Policy bundling and the political economy of climate policymaking

Climate action has been stymied by a challenging political economy: climate policies can impose salient, short-term costs in exchange for uncertain, long-term benefits. Public support for many climate policies has, as a result, remained uneven. We use conjoint experiments in 10 of the world’s largest carbon-emitting countries to investigate the effects of policy bundling – linking one contentious policy to other programs – on public support for climate action. We find remarkable consistency across diverse political and economic contexts: linking climate policy to some progressive economic and social programs expands coalitions of support, notably without reducing support on the political right. Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement’s goals will require every country to navigate contentious domestic climate policy conflicts; we find that policy bundling offers a broadly applicable strategy for strengthening public coalitions in favor of a contentious policy.