Carbon lock-in explains why societies remain trapped in carbon-intensive systems despite the availability of low-carbon alternatives, highlighting the self-reinforcing mechanisms that perpetuate fossil fuel dependence and obstruct transitions toward more sustainable alternatives (Unruh Reference Unruh2000). This inertia arises from interlocking technological, institutional, economic, and behavioral factors that collectively reinforce the status quo. As climate policy has become increasingly polarizing, this article questions whether current explanations of the lock-in fully capture contemporary decarbonisation barriers. I propose that affective polarization—the growing antipathy between partisan groups—represents an underexplored cross-cutting process that further reinforces carbon lock-in by reducing the scope for politicians to enact climate policy. I develop a research agenda outlining how affective polarization reinforces the carbon lock-in within the context of climate policy making and explore how identity-based resistance might create obstacles to climate policy adoption.
Recent scholarship has documented a marked increase in affective polarization across advanced democracies (e.g., Garzia, Ferreira da Silva, and Maye Reference Garzia, da Silva and Maye2023; Iyengar et al. Reference Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra and Westwood2019; Mason Reference Mason2018), characterized by growing hostility between partisan groups that extends beyond policy disagreements to encompass social identity and moral values. Alongside widespread calls for climate action, affective polarization has emerged and has arguably reinforced the persistence of carbon-intensive systems. Deepening polarization has increased the threat of political backlash against climate initiatives, particularly when such policies are perceived to challenge the values or lifestyles of those most polarized. Consequently, many climate policy debates have become refracted through partisan lenses, turning climate issues into flash points within broader “culture wars” (e.g., Chinn, Hart, and Soroka Reference Chinn, Hart and Soroka2020; Falkenberg et al. Reference Falkenberg, Galeazzi, Torricelli, Di Marco, Larosa, Sas and Mekacher2022; King, Janulewicz, and Arcostanzo Reference King, Janulewicz and Arcostanzo2022). In the realm of climate governance, such widening affective rifts risk impeding the establishment of societal agreement around common goals, the negotiation of trade-offs among potentially competing objectives and constituencies, and the enforcement of policies needed for decarbonisation.
The intersection of affective polarization and climate politics has transformed climate policies from a technical challenge to a source of partisan conflict across advanced democracies. Climate policies have faced significant backlash, from Australia’s 2014 carbon pricing repeal to Canada’s 2025 elimination of consumer-facing fuel charges and France’s gilets jaunes protests (e.g., Patterson Reference Patterson2023). Rural–urban cleavages have also deepened, with fossil fuel–dependent regions interpreting decarbonisation efforts as a form of cultural and economic marginalization (Lockwood Reference Lockwood2018). In tandem, resistance has emerged in urban contexts (Tatham and Peters Reference Tatham and Peters2023), where sustainable planning initiatives like the 15-minute city (proposed by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo but generating conspiracy-driven protests in the United Kingdom in early 2023) and low-carbon transport schemes have faced substantial opposition (Marquet et al. Reference Marquet, Mojica, Fernández-Núñez and Maciejewska2024).
Research demonstrates that citizens exhibit greater acceptance of incentive-based approaches—policies that reward desired behaviors—than regulatory or punitive measures such as carbon taxes and fossil fuel subsidy reform (De Groot and Schuitema Reference de Groot and Schuitema2012; Skovgaard and Drake Reference Skovgaard, Drake, Fiorino, Eisenstadt and Ahluwalia2024; Thøgersen Reference Thøgersen2021). However, carrots alone do not achieve deep decarbonisation; sticks are also needed (Luo et al. Reference Luo, Peng, Fawcett, Green, Iyer, Meckling, Nahm and Victor2026). Effective climate action requires ambitious policies that address both mitigation and adaptation challenges. More demanding climate policies like carbon taxes and fossil fuel subsidy reform have faced substantial public opposition across advanced democracies. Citizens have rejected carbon pricing initiatives in referenda, voted out governments that implemented them, and mobilized against their adoption in legislative debates. The political volatility surrounding carbon taxes has led to policy reversals and ongoing controversy, highlighting the persistent gap between climate policy requirements and democratic acceptability (Mildenberger et al. Reference Mildenberger, Lachapelle, Harrison and Stadelmann-Steffen2022). However, these policies often demand significant behavioral changes from individuals, creating potential friction when they conflict with group identities or when political actors frame them as cultural threats (Lockwood Reference Lockwood2018).Footnote 1 This preference pattern suggests underlying psychological and political dynamics that merit further investigation. This dynamic creates a fundamental tension in climate governance: the policies most needed from a technical standpoint to achieve a sustainable future often face the greatest political resistance. To that end, the central research question motivating this research agenda is as follows: How and to what extent does affective polarization sustain the carbon lock-in?
From this question, I derive four interconnected hypotheses developed in this research agenda that warrant empirical investigation. First, future research should examine whether political elites strategically frame climate policies to activate both vertical polarization (mass-level negative affect toward political institutions and elites) and horizontal polarization (against pro-climate constituencies), while investigating how pro-climate elites attempt to circumvent these identity triggers through alternative framing strategies. Second, scholars should explore whether affective polarization reduces public acceptance of climate policies through these dual polarization pathways, with compound effects proving stronger than either dimension operating alone. Third, research is needed to investigate whether elite polarizing rhetoric creates self-reinforcing feedback loops that increase both forms of polarization among mass publics, generating electoral incentives for continued polarizing rhetoric while systematically constraining the policy space available for climate action across political parties. Finally, empirical studies should examine whether policy resistance intensifies when climate policies simultaneously activate both institutional distrust and out-group animosity, compared with when only one polarization dimension is triggered. Testing these hypotheses would help to determine whether affective polarization transforms climate policies from technical solutions to identity battlegrounds, creating novel barriers to decarbonisation that operate independently of policy effectiveness or economic considerations.
This research agenda does not propose that affective polarization replaces material interests, economic considerations, or substantive policy disagreements as explanations for climate policy resistance. Rather, it examines how identity-based divisions might interact with and amplify substantive conflicts. The framework explains why some substantive disagreements—over costs, distributional impacts, or economic transitions—consolidate into durable, identity-based divisions that persist across electoral cycles. Understanding this transformation is crucial because identity-based resistance operates through mechanisms that are different from interest-based opposition, requiring different policy interventions even when the underlying substantive conflicts remain unchanged.
The Carbon Lock-In Framework
The concept of carbon lock-in describes the self-perpetuating inertia that binds societies to carbon-intensive systems, even as the imperative for low-carbon alternatives grows stronger. Bernstein and Hoffmann (Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019) conceptualize carbon lock-in as a fractal system, exhibiting self-similar patterns across multiple scales (local, regional, national, global) that are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Lock-in represents not merely a collection of obstacles but a systemic condition in which technological, institutional, economic, and behavioral factors intertwine across these multiple levels to create entrenched reliance that becomes increasingly difficult to dislodge over time. These elements reinforce one another, producing a rigidity that resists disruption and stifles the emergence of sustainable alternatives. At its heart, the carbon lock-in operates through self-reinforcing dynamics, where initial investments in fossil fuel infrastructure justify further expansion and policy frameworks evolve to protect entrenched interests.
