Government-Led Change: Interviews With UK and German MPs on Climate Change, 2023-2024

This dataset is comprised of 65 elite interviews conducted between April 2023 and February 2024 in Germany and the United Kingdom. 64 of the interviews are with either current or former MPs at the Bundestag and Westminster parliaments. The interviews explore the perspectives, beliefs and motivations of national level politicians in relation to climate change mitigation to understand politicians' role in fostering social transformations.

The interviews were undertaken in relation to two research projects: (1) Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), (Economic and Social Research Council. UKRI project reference: ES/S012257/1) and (2) Deep Decarbonisation: The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps, (European Research Council. Grant agreement ID: 882601).

For the CAST project, the aim was to gain deeper knowledge about political decision makers' understanding and engagement of climate change in the UK to ascertain whether this either advances or prevents further societal change amongst publics.

For the DeepDCarb project, comparative UK/Germany interviews were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the beliefs, motivations and incentives of MPs political behaviour in relation to climate change.