Study title

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.The Centre for Climate Change Transformations (C3T) will be a global hub for understanding the profound changes required to address climate change. At its core, is a fundamental question of enormous social significance: how can we as a society live differently - and better - in ways that meet the urgent need for rapid and far-reaching emission reductions? While there is now strong international momentum on action to tackle climate change, it is clear that critical targets (such as keeping global temperature rise to well within 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels) will be missed without fundamental transformations across all parts of society. C3T's aim is to advance society's understanding of how to transform lifestyles,...