This creates a form of path dependency in which early technological and institutional choices, such as the dominance of the internal combustion engine or long-standing subsidies for coal and oil, constrain future transition pathways. Over time, the costs of shifting away from carbon-intensive systems escalate, while alternative pathways become increasingly difficult to initiate or maintain. Attempts to dismantle one component, such as phasing out petrol vehicles, often provoke resistance across others, from corporate lobbying to consumer reluctance. This interconnectedness grants carbon-intensive systems a form of adaptive resilience, enabling them to withstand external shocks—be they climate disasters or policy interventions (Erickson et al. Reference Erickson, Kartha, Lazarus and Tempest2015; Seto et al. Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-Vorsatz2016; Unruh Reference Unruh2000).
Technological lock-in emerges from the enduring reliance on carbon-emitting physical assets, such as coal-fired power plants, natural gas pipelines, and internal combustion engine vehicles. These systems require substantial capital investment and are engineered for extended operational lifespans, creating economic and logistical barriers to early decommissioning. Once embedded, such infrastructures dictate energy supply-and-demand patterns, often marginalizing cleaner alternatives due to sunk costs, technical incompatibilities, and entrenched supply chains (Seto et al. Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-Vorsatz2016; Unruh Reference Unruh2000).
Institutional lock-in arises from regulatory frameworks, policy paradigms, and governance structures that systematically favor incumbent fossil fuel regimes. Institutional lock-in reinforces fossil fuel dominance through formal mechanisms, including expedited permitting for oil and gas projects, entrenched fossil fuel subsidies, and statutory fiscal advantages, alongside informal practices such as risk-averse regulatory cultures and revolving-door networks that blur oversight boundaries (Gentile and Gupta Reference Gentile and Gupta2025). Powerful vested interests, including fossil fuel lobbies and state-owned enterprises, further entrench this inertia by shaping legislative agendas and opposing decarbonisation efforts (Erickson et al. Reference Erickson, Kartha, Lazarus and Tempest2015; Unruh Reference Unruh2002).
Economic lock-in is propelled by financial mechanisms that incentivize fossil fuel dependence and market structures that prioritize short-term returns over long-term sustainability. The fossil fuel industry benefits from decades of accumulated capital, economies of scale, and political favor, while renewable energy systems frequently encounter disproportionate financing barriers. Stranded asset risks compound this inertia, as investors and governments defer transitions to safeguard existing investments (Erickson et al. Reference Erickson, Kartha, Lazarus and Tempest2015). Semieniuk and colleagues (Reference Semieniuk, Holden, Mercure, Salas, Pollitt, Jobson, Vercoulen, Chewpreecha, Edwards and Viñuales2022) estimate that around $1.4 trillion in oil and gas assets globally are at risk of becoming stranded.
Finally, behavioral lock-in is sustained through habitual practices, cultural norms, and collective attitudes that normalize high-carbon consumption. Daily routines are deeply embedded within social infrastructures, rendering behavioral shifts challenging without systemic intervention. Cognitive biases further impede the adoption of sustainable alternatives (Zhou and Shen Reference Zhou and Shen2022), while narratives that frame fossil fuels as indispensable to economic stability reinforce their cultural legitimacy (Unruh Reference Unruh2000).
Bernstein and Hoffmann (Reference Bernstein and Hoffmann2019) identify a “double trap” dynamic whereby decarbonisation efforts often generate emissions reductions but become stuck in an “improvement” state rather than achieving full decarbonisation. Policies such as natural gas as a “bridge fuel” may reduce emissions while simultaneously entrenching industrial interests that oppose deeper decarbonisation. This pattern reveals how incremental progress can create new forms of lock-in, as political coalitions form around modest improvements and resist more transformative change. This dynamic is particularly relevant for understanding how affective polarization operates: even when climate policies achieve initial success, polarization can prevent the deeper transformations required by generating resistance framed as protecting achieved gains rather than pursuing inadequate ambition. Moreover, Lewis (Reference Lewis2024) demonstrates how communities can “reattach” to fossil fuels even after transitions appear complete, as residents in Whitehaven in the UK did when they embraced a proposed new coal mine by constructing narratives that legitimized extraction through appeals to economic necessity and place-based identity. This suggests that behavioral lock-in operates not only through inertia but also through active processes of emotional and material reattachment that can resurface when communities face economic insecurity.
A substantial body of scholarship, much of it associated with the Climate Social Science Network, documents the political economy context from which anti-climate narratives emerged: persistent efforts by fossil fuel interests to generate and circulate messaging that protects incumbent positions (Roberts, Brulle, and Jacquet Reference Roberts, Brulle and Jacquet2024; Roberts et al. Reference Roberts, Carlos, Jacquet and Downie2025). Brulle (Reference Brulle2014) traces how conservative foundation funding sustained a climate change countermovement of think tanks, trade associations, and advocacy organizations that confounded public understanding of climate science and delayed policy action, and shows that climate-related lobbying expenditure in the United States Congress exceeded two billion dollars between 2000 and 2016 (Brulle Reference Brulle2018). Newell (Reference Newell2021) situates such obstruction within the broader political economy of energy transitions, in which incumbent actors deploy material and discursive power to defend fossil fuel–dependent orders. This political economy constitutes the structural condition under which affective polarization around climate has developed: it supplied the anti-climate narratives now embedded in partisan identities, contributed to the erosion of public trust in climate science and in the institutions advancing climate policy, and thereby helped to drive the broader polarization dynamics that subsequent sections examine.
Acknowledging this structural condition does not reduce affective polarization to the strategies of these incumbent interests and their allies, however, and the affective dynamics warrant separate analytical attention. Once established, polarization can become self-sustaining through the social feedback loops examined later, intensifying even absent continued obstruction efforts. Moreover, political economy accounts explain the supply of anti-climate narratives but not fully their uptake: explaining why ordinary citizens with a limited material stake in fossil fuel extraction become emotionally invested in opposing climate policy requires the identity-based mechanisms this agenda develops, with the implications for intervention noted in the introduction. The relationship between obstruction efforts and polarization dynamics is itself an empirical question for this agenda: research could examine whether these actors intensify polarizing messaging at critical junctures (Capoccia and Kelemen Reference Capoccia and Kelemen2007), for instance when net zero pledges or major climate legislation appear likely, thereby connecting the timing of obstruction campaigns to the feedback mechanisms explored in the sections below.
Recent scholarship identifies a fundamental tension between pursuing policy stability through depoliticized institutions versus politicizing climate action to challenge incumbent interests (Tobin, Paterson, and VanDeveer Reference Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025). Stability-oriented approaches seek to insulate policy from political competition, while politicization strategies aim to contest existing power relations. However, populist actors increasingly frame climate policies as elitist impositions that threaten both institutional legitimacy and group identities (Paterson, Wilshire, and Tobin Reference Paterson, Wilshire and Tobin2024), activating both vertical polarization (against political institutions) and horizontal polarization (against pro-climate constituencies). This suggests that affective polarization may systematically constrain climate policy making regardless of whether policy makers pursue stability or politicization strategies. Both strategies confront the legacy of organized resistance: stability-oriented approaches presuppose the institutional trust that countermovement activity has eroded, while politicization strategies confront incumbent interests with demonstrated capacity to mobilize in response (Brulle Reference Brulle2018). Yet this agenda has so far invoked affective polarization without specifying it. Understanding how it constrains climate policy making requires first setting out what affective polarization is, the social identity processes through which it operates, and the vertical and horizontal dimensions along which it runs.
