Innovations in climate policy: the politics of invention, diffusion, and evaluation

The governance of climate change is in flux. In the understandable rush to explore what is filling the governance gaps created by gridlock in the international regime, scholars risk under-appreciating the capacity of states to engage in policy innovation at national and sub-national levels. Based on a review of existing concepts and theoretical explanations for (in)action at this level, we make the case for adopting a more holistic approach to understanding policy innovation, covering the source of new policy elements (‘invention’), their wider entry into use (‘diffusion’), and their projected and/or real effects (‘evaluation’). The analytical and methodological challenges that arise from integrating these three perspectives are systematically explored and integrated into a new analytical framework used in the other contributions to this volume to explore more fully the politics of invention, diffusion, and evaluation in specific areas of mitigation and adaptation policy.