Parallel process of global convergence and national differentiation of climate change policy ideas : Focusing on policy networks between national and global organizations

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze and describe how the acknowledgement of the climate change problem and the subsequent policy proposals are spread globally and differentiated nationally, focusing on policy networks between national and global organizations based on the survey on Japanese organizations which are active in the domain of climate change policy. Global organizations, especially those that are known for providing scientific information and policy advice, influence the climate change policies being made by the national organizations. The effects of this relationship between the global and national organizations are two-fold: firstly, the information presented by global organizations partially forms the policy preferences of national organizations. Secondly, the national organizations can gain more reputation among policy domain actors by having ties with global organizations, especially with those that do not have ties with other national organizations. This distribution process of scientific information and policy advice from global organizations to domestic policy domain can be seen as the mechanism which brings global convergence on climate change policy ideas. On the contrary, domestic organizations form ties with global organizations based on their own policy preference. As a result, the information from the global organizations is filtered by the national organizations, which brings the national differentiations with respect to climate change policies among the countries.