Affective Polarization
Affective polarization is characterized by significant intergroup distancing between one’s own social identity group and other groups and their supporters (Bäck et al. Reference Bäck, Carroll, Renström and Ryan2023). Affect refers to the immediate, “gut feeling” association—positive or negative—toward an event or object, offering a swift evaluative heuristic. Consequently, affective distancing comprises amplification of positive feelings toward one’s in-group and negative feelings toward one’s out-group (Cole et al. Reference Cole, Gillis, van der Linden, Cohen and Vandenbergh2025). Durnova and colleagues (Reference Durnova, Hilmar, Blum, Císař, Hajer and Kolmaš2025) argue that emotions in climate policy should be understood as “political emotions”—emotions shaped by and embedded in power relations, interests, and values—rather than obstacles to rational decision making. This conceptualization aligns with this research agenda’s focus on how affective responses to climate policies operate through political structures, as elite framing strategies deliberately activate emotional reactions tied to institutional trust and group identities.
Recent studies have identified a widening “affective gap” between these poles, and there is widespread concern that growing affective polarization has deleterious effects on the health of democracies (Voelkel et al. Reference Voelkel, Chu, Stagnaro, Mernyk, Redekopp, Pink, Druckman, Rand and Willer2022), even as it may induce greater political engagement (see e.g., Boxell, Gentzkow, and Shapiro Reference Boxell, Gentzkow and Shapiro2024; Garzia, Ferreira da Silva, and Maye Reference Garzia, da Silva and Maye2023; Phillips Reference Phillips2024; Ryan Reference Ryan2023). The cause for concern is not so much with polarization itself, since affective distance between two or more groups can manifest over mere policy disagreements, but rather its potentially destructive consequences if left unaddressed. These outcomes include the erosion of social cohesion and democratic norms, political gridlock, and civil unrest (e.g., Berntzen, Kelsall, and Harteveld Reference Berntzen, Kelsall and Harteveld2024). The more severe ramifications of such identity-based conflict have been linked to discrete emotions such as fear, anger, and disgust, and can range from avoiding members of the out-group in everyday life to supporting or enacting violence against them (Brosch Reference Brosch2021).
The notion of an in-group refers to an individual’s social identity and can involve a myriad of group identifiers. Individuals are familiar with a range of social identity prototypes, or shared mental representations of different identities corresponding to the social groups that individuals can identify with or consider as “others” (Hogg and Reid Reference Hogg and Reid2006). They are fuzzy sets rather than rigid categories and include attitudes, behaviors, goals, norms, and values (Hogg and Reid Reference Hogg and Reid2006; Tschötschel Reference Tschötschel2023, 4). The stronger the identification with an in-group, the greater the intergroup differentiation; even the mere existence of an arbitrary social group has been shown to elicit intergroup differentiation (Renström, Bäck, and Carroll Reference Renström, Bäck and Carroll2021). An out-group can be whichever group stands beyond the ostensible in-group boundary but is practically limited to those groups that pose a perceived threat to the identity of their in-group. Actual threats are not necessary within this framework, as perceived threats alone are sufficient to alter the behavior of those who perceive them (Levendusky Reference Levendusky2023). Consequently, an individual’s identification within a political group directly shapes which events or challenges they interpret as threatening (Renström, Bäck, and Carroll Reference Renström, Bäck and Carroll2021).
“Social sorting,” a concept emphasized by Mason (Reference Mason2016), elucidates the process through which individuals’ social identities become increasingly aligned with partisan affiliations, thereby diminishing the influence of social cross-pressures on political conduct. Cross-cutting cleavages mitigate societal tensions (Lipset Reference Lipset1960); however, recent scholarship demonstrates how the alignment of religious, racial, and partisan identities exacerbates intergroup antagonism, irrespective of ideological extremity (Mason Reference Mason2016; Mason and Wronski Reference Mason and Wronski2018). This pattern holds cross-nationally: as political affiliations increasingly overlap with “nonpolitical” identities—such as religion, race, or class—hostility toward opposing groups intensifies (Harteveld Reference Harteveld2021). By intensifying emotional responses to perceived political threats, sorted identities create a self-reinforcing cycle of outrage and tribalism (Renström, Bäck, and Carroll Reference Renström, Bäck and Carroll2023). Mason’s (Reference Mason2016) analysis reveals that while partisan identity triggers anger and enthusiasm specifically in response to party-aligned threats or reassurances, social sorting produces heightened emotional reactivity to all politically charged messages. Crucially, this effect is not attributable to the most strongly sorted partisans but rather emerges from the comparatively muted responses of those with cross-cutting identities, whose conflicting group affiliations appear to buffer emotional engagement.
Affective polarization manifests across two primary dimensions in democratic systems: horizontally, between actors at the same political level (elite-to-elite or mass-to-mass), and vertically, across different political levels (between elites and masses) (Berntzen, Kelsall, and Harteveld Reference Berntzen, Kelsall and Harteveld2024). The horizontal dimension encompasses how citizens view other citizen groups across political settings, capturing the lateral tensions between different segments of society. This can include polarized relationships between party elites such as governing parties and their main opposition counterparts (elite-level polarization) or divisions observed between subsets of the electorate along partisan lines (mass-level polarization). The horizontal dimension reflects the adversarial dynamics that emerge when political actors and their supporters view each other as competing teams rather than participants in a shared democratic process.
The vertical dimension encompasses how citizens relate to the political system itself, including their connections to parties, institutions, and democratic norms. This dimension captures polarized relationships between mass and elite levels of politics, as well as citizens’ varying degrees of trust in and commitment to democratic institutions and processes. Cross-national evidence from 143 countries suggests this trust has been declining globally, particularly in representative institutions such as parliaments, governments, and political parties, even as trust in nonrepresentative implementing institutions has remained stable or risen (Valgarðsson et al. Reference Valgarðsson, Jennings, Stoker, Bunting, Devine, McKay and Klassen2025). Unlike horizontal polarization, which involves mutual antagonism between groups, the vertical dimension often exhibits a more one-sided affective character, particularly when citizens develop negative feelings toward political institutions or democratic procedures without necessarily experiencing reciprocal hostility from those institutions.
Climate change has increasingly become entangled with partisan identity across many advanced democracies, with positions on climate action increasingly defining broader political allegiances and group membership (Feldman and Hart Reference Feldman and Hart2018; Smith and Mayer Reference Smith and Mayer2019; Tranter and Booth Reference Tranter and Booth2015). Research spanning European countries and cross-national comparative analyses demonstrates how climate attitudes have become embedded within partisan identities (Birch Reference Birch2020), though this process manifests differently across institutional contexts (Coffé, Crawley, and Givens Reference Coffé, Crawley and Givens2025; Reiljan Reference Reiljan2020; Wagner Reference Wagner2021). Social identity research demonstrates that partisan identity sorting can reshape policy attitudes through identity alignment processes: when individuals’ partisan identities align with other social identities, they may adopt their party’s policy positions to maintain group coherence, even on issues where they previously held different views (Mason Reference Mason2016). Whether and how these established social sorting mechanisms operate specifically for climate policy attitudes represents an important empirical question with significant implications for climate governance. If partisan identity systematically reshapes climate attitudes through social identity processes rather than primarily through substantive policy evaluation, affective polarization would create barriers that persist even when policies are economically beneficial or technically effective, representing a qualitatively distinct form of political resistance that requires interventions that are different from traditional opposition based on material interests or policy disagreement.
