Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

A new study published in Climate Policy, co-authored by Dr. Daniel Valdenegro of Oxford University's Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, exposes the dynamics of competing narratives on climate change between political parties in the U.K. and the influence that climate protests have on them.

The study uses a range of data sources such as parliamentary debates and qualitative interviews with politicians and civil servants between 2017 and 2022 to investigate the existence of trends, patterns and impact in climate policy narratives. While previous research explored the effects of climate movements on policies through the indirect impact of changing public opinion, this study delves into how politicians respond to climate protests.

This study's mixed methods approach focuses on how different narratives influence climate policy decisions. The researchers then look at the impact of climate protests in creating "windows of opportunity" to shift these political narratives and increase the political salience of climate change. Finally, the study provides a party comparison between Conservative and Labor, showing how internal party dynamics can also affect climate policy progress.

Using supervised machine learning models, the study identified three main competing narratives: normative pro-climate action, denial and delay of climate action, and economic or technical arguments for climate action. In the video below, co-author Dr. Valdenegro explains how a mixed methods approach was used to analyze the evolution of climate change narratives in U.K. parliamentary debates.

Credit: University of Oxford

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