Social Movements and Market Transformations

Lessons From HIV/AIDS and Climate Change

http://isq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/13/isq.sqv022.full

Hypothesis 1:  Market transformation is more feasible the fewer the number of product lines that have to be targeted by activists.

Hypothesis 2:  Global market transformation is more feasible when product markets are more tightly integrated across borders.

Hypothesis 3:  Market transformation is more feasible in concentrated than fragmented markets.

Hypothesis 4:  The more dependent firms are on rents that derive from social constructions or rules that were recently enacted (for example, their brand equity or globally contested regulatory frameworks), the more likely the product market can be transformed.

China has the largest share of demand for coal and is responsible for nearly 50 percent of total global demand.  China’s actions will have major consequences for the world. While China’s central government has formidable capabilities with respect to regulating coal, it has found it difficult to shift actors to a low carbon path, given that two-thirds of the country’s primary energy demand comes from coal.

For these efforts to succeed and accumulate, advocates will have to change markets for electricity and coal in all major markets responsible for a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions, including China, the European Union, and more of the United States.

market transformation is more feasible in concentrated markets than diffuse ones

In political systems with few veto players, only a few actors need to be convinced to change policy, so change can cascade across the polity quickly if the veto players are persuaded. However, if they are not persuaded, change can be postponed indefinitely.

attack the social legitimacy of fossil fuel profits and their source of rents.

disruptive technologies have been able to penetrate electricity markets:  wind and solar energy are challenging coal fired generation at utility scale.  Social constructs, such as subsidies and regulations, were developed for fossil fuels over the past 100 years.  This is a barrier to the social movement to decarbonize the energy sector in the short-term.