BACKLASH: Contentious reactions to policy action
The BACKLASH project aims to explain the drivers and mechanisms of backlash to climate policy in advanced industrial democracies. This is a major challenge for efforts to advance ambitious and urgent climate action. The project contributes to understanding how public policy making can proceed in an increasingly turbulent world.
Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger backlash. But why do societies sometimes accept costly public good action, but at other times push back suddenly and reject it?
Abrupt and impactful reactions to climate policy actions are increasingly witnessed: climate backlash. Examples include the Yellow Vests in France, and acrimonious policy rollbacks in Canada and Australia. This can derail ambitious climate action, and call future possibilities into question.
The BACKLASH project studies climate backlash at two levels:
- Across OECD countries to identify broad comparative patterns, and
- In-depth national cases of climate policy (Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom) to understand the detailed processes and impacts.
We thereby seek to explain the comparative politics of backlash to climate policy, especially considering: public responses to policy, the bureaucratic politics of policy making, and the grounded socio-material politics of contestation.
The project is funded by the European Research Council and runs from 2021 to 2026.
Relevance to society
The BACKLASH project contributes to finding new ways to advance ambitious climate policy within complex real-world contexts. Policymaking often confronts many different views and experiences among different actors, as well as disagreement and polarization. We draw lessons from experiences of public pushback to try to understand how climate policy can be designed and implemented more effectively. This is relevant to policymakers, politicians, and civil society groups trying to find opportunities for action.