This paper analyzes the state-level influences on U.S. federal representative climate policy voting, including representative party and ideology, state economic interests, state climate conditions, and state policy path dependency factors. The politics of climate policy have only recently received notable attention in the academic literature, with sub-national policies being the focus (Bromley-Trujillo, 2011; Dierwechter, 2010; Matisoff, 2008). Despite the lack of enacted federal policies, there have been many federal policy proposals since the Kyoto Protocol ratification process was debated. Numerous papers in the Environmental Economics literature have analyzed the costs of implementing climate policy, including the comparison of different policy instruments (cap-and-trade, taxes, command-and-control, etc) in applied contexts, and with impacts identified at both the federal and regional levels (Hassett, Mathur, and Metcalf, 2009; Paltsev, Reilly, Jacoby and Morris, 2009; Rausch et al., 2010). 

This paper bridges a gap between the Economics and Political Science literatures on the issue of climate policy. The latter has highlighted the growing partisan nature of congressional voting on environmental issues (Shipan & Lowry, 2001, Tanger, 2012), which reflects a broader trend of U.S. federal politics (Snyder & Groseclose, 2000; Theriault, 2006). There is evidence of constituent interests playing a role in federal environmental policy voting – such as environmental group membership (Anderson, 2011) and energy consumption (Chupp, 2011; Cragg, Zhou, Gurney and Kahn, 2012). However, there are no studies which explore the influence of the energy industry in federal environmental policy in general, or the influence state-level economic interests in federal climate policy voting in particular.

Alongside ideology and partisanship measures, this study compares the influence of numerous state-level economic indicators on Congressional voting on 145 climate policy bills between 2007 and 2013. Regionalized state-level results from a Computable General Equilibrium analysis of the economy-wide impacts of U.S federal emissions trading policy – incorporating both income and consumption effects – are compared with other indicators of climate policy impacts on income (carbon-intensive industry proportions of state output) and consumption (state-level electricity generation fuel mix, accounting for inter-state electricity trade). Additional factors include the vulnerability of states to climate change, and state-level policy path dependencies, such as whether a state has engaged in a climate action plan. These are combined with factors regularly used in the Political Science literature, such as the margin of victory in previous Presidential elections. 

Selected References:

Anderson, S.E. (2011). Complex constituencies: Intense environmentalists and representation. Environmental Politics, 20(4), 547-565.

Bromley-Trujillo, R. (2011). Environmental policy support in the American states. (Doctoral dissertation) Retrieved from ProQuest.

Chupp, B.A. (2011). Environmental constituent interest, green electricity policies, and legislative voting. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 62(2), 254-266.

Cragg, M.I., Zhou, Y., Gurney, K., & Kahn, M.E. (2012). Carbon geography: The political economy of congressional support for legislation intended to mitigate greenhouse gas production. Economic Inquiry, 51(2), 1640-1650. 

Dierwechter, Y. (2010). Metropolitan geographies of US climate action: Cities, suburbs, and the local divide in global responsibilities, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 12: 1, 59-82