Nudging policymakers: a case study of the role and influence of academic policy analysis

As countries around the world face the monumental challenge of transitioning to low or net zero carbon economies, there is an important opportunity for public policy and political science learnings and models to underpin crucial shifts in policy strategies and decision-making in an arena dominated to date by technical thinking and problem-solving. In this essay we demonstrate how we, as academics working in the fields of political economics and engineering, employed policy science knowledge about building coalitions around polysemic ideas to advance the debate about large scale (industrial decarbonisation) climate change solutions in the UK.