How to make them walk the talk: governing the implementation of energy and climate policies into local practices

Abstract

Abstract. Urban policy mobility has become a lively field of research in recent years. One important argument has been that policies do not travel from place to place unmodified, but are transformed in the process of their implementation. Drawing on a research project on adaptations of climate protection policies in German cities we elaborate how discourse studies and work on governmentality can be brought into resonance with the policy mobility debate. We suggest that these theoretical concepts can be used to explain why, despite the growing number of laws and recommendations in this context, local adaptations of climate policies vary significantly between different cities. We argue that the concept of governmentality is particularly well suited to grasping the discrepancies between discursively produced guidelines and actual planning practices and to conceptualising these planning practices as effects of competing and often conflicting technologies of government.

A turn to geopolitics: Shifts in the German energy transition discourse in light of Russia's war against Ukraine

“…First, the energy transition is based on a relatively broad consensus, even if politics and decisions within the Energiewende remain contested [23,24]. Furthermore, contestation almost exclusively concerns modes of implementation on regional and local scales [25], not the overall desirability of the transition. Second, public and political discussions address the Energiewende primarily as a domestic problem, not one of international relations or geopolitics.…”

A turn to geopolitics: how Russia’s war against Ukraine unsettles the German energy transition discourse

“…First, even though the energy transition is based on a relatively broad societal consensus, politics and decisions within the Energiewende remain contested [26,27]. However, this contestation almost exclusively concerns modes of implementation [23], not the overall desirability of the transition. Second, public and political discussions rarely considered the international dimensions of the Energiewende beyond the general assertion that Germany has an international obligation to reduce CO2 emissions.…”

“…Part of this struggle concerns questions such as, for instance, how knowledge production practices shape visions and goals of energy transitions, how values and norms are negotiated, how coalitions of actors form, or how infrastructure projects are imbued with meaning. Consequently, much work has examined the discursive construction and negotiation of energy transitions [21][22][23]. These studies often draw on Michel Foucault [34] to conceptualize discourse as meaning-making practices constitutive of how reality is perceived, interpreted, and acted upon, not attempts to reach accurate representations of social or material realities.…”

Handbuch Politische Ökologie

“…Vielmehr gewinnen Foucault zufolge in ›modernen‹ Gesellschaften Formen der Führung an Bedeutung, die über die Verinnerlichung von Normen und Handlungsmustern darauf abzielen, dass Menschen sich freiwillig und aus Überzeugung in einer bestimmten Art und Weise verhalten (Foucault 2006). Wie im nächsten Kapitel näher ausgeführt wird, wurde dieses Konzept in der Politischen Ökologie vielfach aufgegriffen, um zwischen unterschiedlichen Formen der umweltpolitischen Steuerung zu unterscheiden und auf deren Verknüpfung mit diskursiven Aushandlungsprozessen hinzuweisen (Mattissek/Sturm 2017).…”