In multiparty systems, affective polarization extends beyond traditional party loyalties to encompass broader political group markers such as left–right positioning and ideological radicalism (Bantel Reference Bantel2023; Comellas and Torcal Reference Comellas and Torcal2023; Kekkonen and Ylä-Anttila Reference Kekkonen and Ylä-Anttila2021). Anti-climate positions typically consolidate within single radical-right populist parties—such as the Sweden Democrats, Alternative for Germany, or France’s National Rally—rather than forming anti-climate coalitions across multiple parties (Ćetković and Hagemann Reference Ćetković and Hagemann2020; Lockwood and Lockwood Reference Lockwood and Lockwood2022). These parties are often either excluded from government entirely or enter as junior coalition partners without controlling climate-relevant ministries, limiting their direct policy influence. However, as discussed above, mainstream right-wing parties may adopt or echo anti-climate positioning through competitive dynamics even when radical-right parties remain formally isolated (Bale and Kaltwasser Reference Bale and Kaltwasser2021). The salience and electoral rewards of anti-climate positions thus differ systematically across electoral systems, as do the mechanisms through which radical-right framing influences broader conservative politics—dynamics requiring further empirical investigation.
Climate Policy Resistance
The convergence of multiple social identities along partisan lines intensifies conflict, as groups increasingly perceive one another as threats (Dias and Lelkes Reference Dias and Lelkes2022), transforming climate policies from technical challenges into markers of political allegiance and eroding the public trust on which climate policy depends (Hetherington and Rudolph Reference Hetherington and Rudolph2015; Mason and Wronski Reference Mason and Wronski2018). Once climate policy becomes an allegiance marker in this way, both principal elite strategies are compromised: stability-oriented approaches rely on technocratic legitimacy that vertical polarization erodes, while politicization strategies risk intensifying horizontal polarization by framing climate action as a partisan identity marker (Tobin, Paterson, and VanDeveer Reference Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025). Affective polarization may systematically narrow the available pathways for effective climate policy making regardless of strategic approach.
This identity-based polarization maps onto structural economic divisions that further entrench climate policy resistance. Oatley’s (Reference Oatley2024) concept of the carbon–climate cleavage captures how diverging material interests between knowledge economy and carbon economy constituencies create a new axis of political conflict. Knowledge economy communities disproportionately support decarbonisation, while carbon-intensive regions perceive climate action as economically threatening. Lewis (Reference Lewis2024) demonstrates how these economic anxieties combine with place-based identities to generate active support for fossil fuel extraction.
These structural divisions intersect with the erosion of shared epistemic foundations to create particularly durable forms of resistance (Rekker and Harteveld Reference Rekker and Harteveld2024). When citizens are divided not only by material interests but also by fundamentally different understandings of climate science and policy effectiveness, resistance becomes embedded in competing worldviews. Affectively polarized citizens become susceptible to in-party-congruent misinformation, as climate policy debates increasingly occur within separate informational ecosystems (Jenke Reference Jenke2023). Mildenberger and colleagues’ (Reference Mildenberger, Lachapelle, Harrison and Stadelmann-Steffen2022) analysis of Canadian carbon tax resistance illustrates this dynamic: conservative supporters systematically recalled negative advertisements and rejected rebate information that contradicted their partisan loyalties, suggesting that policy resistance had decoupled from economic self-interest. This creates policy resistance rooted in identity-based information processing rather than rational cost-benefit calculations, potentially affecting both passive policy acceptance and active behavioral support (Dreyer and Walker Reference Dreyer and Walker2013).
This epistemic fragmentation intersects with trust erosion and elite cue following to create particularly complex resistance patterns. Existing research demonstrates that trust and elite cues are interrelated yet distinct drivers of policy acceptance, with elite influence being contingent on trust levels (Arceneaux Reference Arceneaux2008; Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus Reference Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus2013). Affective polarization systematically erodes trust in opposing elites, amplifying reliance on in-group cues and reinforcing policy resistance. Climate policy faces a double challenge because effective climate action requires both vertical trust (for policy implementation) and horizontal trust (for collective action), yet polarization simultaneously undermines both forms of trust.
The result is a multifaceted resistance pattern where structural economic divisions, identity-based polarization, epistemic fragmentation, and trust erosion reinforce each other to create systematic barriers to climate policy adoption. This interconnected nature of resistance helps to explain why climate policies face particularly intense and durable opposition, and why technical policy improvements or economic incentives alone may be insufficient to overcome entrenched resistance patterns.
How Affective Polarization Reinforces Carbon Lock-In
Having described the various dimensions of the carbon lock-in framework and how affective polarization operates through social identity processes, this section outlines a research agenda examining how affective polarization may reinforce the carbon lock-in. I propose that affective polarization operates as a cross-cutting process that reinforces technological, institutional, economic, and behavioral lock-in to varying extents, rather than constituting a separate fifth dimension. This process operates through three key mechanisms that warrant empirical investigation across both vertical (elite–mass) and horizontal (mass–mass, elite–elite) dimensions of political polarization. Recent scholarship has examined the tension between pursuing stable, depoliticized climate policies versus politicizing climate action to challenge incumbent interests (Tobin, Paterson, and VanDeveer Reference Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025). This research agenda explores how affective polarization may render this tension increasingly difficult to navigate, as polarization simultaneously undermines the viability of both stability-oriented technocratic approaches (through vertical distrust) and politicization strategies (through horizontal identity-based resistance).
Understanding how this cross-cutting process operates requires distinguishing between two types of political elites whose strategic communication shapes all three mechanisms: anti–climate action elites (primarily figures in right-wing populist and conservative parties) who oppose ambitious climate policies (Kulin, Johansson Sevä, and Dunlap Reference Kulin, Sevä and Dunlap2021), and pro–climate action elites (primarily figures in left-green parties) who advocate for decarbonisation measures. This research agenda focuses specifically on political elites within democratic institutions rather than climate movements, nongovernmental organizations, or activist organizations. While climate movements are important actors in climate politics, they operate through distinct mechanisms (social mobilization, direct action, norm setting) that warrant separate theoretical treatment. Political elites face unique constraints and incentives shaped by electoral competition, coalition building, and institutional responsibilities that make their relationship to affective polarization analytically distinct. Climate movements’ interactions with polarization dynamics represent an important complementary research question beyond this agenda’s scope.
I propose investigating how the interaction between these elite camps and their strategic framing choices, the trust dynamics they create, and the feedback loops generated may increase animosity toward political institutions (vertical polarization) and out-groups (horizontal polarization), hardening resistance to climate policy and constraining the policy space available for climate action.
Elite Framing and Dual Polarization Dynamics
The first mechanism through which affective polarization reinforces carbon lock-in involves strategic framing by political elites who shape how climate policies are perceived and evaluated by mass publics. This mechanism operates through a dual process whereby anti–climate action elites deliberately activate both vertical and horizontal polarization to generate resistance to climate policies, while pro–climate action elites attempt to circumvent these identity triggers through framing strategies emphasizing cobenefits such as energy security, economic competitiveness, or improved air quality. This strategic framing dynamic is likely to operate most powerfully in two-party or majoritarian systems where winner-takes-all electoral rules reward mainstream parties for mobilizing polarizing positions (Lockwood and Lockwood Reference Lockwood and Lockwood2022). In proportional representation systems, anti-climate framing typically concentrates within a single radical-right party while mainstream center-right parties operate within different incentive structures, needing to maintain coalition viability with partners (Ćetković and Hagemann Reference Ćetković and Hagemann2020).
