Review Maps 33 Low-Carbon Policies Beyond Green Deal Label

A semi-systematic literature review of 33 national and European Union-level policies concludes that “Green Deals” are better understood as instances of a broader class of low-carbon development policies intended to advance decarbonization and socioeconomic development in the governance landscape following the Paris Agreement. Rather than treating the Green Deal label as a distinct policy category, the study develops a Weberian ideal type for identifying and comparing transition policies through three attributes: transformational objectives, steering instruments and international anchoring. The study’s empirical foundation consists of two existing Green Deals, the European Green Deal and the Korean Green New Deal.

The authors use these cases to accentuate the three governance attributes into a fully developed ideal type. They then apply that framework to a globally diverse sample spanning different regions and politico-economic systems, ranking each policy according to how closely it approximates the ideal type across all three attributes and assigning the reviewed cases an overall classification. The review treats it as a governance feature of domestic transition policies rather than simply external background and identifies five institutional forms.

These forms vary in purpose, which the study classifies as climate-oriented, mixed or non-climate. Including international anchoring in the comparison makes the connections between domestic policy frameworks and international institutions part of the same analytical system used to assess transformational objectives and steering instruments. The authors developed the review in response to what they describe as a disproportionate scholarly focus on initiatives explicitly labeled “Green Deals.” That emphasis can obscure a wider change in sustainability transition governance.

By examining policies under a wider analytical lens, the study seeks to identify national and EU-level transition initiatives that pursue comparable low-carbon objectives through different labels and institutional arrangements. The framework is intended to support comparison on an equal analytical basis without presuming that programs sharing a prominent name have identical policy designs. Overall, the research offers a conceptual and comparative tool for examining post-Paris transition governance rather than a quantitative assessment of particular policies.

Its stated contributions are to identify and compare sustainability transition policies beyond the Green Deal label, theorize international anchoring as a governance feature and establish a common basis for assessing diverse cases. The supplied evidence describes the scope and method as a semi-systematic review of 33 policies; it does not provide specific numerical results for the individual rankings or the five international institutional forms.

Subject of Research: Comparative governance of national and EU low-carbon development policies after the Paris Agreement

Article Title: Reconsidering Green Deals as national transition policy frameworks after the Paris Agreement

Article References: Nguyen, K. H. (2026). Reconsidering Green Deals as national transition policy frameworks after the Paris Agreement. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04783-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04783-5

Keywords: Green Deals, low-carbon development, sustainability transitions, transition governance, national climate policy, decarbonization, policy instruments, international anchoring, Paris Agreement, literature review, Reconsidering, Green