Global Warming Policy in Japan and Britain: Interactions Between Institutions and Issue Characteristics

This is the first book to attempt a systematic comparison of Japanese and British climate policy and politics. Focusing on institutional contrasts between Japan and Britain in terms of corporatist or pluralist characteristics of government-industry relations and decision-making and implementation styles, the book examines how and to what extent institutions explain climate policy in Japan and Britain. In doing this, the book explores how climate policy is shaped by the interplay of nationally specific institutional factors and universal constraints on actors, which emanate from characteristics of the global warming problem itself. It also considers how corporatist institutional characteristics may make a difference in attaining sustainable development. Overall this book provides a new set of comparison of climate policy and new frameworks of analysis, which could be built on in future research on cross-national climate policy analysis.