Partisan elites powerfully influence mass attitudes toward responsibility, control, and trust, shaping whether citizens believe a problem fundamentally requires government action (McCarty Reference McCarty2019). Citizens frequently align their positions with party elites regardless of ideological consistency or policy substance. The strength of this influence is not uniform, however: it varies with the salience of partisan identity across individuals. Conceptualizing partisanship as a social identity of varying importance (Mayer Reference Mayer2020), climate policies become more threatening as partisan identity becomes central to the self-concept. Elites must therefore navigate entrenched identity-based resistance that operates independently of policy substance, constraining the available policy options. Existing research, however, has not systematically examined how elite framing might activate both dimensions of affective polarization simultaneously in climate debates, the question this section addresses.
I propose that anti–climate action elites frame climate policies in ways that simultaneously activate both vertical and horizontal polarization dimensions. This dual activation transforms climate policies from technical policy choices into comprehensive identity threats. As Durnova and colleagues (Reference Durnova, Hilmar, Blum, Císař, Hajer and Kolmaš2025) observe, the scale and intensity of required climate changes inevitably intersect with pressing issues of identity, sovereignty, and perceived inequality, creating conditions where emotional responses to climate policies become politically charged and embedded in existing power relations. Citizens who might accept climate policies on technical or economic grounds become resistant when those policies are framed to threaten their trust in institutions and their group identities. This creates policy resistance that can operate independently of the actual content, design, or effectiveness of climate policies themselves.
Anti-climate elites frame ambitious climate policies as evidence of institutional failure and elite disconnection from ordinary citizen concerns. Climate action becomes portrayed as technocratic overreach that ignores economic hardship, dismisses cultural values, and prioritizes abstract environmental goals over immediate material needs. This framing generates broader animosity toward political institutions beyond the specific parties proposing climate policies, positioning climate action as symptomatic of a broader failure of democratic responsiveness. Simultaneously, these same elites frame climate policies as markers of threatening out-group identity. Supporters of climate action are characterized as urban elites, cultural progressives, or global cosmopolitans whose values fundamentally threaten traditional ways of life. This transforms climate policy from a policy choice into an identity battlefield between “ordinary people” (the in-group) and “climate elites” (the out-group), making policy resistance a form of group loyalty and identity defense.
This identity-driven polarization can be mitigated through strategic framing, though such strategies involve trade-offs between stability and politicization (Tobin, Paterson, and VanDeveer Reference Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025). Feldman and Hart (Reference Feldman and Hart2018) demonstrate that US Republicans exhibited lower support when policies were linked to climate change mitigation but responded positively to identical policies framed around energy security or air pollution reduction. This reveals how strategic framing can circumvent polarizing identity triggers without changing policy substance, potentially expanding policy space by avoiding the dual polarization dynamics that constrain both depoliticized and politicized climate strategies.
Pro-climate elites can potentially expand the space for viable climate policy making by decoupling policy substance from polarizing identity triggers. This involves emphasizing cobenefits that appeal to conservative values such as energy security, economic competitiveness, technological innovation, or local air quality rather than climate change mitigation goals that activate partisan resistance. Research suggests that emphasizing technological innovation and framing policies as consistent with market principles, rather than as government mandates, may reduce identity-based resistance among conservative-leaning citizens (Lyons Reference Lyons2018). The operative distinction concerns framing and perception rather than instrument type: carbon taxes are market instruments by design, yet attract intense resistance when framed as impositions, underscoring that resistance tracks identity activation rather than policy substance. Evidence from the UK illustrates the potential effectiveness of such reframing strategies. While only 32% of Reform UK voters support the “net zero” target (Climate Barometer 2025), 54% support “policies to stop climate change” when framed around specific targets (Johnstone Reference Johnstone2025), and 71% support higher taxes on polluting companies (Global Witness 2025). This variation suggests that “net zero” has become a polarized identity marker among this group, while substantively similar climate policies framed around fairness, accountability, or cobenefits can bypass partisan resistance.
While this framework distinguishes between anti-climate and pro-climate elites for analytical clarity, an important dynamic warranting investigation is how mainstream right-wing parties respond strategically to radical-right positioning on climate change. Research on immigration politics demonstrates that mainstream right parties face a strategic dilemma when radical-right parties gain electoral traction: whether to maintain distance or adopt similar positions to compete for voters (Bale and Kaltwasser Reference Bale and Kaltwasser2021). Abou-Chadi and Krause’s (Reference Abou-Chadi and Krause2020) work demonstrates how mainstream parties can inadvertently normalize radical-right positions through this competitive process. Similar dynamics appear to be emerging in climate politics, most visibly at the European Union level where the European People’s Party has increasingly aligned with voices in the European Conservatives and Reformists group and the Patriots for Europe group that frame the EU’s Green Deal as undermining competitiveness and growth. This suggests that even in multiparty systems where radical-right parties remain relatively isolated, anti-climate positioning may influence mainstream right parties’ climate policy stances through competitive dynamics, potentially amplifying the polarization mechanisms identified below.
These dynamics suggest that pro-climate elites face a fundamental strategic dilemma: framing strategies that expand appeal to resistant constituencies may simultaneously weaken mobilization among supportive ones, while approaches that energize the base may reinforce polarization patterns that constrain overall policy space. Avoiding explicit climate framing may satisfy tactical political needs but risks undermining the urgency and scope of action required for effective climate policies. Moreover, identity-neutral framing may not mobilize pro-climate constituencies who are motivated by environmental values and climate concern. This analysis of elite strategic framing and dual polarization dynamics generates the following testable hypothesis:
H1 (dual elite framing): anti–climate action elites frame climate policies that activate vertical polarization (against political institutions and pro-climate parties) and horizontal polarization (against pro-climate out-groups), while pro–climate action elites attempt to circumvent these identity triggers through strategic reframing that emphasizes policy cobenefits rather than climate goals.
Trust Erosion and Dual Polarization Dynamics
The second mechanism through which affective polarization reinforces carbon lock-in involves trust erosion operating as a crucial mediating condition between elite framing strategies and mass policy resistance. Rather than treating trust simply as another barrier to climate action, I propose conceptualizing it as the key mechanism that determines how polarizing elite rhetoric translates into sustained policy opposition across multiple dimensions of carbon lock-in.
Trust erosion operates differently from the direct framing effects described in the first mechanism. While elite framing can immediately activate polarized responses to specific policies, trust erosion creates more fundamental and durable resistance patterns by altering how citizens evaluate climate policies over time. When citizens lose trust in political institutions (vertical dimension) or toward pro-climate action groups (horizontal dimension), they become systematically predisposed to reject climate policies regardless of their specific content or framing.
The existing literature establishes important connections between trust and policy acceptance (e.g., Harring and Jagers Reference Harring and Jagers2013; Johnson and Schwadel Reference Johnson and Schwadel2019; Kallbekken and Sælen Reference Kallbekken and Sælen2011), but has not systematically examined how trust operates through simultaneous vertical and horizontal polarization pathways. I propose that these dual trust dynamics create compound effects that are more powerful than either dimension alone, generating particularly entrenched forms of policy resistance.
