Expanding the frontiers of climate action research in Latin America: a policy studies perspective

Abstract

Latin America has experienced increasingly frequent extreme events, which have heightened the urgency of mitigation and adaptation efforts. The region offers a rich and complex context for examining how climate action, which involves a wide array of actors operating at multiple levels, is formulated and implemented across diverse political, social, and institutional settings. Yet research on climate action grounded in policy studies in Latin America remains incipient, limiting the region’s contribution to broader theoretical debates. This dossier contributes to structuring this emerging field by highlighting six key dimensions, which are discussed in this introduction. First, it shows how Latin America’s specificities — its democratic trajectories, persistent inequalities, and distinctive geographies — shape the emergence and evolution of climate policies. Second, it examines cycles of policy construction, dismantling, and reconstruction, which reveal the political volatility surrounding climate commitments. Third, it underscores the differentiated levels of climate policy capacity across countries and municipalities, with implications for implementation and coordination. Fourth, it calls for deeper engagement with the design, diffusion, and translation of climate policy instruments, whose circulation is increasingly influenced by transnational networks. Fifth, it emphasizes the growing relevance of multilevel and transnational governance, where cities often innovate and act autonomously, sometimes in tension with national governments. Finally, it highlights the central yet unequal role of social participation, particularly given the disproportionate impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations. Together, these contributions highlight the relevance of Latin America for advancing climate policy research and underscore the value of engaging policy-studies perspectives more systematically.