Blame Games and Climate Change: Accountability, Multi-Level Governance and Carbon Management

Abstract

Research Highlights and Abstract This article provides the first detailed and evidence‐based account of the coalition government's approach to transport‐related carbon management. It exposes the existence of a ‘governance vacuum’ between the statutory target and a very weak devolved implementation system (i.e. ‘fuzzy governance’ and ‘fuzzy accountability’). Research in four major city regions reveals a systemic switch from an emphasis on carbon management and reduction towards economic growth and job creation. Officials within the policy design and delivery chain emphasise the manner in which the demands of democratic politics tend to frustrate meaningful policy change. A general demand by actors at the local level not for the discretions delivered by localism but for a more robust and centrally managed—even statutory—governance framework. The Climate Change Act 2008 received global acclaim for embedding an ambitious set of targets for the reduction of carbon emissions in legislation. This article explores the policies and institutional frameworks in place to deliver transport‐related carbon reductions as part of the subsequent Carbon Plan. A detailed methodology involving institutional mapping, interviews and focus groups combined with a theoretical approach that combines the theory of multi‐level governance with the literature on ‘blame avoidance’ serves to reveal a complex system of ‘fuzzy governance’ and ‘fuzzy accountability’. Put simply, it reveals there are no practical sub‐national implementation levers for achieving the statutory targets. Apart from symbolic or rhetorical commitments, the emphasis of policy‐makers at all levels in the delivery chain has switched from carbon management and reduction to economic growth and job creation. This raises fresh research questions about the pathologies of democratic competition and future responses to the climate change challenge.

Anticipatory and reactive forms of blame avoidance: of foxes and lions

“…Table 1 provides an overview of the literature on BAB along the two dimensions outlined above. (Pierson, 1994(Pierson, , 1996 BAB as a means of pursuing risky reforms (Vis, 2016) Arms-length institutional bodies that displace blame (Fiorina, 1982;Horn, 1995) Indexing provisions that limit budgetary discretion (Weaver, 1988) Opposition of policies that impose large and direct costs (Arnold, 1990) Blame-decreasing organizational responses to demands for transparency (Hood and Rothstein, 2001) Responsibility-blurring governance vacuums in multi-level systems (Bache et al, 2015) Reactive BAB Justification for retrenchment and its effects (Mortensen, 2012;Wenzelburger and Hörisch, 2016) Blame-deflecting effects of political accounts (McGraw, 1991) Cabinet officials as 'lightning rods' (Ellis, 1994) Blame management after crisis situations (Bovens et al, 1999;Brändström and Kuipers, 2003;Brändström et al, 2008;Hood et al, 2009;Boin et al, 2010;Moynihan, 2012;Brändström, 2015) Commissions of inquiry for blame avoidance reasons (Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2010) Blame attribution effects of public sector reforms (Mortensen, 2013b) Conceptualizing BAB…”

Transaction costs, power, and multi-level forest governance in Indonesia

“…Like the literature on polycentric governance, the multi-level governance literature emphasizes the importance of robust relationships of information exchange and collaboration across governmental levels. From this perspective, a central question is under what conditions these important cross-level relationships will form, but the causal mechanisms behind these connections have only recently begun to be theorized, and, as Bache, et al (2014) characterize it, multi-level governance "is perhaps best understood as "a 'proto-theory' awaiting further theoretical refinement." Galaz, et al (2012) provide a starting point for theorizing multi-level governance as a process.…”

“…Provincial officials, on the other hand, often looked to Jakarta. Despite nearly constant conferences and workshops in both Jakarta and the provincial capital of Palangkaraya, attended by representatives of dozens and in some cases hundreds of interested organizations, REDD+ policy suffered from a "failure to communicate" across governmental levels (see Bache, et al, 2014, for another example).…”

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

“…It is, thus, important to understand the multiplicity of forms of urban governance that are shaping reconfiguration of systems and experimental processes. This is easier said than done and involves complex multi-level governance arrangements [98]. Multiple forms of governance emerge in reconfiguration that involves existing and experimental forms of urban governance (the old and the new).…”