Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (Compon) is an international research project on the factors that determine the capacity and success of nations in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions (or protecting sinks) and thereby helping to mitigate global climate change. Current lack of response at national and international levels depends first of all on a lack of political will. If the will were present, the right institutions would follow. However, while no effort is sufficient to bring about the needed changes, countries do differ in the will and effort to mitigate climate change. The Compon project studies the conditions affecting this variation to find the general principles governing national responses to climate change. The project has teams in 15 countries and at the international level, with more in formation. The cases include the largest emitters as well as those representing differing underlying causal factors. The teams use common data collection instruments to make comparable analyses of national discourse (from media content) and networks of mobilization (from organizational survey) in the climate change policy-formation field. In each case, receipt, evaluation and use of scientific information from the IPCC constitutes a core comparable dynamic. Hypotheses include the effect of stakeholder participation on diffusion of scientific acceptance, the array of dominant interest groups and their commitment to fossil fuel use, geophysical vulnerability, political institutions, and activism of civil society. Network data permits detailed testing of hypotheses within the dynamic of organizational interaction in the policy-formation field. Along with scientific findings, the project aims to establish a global network of social scientific research on climate change, to continue data collection into the future as the effects to climate change intensify, and to provide a public use dataset for interested scholars. The project welcomes new teams. For information visit the project website www.compon.org or contact Principle Investigator Jeffrey Broadbent broad001@umn.edu.
The Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks-Project (COMPON) featured in: Smith, Kerry. 2009. The Wisdom of Crowds. Climate Change is inherently a social problem - so why have sociologists been so slow to study it? Nature (online version), 30 July 2009.
COMPON presents the report of the Workshop on Sociological Perspectives on Global Climate Change, held 30-31 May 2008, Arlington, United States. The purpose of the workshop was to identify ways to increase sociology´s capacity to conduct climate change research, to motivate research that contributes solutions to a global problem of historical importance, and, to expand sociological participation in interdisciplinary research and education about global climate change.
