What question did this study set out to answer?

The paper aims to establish a theoretical framework to analyze how politicization impacts climate policy-making.

February 14, 2026Open Access

The politicization of climate change governance. Building blocks for a theoretical framework and research agenda

Puntos clave

The paper aims to establish a theoretical framework to analyze how politicization impacts climate policy-making.
Identifies four building blocks for a theoretical framework regarding politicization.
Explores political agendas, arenas of public debate, issue dimensions, and governance network interactions.
Compares climate change politics in the EU and US post-Paris Agreement.
Politicization creates dynamic public contestation over climate change policies.
The proposed framework illustrates mediation of politicization effects by various political and public factors.
Findings highlight differences in how climate politics are approached in the EU and US.

Resumen

On the CSS Working Paper Series The CSS Working Paper Series welcomes papers on all aspects connected with the research focus of the center and gives authors a chance to increase the circulation, visibility, and impact of their research. The Working Paper Series presents results from ongoing and cutting-edge research at the CSS and partner institutions. Working paper topics reflect the various disciplines involved in the CSS. The Series serves to publish (preliminary) results quickly, and Working Papers may prepare a publication in an academic journal at a later date. Replication studies are also welcome. Abstract of Current Paper Climate change prompts political controversies of increasing reach, political salience and contentiousness, creating a dynamic of public contestation captured by the term politicization. The implications of this dynamic for policy-making remain unknown, with extant research struggling to establish theoretical concepts and hypotheses in this regard. How can observable and anticipated effects of politicization on climate policy-making be theorized? The paper seeks to advance the debate on this question by proposing four building blocks for a theoretical framework and future research agenda: first, the scope of political agendas and policy programs that frame political controversies on climate change; second, relevant arenas of public debate and their effect on structuring dynamics of interaction between policy-making agents and broader political publics; third, issue dimensions emerging from controversy on climate change involving questions of problem definition, assignment of political authority and policy evaluation; and finally, interfaces between institutional nodes of climate governance networks and their interaction with each other. The central hypothesis of this framework – namely, that the effects of politicization are mediated by the escalating or accommodating quality of these four factors – is illustrated by a comparison of climate change politics in the EU and US since the Paris Agreement. Website https://www.esrah.uni-hamburg.de/

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