubs:2130362
Deposit date:: 2025-06-16
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_8ab7598d083549c6b4e027bdd7558bec

Copyright holder:: Bayer and Genovese
Rights statement:: © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.

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