This dual trust erosion reinforces carbon lock-in across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Institutional lock-in is strengthened where vertical polarization makes climate policy electorally costly for parties and elected politicians, who may then avoid proposing climate policies because doing so triggers anti-institutional backlash extending beyond specific policy disagreements. Behavioral lock-in becomes more entrenched when horizontal polarization embeds policy resistance within social identities and opposing climate policies becomes a marker of group loyalty rather than a policy preference, making resistance persist even when individual circumstances change. Economic lock-in is reinforced indirectly as dual polarization protects fossil fuel interests by generating identity-based opposition to carbon pricing, subsidy reform, and other economic transition policies that might otherwise gain support based on their economic merits alone. This approach recognizes that policy resistance operating through identity-based mechanisms may prove more durable than resistance based purely on instrumental concerns about policy effectiveness or economic costs (Bugden Reference Bugden2022). When climate policies activate both institutional distrust and out-group animosity, they face resistance that operates independently of their objective characteristics.
These trust-mediated dynamics create self-reinforcing cycles that systematically narrow the space for climate policy making. Anti–climate action elites who successfully polarize climate issues may gain electoral advantages by mobilizing both anti-institutional sentiment and tribal loyalties, creating incentives for continued polarizing rhetoric. At the mass level, citizens exposed to polarizing elite rhetoric may develop heightened emotional responses to climate policies that persist beyond specific electoral cycles. This emotional conditioning makes them more receptive to future polarizing appeals while simultaneously making them less responsive to technical policy arguments, economic evidence, or compromise proposals. The durability of such effects would suggest that trust erosion may create path-dependent resistance that becomes increasingly difficult to reverse over time.
This represents a fundamental challenge for evidence-based policy making: the political viability of climate policies becomes decoupled from their substantive merits, creating systematic barriers to implementing the most necessary and effective climate actions. The second mechanism, involving trust erosion as a mediating condition between dual polarization and policy resistance, suggests the following hypothesis:
H2 (trust-mediated polarization): trust erosion mediates the relationship between affective polarization and climate policy resistance, such that simultaneous vertical polarization (eroding trust in political institutions and pro-climate elites) and horizontal polarization (eroding trust in pro-climate out-groups) produces stronger and more durable policy resistance than either polarization dimension operating independently.
Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loops
The third mechanism through which affective polarization reinforces carbon lock-in involves self-reinforcing feedback loops that may represent the most significant and durable contribution of polarization to climate policy resistance. Unlike the previous mechanisms, which focus on how polarization emerges and operates at specific moments, this mechanism examines how polarization becomes self-perpetuating, creating escalating cycles that systematically entrench carbon lock-in over time.
Self-reinforcing feedback loops operate through a cyclical process whereby polarizing elite rhetoric generates mass-level polarization, which then creates electoral incentives for continued elite polarization, further deepening mass attitudes, and so forth. This creates a dynamic where initial polarization becomes amplified through repeated cycles, making climate policy resistance increasingly entrenched and difficult to reverse.
These feedback mechanisms operate across both vertical and horizontal dimensions of polarization. Vertically, anti-institutional sentiment grows as repeated polarizing rhetoric portrays climate policies as evidence of systemic democratic failure, while horizontally, out-group animosity intensifies as pro-climate groups become increasingly characterized as fundamental threats to in-group values and identities. The dual operation of these feedback loops creates compound effects that systematically constrain climate policy adoption by making climate action increasingly politically costly for any actor who attempts to advance it.
The feedback loop reinforces carbon lock-in across all four dimensions through interconnected pathways. Institutional lock-in is strengthened as electoral incentives increasingly punish politicians for proposing climate policies, creating path-dependent resistance within democratic institutions. Politicians learn that climate policy advocacy triggers both anti-institutional backlash and out-group mobilization against them, making climate action politically costly regardless of policy substance. Behavioral lock-in becomes more entrenched as polarized communities develop social norms that actively discourage climate-conscious behaviors and sanction members who adopt them. Climate action becomes not just individually costly but socially deviant within resistant communities. Economic lock-in is reinforced as the narrowing policy space makes carbon pricing, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and other economically efficient transition policies politically untenable, thereby protecting existing fossil fuel investments and economic structures. Technological lock-in operates more indirectly but significantly, as feedback loops impede government support for clean technology deployment, research funding, and infrastructure development when these become polarized issues rather than technical ones.
These feedback mechanisms operate across multiple levels of political behavior, creating particularly complex and powerful lock-in effects. At the elite level, anti–climate action elites who successfully polarize climate issues gain electoral advantages by mobilizing both anti-institutional sentiment and in-group loyalties. This success creates incentives for continued and intensified polarizing rhetoric, even when such strategies conflict with broader policy objectives, long-term party interests, or governance needs.
At the mass level, citizens exposed to repeated polarizing elite rhetoric develop heightened and persistent emotional responses to climate policies that extend well beyond specific electoral cycles. This emotional conditioning creates psychological path dependence: citizens become more receptive to future polarizing appeals while simultaneously becoming less responsive to technical policy arguments, economic evidence, or compromise proposals. The durability of these emotional responses means that polarization effects accumulate over time rather than dissipating between electoral cycles. Research suggests that affective polarization may also increase electoral participation, with polarized voters exhibiting a sizeable independent boost in turnout even when accounting for the confounding effects of partisanship and ideological polarization (Harteveld and Wagner Reference Harteveld and Wagner2023). This creates an asymmetric dynamic: identity-based hostility mobilizes anti-climate voters at higher rates while diffuse pro-climate majorities may be less consistently activated, compounding the electoral advantages available to anti-climate elites.
When pro-climate majorities govern in polarized environments, these dynamics create particularly challenging constraints. Vertical polarization enables opponents to delegitimize climate policies as elite impositions disconnected from citizen concerns, while horizontal polarization mobilizes an intense backlash that raises political costs even for democratically elected pro-climate majorities. This differs from low-polarization contexts where public apathy may paradoxically permit bolder climate action, as technocratic policy changes face less organized resistance. These dynamics affect government alternation, though whether effects are symmetric or biased against climate action remains an empirical question. Anti-climate parties in power can mobilize polarized opposition to reverse policies that have become identity markers, while pro-climate parties in power face similar polarized resistance when advancing new policies. The combination of polarization with other factors—such as status quo bias, institutional veto points, and the long time horizons required for climate policy—may create asymmetric effects that systematically favor inaction, but this requires empirical investigation.
The interaction between elite and mass polarization creates the most powerful lock-in effects through escalating cycles of mutual reinforcement. As mass publics become more polarized through exposure to elite rhetoric, they exert pressure on pro–climate action elites to adopt more confrontational rhetorical strategies to maintain credibility and mobilize their base constituencies. However, these more confrontational approaches then further activate identity concerns among resistant groups, deepening their polarization and creating electoral incentives for anti-climate elites to escalate their rhetoric further. These self-reinforcing feedback dynamics are most likely to consolidate where electoral systems reward mainstream parties for adopting polarizing positions. In first-past-the-post systems, feedback mechanisms can push major parties toward anti-climate positions to capture swing voters. In proportional systems, feedback mechanisms may instead reinforce the formation of single-issue radical-right parties that remain constrained by coalition dynamics (Lockwood and Lockwood Reference Lockwood and Lockwood2022).
