Beyond (and Within) City Limits: Climate Policy in an Intergovernmental System

This analysis explores the role of city‐level and state‐level variables to explain why some cities make more progress on climate‐related policy implementation than others. Using multilevel modeling, we find little support for the influence of state factors on local government leadership among the 81...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Review of policy research 2015-09, Vol.32 (5), p.538-555
Main Authors: Simon Rosenthal, Cindy, Rosenthal, James A., Moore, Jonathan D., Smith, Jamie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cities
Climate change
Climate policy
Community
environment
Environmental policy
Environmental protection
Global economy
governance
intergovernmental
Intergovernmental relations
Leadership
Local government
urban studies
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Summary:This analysis explores the role of city‐level and state‐level variables to explain why some cities make more progress on climate‐related policy implementation than others. Using multilevel modeling, we find little support for the influence of state factors on local government leadership among the 812 cities in the dataset, but local government institutional and community variables are strongly associated with climate policy initiatives. We argue for a rethinking of the notion of the limited and constrained city and suggest that, in the realm of climate protection and environmental policy, cities are leading a bottom‐up federalism. Moreover, where some political analysts and scholars have argued that climate protection and environmental policies may not be economically rational for cities to pursue, we theorize that cities are acting locally to further their self‐interest in an increasingly global economy.
ISSN:1541-132X
1541-1338
DOI:10.1111/ropr.12136