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Prof. Aseem Prakash and Kayla Morton in The Regulatory Review, "Protecting Climate Legislation Through Issue Linkage"

Submitted by Stephen Dunne on January 21, 2025 - 9:44am
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Solar farm

Prof. Aseem Prakash, grad student Kayla Morton and Prof. Nives Dolšak in U Penn's The Regulatory Review,

The 2024 elections have raised questions about the future direction of climate policy in the United States. Many are concerned that legislative progress on climate issues will stall in the 119th U.S. Congress. And with Trump 2..0 controlling the executive branch, climate backslide is likely. On the face of it, climate issues have not been a top legislative priority for either party....

What might motivate Representatives to signal their support for climate action or hide their support behind other issues? We explore the role of issue linkages in this regard. The intuition is that linking climate change with other policy issues might allow legislators to construct a stronger coalition or hide behind another issue, should climate be unpopular with their constituents.

To better understand this phenomenon, we explore the role of issue linkage in U.S. climate politics....

Our regression analysis of the votes of 435 Representatives on 77 climate-focused legislative actions cast between 2007 and 2022 suggests that all else equal, standalone climate issues diminish legislative support, although they receive more support among Democrats. Linking climate-focused legislative actions with clean air, environmental justice, and transportation issues attracts more votes. However, issue linkages can also backfire—climate-focused legislative actions linked with water issues diminished legislative support.

Please link here for the full article.

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