This represents a fundamental challenge to evidence-based policy making: the feedback loops create systematic selection pressures that favor politically palatable policies over substantively necessary ones. The political system becomes biased against the most ambitious and effective climate policies precisely because these are most likely to activate polarized responses, while incremental or symbolic policies face fewer barriers despite their limited impact. This third mechanism yields the following hypothesis:
H3 (escalating feedback effects): elite polarizing rhetoric about climate policies amplifies both vertical and horizontal affective polarization among mass publics, which creates electoral incentives for intensified polarizing rhetoric, resulting in escalating cycles that progressively constrain the policy space available for climate action across all political parties.
Depolarization Strategies and Asymmetric Elite Incentives
Having established how affective polarization reinforces carbon lock-in, this section examines depolarization interventions. These interventions work differently across the two dimensions: reducing vertical polarization operates largely through policy design that rebuilds institutional trust, whereas reducing horizontal polarization operates through framing and communication that lowers identity-based hostility. Stability-oriented approaches rely on citizens trusting technocratic institutions, but vertical polarization erodes this trust. Research demonstrates that specific policy design features, such as transparent revenue recycling or visible benefits, can rebuild vertical trust by demonstrating government responsiveness. Allocating proceeds from environmental taxes to environmental causes enhances their acceptance (Kallbekken and Sælen Reference Kallbekken and Sælen2011), while dismantling fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting funds to social policies has proved to be successful in several countries (Bolet, Green, and González-Eguino Reference Bolet, Green and González-Eguino2023). Maestre-Andrés, Drews, and Van den Bergh (Reference Maestre-Andrés, Drews and van den Bergh2019) find that perceived fairness significantly increases both policy acceptability and support for carbon pricing instruments. These findings suggest that vertical polarization can be reduced through policy designs that provide visible, tangible benefits demonstrating institutional effectiveness. Revenue recycling mechanisms that emphasize direct economic benefits—such as infrastructure investment, tax relief, or rebate programs—could rebuild trust by showing they respond to citizens’ economic concerns rather than solely pursuing more abstract environmental goals with diffuse benefits.
Horizontal polarization requires different interventions focused on reducing identity-based resistance between groups. As noted in the Elite Framing and Dual Polarization Dynamics subsection, Feldman and Hart (Reference Feldman and Hart2018) demonstrate that public support for low-carbon policies varies significantly depending on whether they are framed around climate change, air pollution, or energy security. This asymmetry underscores how strategic framing can either exacerbate or circumvent solution aversion by activating or avoiding partisan identity triggers.
Communication research identifies emotional strategies for reducing out-group animosity (Wong-Parodi and Feygina Reference Wong-Parodi and Feygina2021). Brosch’s (Reference Brosch2021) study finds that emotional appeals combining hope with specific efficacy assessments—for instance, messages that inspire optimism about renewable energy futures while providing concrete information about how individual actions contribute to measurable outcomes—prove particularly effective. Similarly, appeals to pride, such as framing energy efficiency upgrades as demonstrations of responsible homeownership or community leadership, correspond with increased environmental investment intentions.
However, the effectiveness of these strategies depends critically on whether they activate group-based identities or focus on shared concerns that transcend partisan boundaries. For example, a message emphasizing patriotic energy independence focuses on shared national identity rather than environmental ideology, potentially avoiding partisan triggers. Conversely, messages that frame climate action as progressive virtue signaling or associate environmental protection with specific political movements risk activating out-group animosity among certain audiences, undermining policy support regardless of the emotional appeal used.
The dual nature of affective polarization creates complex challenges for depolarization efforts. Strategies that successfully reduce vertical polarization by demonstrating institutional competence may simultaneously activate horizontal polarization if they become associated with particular political groups or cultural identities. Conversely, efforts to reduce horizontal polarization through identity-neutral framing may fail to address underlying institutional distrust that motivates resistance to government climate policies. Whether sequencing interventions by the dominant dimension can contain this interaction, or whether addressing one dimension inevitably provokes the other, is itself an empirical question. People respond to cues from political elites that guide the construction of public attitudes about climate policy, and how such information is received is contingent on both the source credibility (vertical dimension) and the social identities among message recipients (horizontal dimension) (Van Boven and Sherman Reference Van Boven and Sherman2021). Educational communication about climate science may reduce horizontal polarization by providing shared factual foundations but simultaneously activate vertical polarization if perceived as elite manipulation or government overreach.
Understanding dual polarization dynamics suggests that effective depolarization strategies may need to be carefully sequenced and coordinated. Interventions targeting vertical polarization should focus on rebuilding institutional trust through transparent, fair policy design that provides clear economic benefits (Marsh Reference Marsh2023). Those addressing horizontal polarization should emphasize shared values and cobenefits while avoiding partisan identity triggers. However, the interaction between dimensions means that interventions may need to be tailored to specific contexts. In highly vertically polarized environments, institutional credibility building may need to precede policy communication efforts. In contexts dominated by horizontal polarization, identity-neutral framing may prove more effective than institutional trust-building measures. The interaction between mechanisms points to an additional hypothesis:
H4 (context-adaptive depolarization strategy): depolarization interventions addressing both institutional distrust and out-group animosity will be most effective when sequenced according to the dominant polarization dimension, beginning with trust-building measures in vertically polarized contexts and with identity-neutral communication in horizontally polarized contexts.
Concluding Remarks
This research agenda has outlined how affective polarization may represent a critical yet underexplored mechanism reinforcing carbon lock-in across advanced democracies. By integrating social identity theory with carbon lock-in literature, I have developed a theoretical framework demonstrating how polarized elite–mass interactions create novel barriers to climate policy adoption that operate independently of technical feasibility or economic efficiency considerations.
The framework contributes to existing scholarship across multiple dimensions. First, it disaggregates affective polarization into vertical and horizontal dimensions, arguing that elite framing may activate both institutional distrust and out-group animosity through distinct yet reinforcing pathways, creating resistance to climate policies that operates independently of policy substance. Second, it extends carbon lock-in theory by conceptualizing polarization as a cross-cutting process that operates through these dual dimensions to simultaneously reinforce multiple lock-in types. Third, it identifies three specific mechanisms—elite strategic framing, trust erosion as a mediating condition, and self-reinforcing feedback loops—through which affective polarization transforms climate policies from technical solutions into identity battlegrounds. Each mechanism operates through different temporal dynamics and creates distinct types of barriers, but together they create compound effects that may prove more constraining than the sum of their individual impacts. Fourth, it engages with scholarship on the stability–politicization dilemma (Tobin, Paterson, and VanDeveer Reference Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025) by examining how affective polarization renders both approaches increasingly difficult. While Mildenberger and Lockwood (Reference Mildenberger, Lockwood, Tobin, Paterson and VanDeveer2025) show that “apolitical” institutions remain vulnerable to partisan contestation, this framework explains why: vertical polarization erodes trust in technocratic institutions while horizontal polarization undermines cross-partisan coalition building, systematically constraining both depoliticized and politicized climate strategies.
