In this book, the author traces the emergence of the climate-related financial risks (CRFR) policy norm in central banking. During recent years, Central Banks (CBs) have increasingly started to care about climate change. This development is puzzling and has received surprisingly little scholarly attention so far. Why is it that CBs with a very narrow mandate like the ECB, start to tackle CRFR? What makes CBs adopt a new policy norm on climate change and sustainable development although this provokes discussions about their independence? Based on data collected through expert interviews triangulated with public sources, the author shows that the CRFR policy norm emerged in three steps. First, an epistemic community of think tanks and politically engaged academics framed the idea of CRFR and proposed a policy norm specifically focusing on CBs. Second, the epistemic community taught the CRFR policy norm to early-adopting CBs that acted as norm champions, which helped strengthen its social recognition in the central banking community. Third, the CRFR policy norm has been strengthened by activist campaigns demanding CBs to comply with the emerging new policy norm.
Author(s): Fiona Hauke
Publisher: Springer Gabler
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 70
City: Wiesbaden
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
1 Introduction
2 State of the Art
2.1 How Ideas Become Policy Norms
2.2 Contribution of the Thesis
3 Theoretical Propositions
3.1 Proposition 1: The Interplay between Epistemic Communities and IOs
3.2 Proposition 2: Enforcing Social Recognition through in-Group Norm Champions
3.3 Proposition 3: Enforcing Social Recognition through Public Campaigns
3.4 Political Opportunity Structures
4 Methodological Approach
4.1 Strengths and Limits of an in-depth Single-outcome Study
4.2 Scope of Analysis
4.3 Data and Method of Analysis
5 The Successful Emergence of a Policy Norm in Central Banking
5.1 Status Quo of the Climate-related Financial Risk Policy Norm in Central Banking
5.2 The UNEP Inquiry—An Organizational Platform for Financial Sustainability Norms
5.2.1 The Successful Framing of a Policy Idea
5.2.2 Setting the Agenda for CRFR in Central Banking
5.3 Zooming in: The Emergence of the CRFR Policy Norm in Europe
5.3.1 Teaching the CRFR Policy Norm to a Coalition of the Willing
5.3.2 Increasing the Public Social Recognition of the CRFR Policy Norm
6 Concluding Discussion of the Empirical Findings
References
