Social movements play a critical role in advancing landmark statutes. Likewise, lack of movement pressure is a leading explanation for the failure of policy efforts. Yet, we have little systematic evidence about the impact of social movements on policy. To what extent do movements shape the thousands of policies that governments make every year? I examine how social movements affect policymaking by assessing the climate movement’s impact on 20 thousand policy documents from 24 U.S. federal agencies. Leveraging a new dataset of 40 million public comments on these policies, I find that when public comments raise climate or climate justice concerns, these concerns are more likely to be addressed in the final rule. Effect sizes vary across agencies, possibly due to the alignment of climate and climate justice issue frames with agency missions. The magnitude of public pressure also matters. When more groups and individuals raise climate and climate justice concerns, policy texts are more likely to change, even when controlling for overall levels of public attention. These findings suggest that public pressure for recognizing both scientific and distributive justice claims systematically affects policymaking. Finally, public comments offer a new lens to assess the rise, institutionalization, and impact of the climate justice movement within the broader climate and environmental justice movements.
