Blocking coalitions vs. driving coalitions

I'm experimenting with a different cut at the climate problem. Consider the following two-by-two matrix:

This graphs the level of coordination achieved by interests that favor or drive toward a particular action or agreement vs. the configuration of interests that block or oppose it. A non-trivial part of the problem with climate change mitigation is that, although there's a lot of collective utility to be derived from averting climate change - that is, most people will derive some amount of benefit from doing so - the interest structure that translates into is very diffuse. "Many people deriving some moderate amount of benefit" tends to create a structure that doesn't lobby very effectively. Similarly, while there may be a lot of potential economic gain to be had in green industry, there's not a lot of effective coordination to mobilize those potential interests into an effective current lobby. The interests remain diffused amongst a lot of not-individually-powerful small and medium-sized businesses. By contrast, the interests that favor blocking climate change mitigation, although also distributed throughout the economy and society, have done a much better job of coordinating. Hence, their collective power is more easily wielded.

Actions or agreements that sit in the northwest quadrant - concentrated blocking interests vs. diffuse driving interests - are always going to be difficult. Things that sit in the southeast quadrant - diffuse blocking interests vs. concentrated driving interests - tend to be easy to get (or hard to oppose). Things that sit in the southwest and northeast quadrants are more in the "it depends" world. But I suspect, although this is just intuition, that they depend on different things. I suspect that things in the northeast quadrant (concentrated interests on both sides) largely come down to relative levels of power and motivation for each side (and maybe bargaining skill), while things in the southwest quadrant (diffuse interests on both sides) largely come down to the structure of the playing field based on prior history, political and legal landscape, and so on.

It's actually the southwest quadrant that brought this to mind today. The question came up at my institute of why nuclear power isn't more of a "thing" in the US. I think the answer is partly in the graph above: at this point, I think both the interests resisting and the interests favoring nuclear power are fairly diffuse. I think a strong, focused lobby for nuclear, if it materialized, could push some through; but it doesn't exist. Well-coordinated interest coalitions seem to me to be much more likely to occur when there's a core of specific actors that really want (or really don't want) something, and there's no core of really-want-it nuclear supporters at the national level.

And given that both sides are currently pretty diffuse, history plays a role. Here's a graph that shows what I think happened in these issues historically (leaving off tax cuts for the rich, which I know little about and was just using as an example):

My impression is that nuclear power started with a moderately well-coordinated set of driving interests vs a diffuse (and perhaps merely potential) set of blocking interests. It shifted over time (as people got more afraid of nuclear) to a moderately well-coordinated set of blocking interests vs. a more diffuse set of driving interests. During that period, a regulatory landscape was put in place that solidified and supported the blocking interests. As of now, both sides are pretty diffuse (I think). But in the world of diffuse interests vs. diffuse interests, the regulatory playing field favors the diffuse blocking interest.