Professor Matthew Paterson

Personal statement:

I am a political scientist who has worked on climate politics since 1989. I work broadly on the political economy, global governance, and cultural politics of climate change. I have worked within these broad themes on various specific topics over the years, including the UNFCCC, transnational climate governance, carbon markets, the political drivers of national climate policy, urban climate politics. I use a range of methodologies but in recent years have enjoyed working with Social Network Analysis. I have been both a Lead Author (AR5) and Contributing Author (AR6) within the IPCC, and have recently developed links with UK policymakers.

Key topic areas of research or interest:

My three current areas of research are: (a) a project on the political economy of energy transitions, focused on the way that disruptive dynamics both within energy transitions and in broader political life shape the trajectory of energy transitions; (b) a series of pieces of work on the complex contemporary dynamics of climate politics in the UK; and (c) work within the newly established Centre for Joined Up Sustainability Transformations (www.just.ac.uk), of which I am the deputy director and co-lead on the ‘Policy, Governance and Change’ theme.

Publications:

Embracing the politics of transformation: Policy action as “battle‐settlement events” (with James Patterson). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ropr.12627. Review of Policy Research.

The Rise of Anti-Net Zero Populism in the UK: Comparing Rhetorical Strategies for Climate Policy Dismantling (with Stanley Wilshire and Paul Tobin). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13876988.2023.2242799. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.

Stability and Politicization in Climate Governance (co-edited with Paul Tobin and Stacy VanDeveer). https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/stability-and-politicization-in-climate-governance/8BA5D2FD6034DE1A1F5F7C538F909088.

Transnational city networks, global political economy, and climate governance: C40 in Mexico and Lima (with José Manuel Leal). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290.2023.2167849. Review of International Political Economy.

National climate institutions complement targets and policies. (With Navroz Dubash and several others). https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.abm1157. Science.

In Search of Climate Politics. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/in-search-of-climate-politics/C7A9A41385614D553869603D91ABA6E6

Climate change and international political economy: Between collapse and transformation. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830829. Review of International Political Economy

Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester. www.sci.manchester.ac.uk
Centre for Joined Up Sustainability Transformations