A digital analog? A study of Canadian climate change policy networks

It has been over a decade since the initiation of Canada's National Climate Change Process, which sought to engage stakeholders across the country in planning for the impacts of Climate Change. Since then, a number of federally initiated 'plans' have been written and debated -- despite this, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. This study seeks to understand why we get the policies that we do by examining the stakeholders and their relationships in the policy network. This study utilizes Issue Crawler software to assemble an online network of climate change policy actors using the stakeholders consulted during the creation of the Clean Air Act in 2006-2007. The online network was found to contain a pressure pluralist subgovernment, largely dominated by the state that is within a larger and more diverse issue network of interest groups. Largely absent from the subgovernment were the Industry and Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations.;Keywords: Climate Change, Policy Networks, Policy Network Analysis, Issue Crawler, Virtual Policy Networks, Social Networks, Social Network Analysis, Hyperlink Network Analysis, Interest Groups...