University Honors

The world is facing devastation from climate change as countries are not implementingeffective and efficient carbon emission policies quickly enough to decrease the effects of climatechange. Countries have supposedly tried to decrease their contribution to worsening climatechange but are not meeting their climate goals set by the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Thispaper examines the factors leading to the policy implementation gap in carbon emissions andtheir policy implications. It looks at how the policies implemented based on internationalorganizations fall short of meeting their carbon emission reduction goals. I assess this policyimplementation gap in four Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)countries: Australia, Canada, Norway, and Türkiye. I argue that varying levels of politicalwillingness to meet climate goals, the differing types of multilevel governance, and varyingresources devoted to climate issues significantly impact the level of policy implementation gapin carbon emissions. The first type of cross-comparison is to compare each country to each otherindividually in their efforts to decrease the policy implementation gap in carbon emissions. Thesecond cross-comparison is between the two federal systems (Australia and Canada) and twounitary systems (Norway and Türkiye), which may provide patterns of behavior based on thegovernance system. These layers of cross-comparison showcase how political willingness,differing multilevel governance, and varying resources devoted to climate issues affect the policyimplementation gap in carbon emissions.