Pathways to Progression? Participation Capacity and Climate Policy Support Project Grant funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), 1. September 2026 – 31. August 2030, 899.300 CHF

Summary in German: https://www.unilu.ch/news/wenn-klimapolitik-spaltet-warum-teilhabe-entscheidend-ist-10388/

Team

• PI: Lena Maria Schaffer
• Postdoctoral researcher (80%): N.N.
• Phd student (100%): N.N.

Summary

In recent years, climate policy has moved from the margins to the center of public debate. A large literature shows that while climate measures generate broad collective benefits, their costs often fall on specific groups—such as motorists, fossil-heat users, or communities hosting renewable infrastructure—fueling discontent and, at times, backlash (Bosetti et al. 2025; Goerg, Pondorfer, and Stöhr 2025).

This project adds a complementary pathway from policy design to backlash: citizens’ capacity to participate in the transition. I argue that not only do concentrated personal costs reduce support or shift votes toward radical right-wing parties, but also that withheld participation and inaccessible benefits can politicize climate policy and produce electoral consequences. I conceptualize Teilhabemöglichkeit as citizens’ capacity to participate in decarbonization policies. For individuals or groups who are structurally excluded—renters unable to install solar PV or lacking access to charging infrastructure—the capacity to participate is low. They face costs without agency, shoulder rising fossil-fuel bills, and lack feasible avenues to respond. Such constraints heighten perceived unfairness, dampen the satisfaction of “doing one’s part,” and foster frustration.

The theoretical contribution is to treat participation capacity as a distinct, policy-sensitive channel linking climate policy design to political outcomes (support vs. rollback, voting), interacting with—rather than replacing—known drivers such as perceived cost, ideology, and trust. The central expectation is that the balance between participation capacity and household burden predicts whether climate policy progresses or is dismantled.
The overarching research question is: Does policy design that enables or restricts citizens’ participation influence public support, politicization, and the risk of climate-policy backlash?

Empirically, the project uses a cross-national, multi-method design spanning electricity, buildings, and transport sector. Work Package 1 develops comparative policy-year indicators in six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, UK) that separately measure participation capacity (who can access and benefit) and household burden (stringency, timelines, penalties, residual co-pays), yielding the first dataset that diagnoses when reforms widen access versus concentrate obligations. Work Package 2 maps how design reverberates in politics by tracking monthly media politicization and party positions, and by coding whether public debate emphasizes participation or burden frames. Work Package 3 studies voters: a cross-country survey measures perceived participation capacity, fairness, burden, trust, and social identities (e.g., homeowner/renter, rural/urban) and embeds a policy conjoint and framing experiments that vary participation and burden attributes. Two-wave election-period panels in Switzerland (2027), Germany (2029), and the UK (2029) then track within-person changes in support, rollback preferences, perceived polarization, and vote intention, linking individuals to the objective policy context from WP1 and the evolving discourse from WP2.

Methodologically, the project combines new comparative indicators, event-study designs around dated reforms, text analysis for claims and frames, and survey experiments to test whether participation capacity operates through perceived fairness and efficacy. Substantively, it explains why similar instruments can succeed in one setting and trigger backlash in another—not only because of who pays, but because of who can act. The policy payoff is immediate: because Teilhabemöglichkeit is designable, identifying levers—eligibility for renters, point-of-purchase financing, reduced administrative friction, credible timelines and penalties—provides actionable guidance for socially inclusive, politically resilient pathways to net zero.