The Design of the Clean Power Plan as a Complex Ecology of Policy Games

Abstract

"In this paper, we examine stakeholder participation during the design of the Clean Power Plan, the cornerstone rule devised by the Obama administration to tackle climate change by lowering greenhouse emissions from power plants in the U.S. We code information from publicly available documents detailing the complex interactions involving EPA staff and stakeholders before the rule published in final form, and examine the patterns of participation of more than 1200 stakeholders in 266 meetings that took place between June of 2013 and October of 2015. We see the forums where stakeholders interact as realizations of policy games that give actors the chance to learn about the potential scope and content of the rule but also build ties with other stakeholders, which in turn could be the foundation for formal coalitions that exert influence in the rulemaking process. Our results show that the subset of stakeholders who can be potentially more affected by the content of the Clean Power Plan are more likely to overlap in their forum attendance patterns, in comparison to other types of stakeholders. These participation patterns help illustrate the unprecedented level of conflict that the rule generated, which ultimately led to its demise in early 2017."