How a climate bill becomes a reality

Oct 5, 2020

Leah Stokes, a political scientist at UC Santa Barbara and author of Short Circuiting Policy, dives into the intricate world of climate legislation. She discusses the 'fog of enactment' where promising bills often lose momentum post-passage due to interest group influence. Stokes highlights successful and failed clean energy initiatives in states like Texas and California, emphasizing the need for clarity in law and the importance of grassroots activism. The conversation sheds light on the disconnect between public opinion and legislative action, urging greater engagement in climate policy.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Interest Groups' Influence

Interest groups significantly shape public policy, acting as a filter between the public and politicians.
They influence politicians' perceptions of public opinion through polls, funding, and direct access.

ANECDOTE

Issue Salience and Interest Group Power

Public awareness of policy issues varies; some are widely known (Medicare), others obscure (trade deal specifics).
Interest groups wield greater influence on low-salience issues.

INSIGHT

Fog of Enactment

The "fog of enactment" describes how even politicians often misunderstand a law's true content and consequences.
Interest groups exploit this ambiguity, inserting provisions that benefit them.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Helluva week in politics, huh? And yet, in the background, the world is still warming, the fires still burning, the future still dimming. There will be plenty of episodes to come on the election. But I wanted to take a step back and talk about a part of policymaking that is often ignored, but which our world may, literally, depend on.

In campaign season, candidates make extravagant promises about all the bills they will pass. The implicit promise is the passage of those bills will solve the problems they’re meant to address. But that’s often not how it works. Between passage and reality lies what Leah Stokes calls “the fog of enactment”: a long, quiet process in which the language of bills is converted into the specificity of laws, and where interest groups and other actors can organize to gut even the strongest legislation. This is where wins can become losses; where historic legislative achievements can be turned into desultory, embarrassing failures.

Stokes is a political scientist at UC Santa Barbara, and author of Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States. Her book tracks the fate of a series of clean energy standards passed in the states in recent decades, investigating why some of them failed so miserably, and how others succeeded. But her book is more than that, too: It’s a theory of how policymaking actually works, where it gets hijacked, how power is actually wielded, and how to do policymaking better.

So this is a conversation that’s about policymaking broadly — we talk about far more than climate, and the principles here apply to virtually everything — but is also about the key question of the next few years narrowly: How do we write a climate bill that actually works?

Book recommendations:

Rising by Elizabeth Rush

The Education of Idealist by Samantha Power

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Credits:

Producer - Jeff Geld

Audio engineer- Jackson Bierfeldt

Researcher - Roge Karma

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere)

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices