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With national electricity systems, 'transition' may involve decentralising production and ownership, and digitalising the system. These processes are facilitated by smart metering, 'prosuming,' and changes in consumer behaviour. Driving factors may be national steering, or the process can be left to the market. In Norway, the government has opted for tightly steered national coordination of three key areas: national smart-meter implementation (since 2011), prosumer regulation (since 2016), and a national end-user demand flexibility regulation (expected to be adopted in 2020). These regulations influence production patterns, energy flows and grid activities. Drawing on organisational fields theory, this article asks: Why was it decided to adopt these policies centrally? Which actors have had greatest influence on policy outputs? And, finally, what of the possible implications? The regulations, developed in a sector in a state of field crisis, have generally been supported by the relevant actors. The Norwegian case can help to explain incumbent roles and field crisis, as well as nuanced drivers in complex transitions, beyond decarbonisation.

With national electricity systems, 'transition' may involve decentralising production and ownership, and digitalising the system. These processes are facilitated by smart metering, 'prosuming,' and changes in consumer behaviour. Driving factors may be national steering, or the process can be left to the market. In Norway, the government has opted for tightly steered national coordination of three key areas: national smart-meter implementation (since 2011), prosumer regulation (since 2016), and a national end-user demand flexibility regulation (expected to be adopted in 2020). These regulations influence production patterns, energy flows and grid activities. Drawing on organisational fields theory, this article asks: Why was it decided to adopt these policies centrally? Which actors have had greatest influence on policy outputs? And, finally, what of the possible implications? The regulations, developed in a sector in a state of field crisis, have generally been supported by the relevant actors. The Norwegian case can help to explain incumbent roles and field crisis, as well as nuanced drivers in complex transitions, beyond decarbonisation.

Climate Change Acts (CCAs) seek to anchor national climate policy by establishing long-term targets and lines of accountability that guide the development of other climate policy instruments. However, counter-pressures to modify CCAs can occur where tensions exist with the provisions of already-established policies that enjoy substantial political and stakeholder support. Such tensions can be especially pronounced where CCAs necessitate major changes to emissions trading schemes (ETSs) that have formed the mainstay of efforts to reduce national emissions. This article employs a novel anchoring policy framework to examine the dynamics of aligning ETSs with CCAs. We investigate debates on reforms to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme following the introduction of the Zero Carbon Act in 2019 to examine how alignment pressures between anchoring and subordinate policies are negotiated. The analysis reveals several tactics used to increase the acceptability of reforms to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and protect the Zero Carbon Act's integrity. The article concludes by arguing that a greater understanding of alignment pressures between anchoring and subordinate policies is essential in enabling both CCAs and ETSs to contribute to achieving decarbonisation goals.

AbstractExisting EU study approaches have come under stress as comprehensive models of European politics. In this context, bilateral relations between EU members remain under‐researched yet important for understanding the inner workings of the EU. While EU membership puts strong limitations on certain kinds of state behaviour it also leaves room for the pursuit of national interests through economic and legal means. Against this background, the article presents and develops the EU Geoeconomics Framework. Focussed on situations where state and companies share control over vital sectors of the national economy, this framework theorizes the relations between EU member states (MSs). After presenting the main assumptions and focus of EU Geoeconomics, the article develops six testable propositions. It then discusses these propositions as well as the fruitfulness of the framework against the latest developments in EU studies theory. The article concludes by pointing towards a renewed discussion of bilateral relations.

We use the New Zealand emissions trading scheme to explore how diffusion and learning from other emissions trading systems can explain the adoption, design, and revision of climate policy. Drawing on secondary documents and interviews with politicians, government officials, business leaders, and independent commentators, we argue for further investigation of how interactions between international and domestic factors shape the design of climate policy, and for deeper probing of structural and shorter-term domestic imperatives, to avoid misreading the extent and nature of international diffusion influences. We particularly stress the importance of distinguishing analytically between diffusion interactions motivated by learning between jurisdictions and scrutiny aimed at avoiding material disadvantages as a result of miscalculations in climate policy design. Finally, we argue for greater attention to the temporal dimensions of climate policy development in explanations of how diffusion and domestic influences may change during policy adoption, design, and revision.

Researchers expect under-reaction in climate policy. However, this might differ depending on the access of different interest groups to a political system. To explore the relationship between entrenched patterns of domestic politics and proportionality of climate policy, we compare two renewables policies which financially support new renewable electricity in the UK. Drawing on the literature on policy styles and related opportunity structures, this article shows that UK political parties have responded to growing public concern and NGO pressure by, at times, trying to out-green one another to win votes. However, powerful industry actors have been influential in shaping UK renewables policies, in particular when political competition about the individual policies has been low. The findings suggest that an over-reaction in terms of exceeding the marginal costs of renewable electricity production is equally likely under conditions of high or low political competition.