These dynamics may be particularly problematic for addressing complex, long-term challenges that require sustained policy commitment across multiple electoral cycles. Climate change exemplifies such challenges, but similar dynamics might affect other domains requiring technical expertise and long-term policy making, such as pandemic preparedness, infrastructure investment, or technological regulation. Indeed, the framework may constitute a more general account of how affective polarization converts substantive policy disputes into durable, identity-based constraints, with climate as a paradigmatic rather than unique case. Climate is nonetheless an especially likely site for these dynamics, combining organized and well-resourced incumbent interests, policy time horizons that span many electoral cycles, and a depth of identity entanglement. Whether the mechanisms identified here operate with comparable force in other polarized policy domains is a comparative question this agenda invites. Understanding how polarization processes transform technical issues into identity conflicts could prove crucial for maintaining democratic capacity to address complex collective action problems.
This theoretical framework generates several empirical research priorities. Future studies should combine elite interviews, content analysis of political communication, and experimental research to trace how polarizing rhetoric shapes mass attitudes and how those attitudes, in turn, constrain elite policy options. Cross-national comparative research could examine how these mechanisms operate across different institutional settings, party systems, and cultural contexts, testing whether the dual polarization dynamics identified here prove generalizable or context dependent. Longitudinal research examining polarization dynamics over multiple electoral cycles could test the proposed feedback mechanisms and their cumulative effects on policy space constraints. Experimental studies could isolate the effects of different framing strategies and test whether depolarization interventions can successfully interrupt the mechanisms identified while maintaining policy effectiveness.
This agenda analyses barriers to change, and the lock-in metaphor raises a corresponding question about unlocking that warrants explicit attention. Two traditions in the policy sciences are relevant. The punctuated equilibrium tradition identifies exogenous shocks such as elections, economic crises, and energy price shocks as central drivers of major policy change (Baumgartner and Jones Reference Baumgartner and Jones1993). The framework developed here raises the question of whether affective polarization degrades the capacity of such shocks to open policy windows: shocks assimilated into existing partisan schemas may fail to produce the redefinition of policy images and concentration of attention through which punctuations occur, instead reinforcing established alignments. A second tradition emphasizes gradual, endogenous change through mechanisms such as policy layering and dismantling, whereby new interventions accumulate within complex policyscapes and entrenched policies are weakened incrementally while managing organized opposition (Adam et al. Reference Adam, Hurka, Knill and Steinebach2019; Mettler Reference Mettler2016). Relatedly, scholarship on long-term policy investments identifies credible expectations of long-term benefits, electoral safety for implementing politicians, and institutional capacity to overcome organized opposition as necessary conditions for policies imposing short-term costs for long-term gains (Finnegan Reference Finnegan2022; Lindvall Reference Lindvall2017). The mechanisms identified in this agenda bear directly on both: affective polarization erodes electoral safety and renders long-term benefit expectations noncredible across partisan lines, while gradual, low-salience strategies may retain viability precisely because they avoid activating the identity triggers that major reform provokes. How affective polarization conditions these established change mechanisms, whether by blunting exogenous shocks or by channeling feasible reform toward incremental and less visible strategies, is a further empirical question connecting this agenda to theories of institutional and policy change, though the Carbon Lock-In Framework section and the Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loops subsection note such incrementalism may itself entrench modest gains. Affective polarization may condition not only whether exogenous shocks open policy windows but also which policy responses they license. During the 2022 energy crisis, governments largely shielded consumers from high prices rather than restraining demand; whether polarization renders visible, household-facing interventions particularly vulnerable to identity-based framing remains an empirical question requiring investigation.
This research agenda applies primarily to contexts where climate policy has become a salient partisan issue and affective polarization levels are moderate to high. In low-polarization contexts, climate inaction may stem from apathy, elite consensus against action, or technical or economic barriers rather than identity-based resistance. The mechanisms identified here may not apply or may operate weakly in such settings. Similarly, where climate salience is low, apathy and low turnout likely matter more than hostility in explaining anti-climate electoral success. Future research should examine when affective polarization becomes the binding constraint on climate policy versus when other mechanisms dominate. Additionally, this framework may apply differently when pro-climate constituencies hold strong governing majorities: polarization could potentially reinforce climate action through identity-based mobilization rather than only constraining it, though this remains an empirical question requiring investigation. Polarization might also mobilize pro-climate constituencies or create electoral pressures for ambitious policies in certain contexts. Youth climate activism, for instance, has generated significant mobilization for climate action (Hilder and Collin Reference Hilder and Collin2022; Knops Reference Knops, Bessant, Collin and O’Keeffe2024), though how such movements interact with the polarization dynamics identified here requires further investigation. For instance, high polarization might generate strong in-group mobilization that overrides resistance from polarized opponents, particularly in contexts where pro-climate identities become politically dominant. Additionally, the mechanisms identified may operate differently across institutional settings, party systems, and cultural contexts, representing important scope conditions for the framework.
The framework’s logic is implicitly modeled on two-party or first-past-the-post systems where electoral competition creates strong incentives for major parties to adopt polarizing positions to capture winner-takes-all effects. In multiparty proportional representation systems, the incentive structures differ: parties can survive by appealing to narrower constituencies, and coalition formation dynamics constrain the policy influence of parties that take extreme positions. As noted above, empirical evidence from Western European democracies suggests that in proportional representation systems, anti-climate positions typically consolidate within a single radical-right populist party that is either excluded from government or enters as a junior partner without controlling climate-relevant ministries (Ćetković and Hagemann Reference Ćetković and Hagemann2020; Lockwood and Lockwood Reference Lockwood and Lockwood2022). However, this institutional containment may be less durable than it appears. Research on mainstream party responses to radical-right electoral success demonstrates that competitive dynamics can lead mainstream right parties to adopt or echo radical-right positions even without formal coalition arrangements (Abou-Chadi and Krause Reference Abou-Chadi and Krause2020; Bale and Kaltwasser Reference Bale and Kaltwasser2021), a process through which such positions may become normalized across the broader Right. At the mass level, Valentim (Reference Valentim2021) shows that radical-right positions lose their stigma once such parties gain parliamentary representation, as supporters perceive previously unacceptable views to have been legitimized.
Whether the feedback mechanisms identified here operate with equal force across these different institutional contexts, or whether they are most powerful where electoral systems reward mainstream parties for mobilizing anti-climate affect, remains an empirical question requiring systematic comparative research. Countries with stronger environmental movements or different cultural relationships to government authority might experience modified versions of these processes. A further scope condition concerns the national framing of the analysis. Elite frames, campaign strategies, and disinformation circulate across borders (Böhmelt et al. Reference Böhmelt, Ezrow, Lehrer and Ward2016), as the transnational spread of 15-minute-city conspiracy narratives illustrates, so the mechanisms identified here may not remain contained within national party systems. Whether transnational frame diffusion can generate climate policy resistance even in polities with comparatively low affective polarization, and whether such diffusion itself contributes to the observed cross-national rise in polarization, are open empirical questions for this research agenda.
If the mechanisms outlined in this research agenda prove empirically supported, they suggest that effective climate policy strategies may need to address polarization dynamics as seriously as technical and economic barriers. This might involve developing depolarization interventions, designing policies that avoid identity triggers, or finding ways to harness polarization for pro-climate mobilization rather than resistance. However, such strategies must navigate the fundamental tension between the scientific urgency of climate action and the political constraints created by polarization processes. The challenge for policy makers and advocates may be finding approaches that acknowledge polarization dynamics without compromising the scope and ambition of climate action required to address the underlying challenge effectively.
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