Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe

Abstract

The success of local climate governance in Europe depends not only on leading cities but also on the dynamics between leaders, followers, and laggards. Upscaling local experiments helps to close the gap between these actors. This process is driven by the increasing embeddedness of cities and their networks in EU multilevel governance. Embedded upscaling combines horizontal upscaling between leading cities with vertical upscaling between leaders and followers that is mediated by higher levels of government, and hierarchical upscaling that even reaches the laggards. Various types of upscaling, their combinations, and their impacts are analyzed. Networks have become denser and networking has intensified. City networks and their member cities have become embedded in national and EU governance, lost authority and depend more and more on regional, national, and European authorities.

Limits to polycentricity? Institutional layering and policy feedbacks of building energy performance requirements in Sweden

“…In that sense, it reiterates the relevance of a polycentric governance perspective. Although similar work has drawn a lot on the concept of scaling for investigating the policy outcomes of local environmental governance initiatives (K. Kern, 2019;van der Ven et al, 2017;van Doren, Driessen, Runhaar, & Giezen, 2018), this research points to the many ways in which a local governance initiative can have policy outcomes. The concept of policy feedback through administrative effects, resource effects, and interpretive effects proved useful in this regard.…”

Covenant of Mayors: Local Energy Generation, Methodology, Policies and Good Practice Examples

“…Governance relates to mechanisms directed toward the coordination of multiple forms of state and non-state action across scales (from local/municipal authorities to national governments), as well as through networks and partnerships that operate within and between cities [12]. The CoM is a unique feature of multilevel polycentric governance that goes far beyond transnational city networking [11]. Such governance has a crucial role in demonstrating, guiding and influencing key measures for achieving emissions reductions through efficient electricity and local heat/cold production.…”

“…Their performance and identity are increasingly scrutinized in terms of global impact and exploited in the scientific literature [2]. This includes factors influencing the cities' participation in the networks and multilevel governance models that include observed [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] drivers influencing the emissions and target setting [13][14][15][16], tools and strategies for the redaction of the climate action plans [17][18][19][20][21][22] and benchmarking methods [23][24][25][26]. The factors further involve the assessments of the global contribution of local climate mitigation actions [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Pioneers, leaders and followers in multilevel and polycentric climate governance

“…Ostrom et al 2012, Ostrom 2014, Jordan et al 2018. According to Dorsch and Flachsland (2017), one of the advantages of polycentric governance is that experimentation at local and decentralised levels may lead to learning-by-doing and subsequent horizontal diffusion or upscaling to higher climate governance levels (see Ostrom et al 2012, Kern 2019.…”

“…As these negotiations became more protracted over time the scholarly search for evidence of climate leadership/pioneership shifted from the international level to national and subnational levels (e.g. Eckersley 2018, Kern 2019.…”