Climate Backlash: Contentious Reactions to Policy Action (BACKLASH)

Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger public and political 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, along with many other more recent examples. However, climate governance theory struggles to account for such dynamics, which undermines prospects for ambitious climate action. The challenge of BACKLASH is to empirically study, and to theorise, this type of contentious reaction to policy action. To do this, we conduct a two-level study of 36 OECD countries, and 4 in-depth national cases of climate policy, namely Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom. This opens up new frontiers for the interdisciplinary study of backlash to policy in addressing collective problems, with implications for understanding policy-society dynamics in a turbulent world.

Team:

I am the Principal Investigator of the BACKLASH project (ERC Starting Grant, 2021-2026, project number: 949332), which also involves a core research team comprising three PhD researchers: Ksenia Anisimova, Jasmin Logg-Scarvell, and Cille Kaiser. 

Website:

See the project website for more information: https://backlashproject.eu

Farmers protests and democracy in Europe

I collaborate in investigating backlash to sustainability transformations in agriculture and food in Europe. This includes recent farmers protests in 2024 within and across several European countries, and before (such as in The Netherlands from 2019 onwards). This initiative is being collaboratively led by James Patterson and Julia Tschersich, also working with motivated master and bachelor student researchers contributing in various ways. We aim to explain the causes, dynamics, and consequences of such contentious activity, and the implications for democratic sustainability transformations.

Team:

James Patterson, Julia Tschersich and student researchers: Eero Gaffney (Bright Minds Assistantship scholar, Master researcher), Paula Boy (Research Asssistant), Justus van Essen (Master thesis researcher). 

Navigating conflict in sustainability transformations

I collaborate in investigating how policymakers and societal actors can navigate situations of deep conflict in pursuing sustainability transformations. This is motivated by the observation that debates on sustainability transformations are held back by simplistic assumptions about how policy action can be taken. We aim to provoke debate on this issue, drawing on insights from fields of sustainability transformations, policy studies, and peacebuilding and conflict studies. 

As a first step we have derived a novel lens for conceptualising policy action in the face of deep division that we call ‘partial political settlements’. We also held an expert workshop bringing together scholars from several fields (sustainability transformations, peacebuilding and conflict studies, and political theory) to interrogate this idea further (funded by a seed grant from the Institutions for Open Societies Strategic Theme of Utrecht University). 

Team:

James Patterson, Giuseppe Feola and collaborators including Chris van den Borgh and Rak Kim.