Mémoire
| Résumé : | Due to the increasing relevance of climate change in the public domain, the subject has become heavily politicized. Nevertheless, the concept “politicization” remains under-researched and abstract. This qualitative dissertation provides empirical evidence for climate change politicization, applying discourse analysis to newspaper articles from a French and a German media outlet. This in turn allowed to determine its impact on energy policies, as energy is not a solely technical matter but something that can be part of the public debate and thus become political. By tracing the public framings of European energy integration over time, it was examined what role climate concerns and thus climate change politicization played therein. The concept was divided into three dimensions: Salience, polarization, and actor/audience expansion. It was found that politicization has different manifestations. The salience was established by the dramatic consequences expected from climate change. Particularly mediatized were weather extremes but also the impact of climate change on health, migration, biodiversity, social inequalities, and the economy. The second dimension, polarization, concerns a public disagreement. Polarization was found to be visible among various actors: citizens, institutions, and individual states. Polarization can also concern a broad range of topics ranging from climate targets to specific policy instruments such as CO2 prices. Disagreement among different actors can on the one hand hamper integration but it can also stimulate debate and lead to effective policies. The last dimension, expansion of actors and audiences, concerns the mobilizations of new players in not only the political game but particularly in climate action. Cities, businesses, and the civil society alike were found to exert political pressure for public policies on climate change. However, these three dimensions of politicization are not always equally prominent but there are phases. When examining energy policy framings, it was concluded that competitiveness and energy security have for a long time been the prominent framings and reasonings to advance energy integration. However, as climate change politicization has particularly developed over the last few years, it was expected that this would lead to climate being of higher priority in energy integration. This was also partly the case; climate has become a prominent reasoning in energy policies in recent years. However, also energy security concerns remain prevalent. The impact of climate change politicization on integration remains two-fold, as expected: it has had a significant effect on energy integration, sometimes positive and at times also negative. |
