The emergence of climate change policy entrepreneurs in urban regions

Identifying the Potential for Climate Compatible Development Efforts and the Missing Links

“…Cities in the Great Lakes region are associated with the US' "Rust Belt"-an area that has been forced to re-orient its economy and identity in light of dramatic losses in manufacturing employment related to global economic changes over the last several decades [33]. This history of combating the impacts of global processes, as well as the region's experience with complex policy deliberations and implementation around protecting the Great Lakes make it a particularly compelling region for exploring the intersection of economic development, sustainability, and climate change efforts [34,35]. The study population included all cities in these eight states with a population between 5000 and 500,000 for which I could find a viable email address to contact.…”

“…The respondents were city staff members who responded on behalf of their city with city council clerks being the position that I specifically targeted. I selected clerks as the respondents because they are individuals tasked with attending and keeping objective records related to city policy deliberations [8,11,35,37]. Therefore, while they are informed about policy debates taking place around issues, they should be relatively dispassionate observers with less of a political or departmental agenda than others with such knowledge [8,11,35,37].…”

“…I selected clerks as the respondents because they are individuals tasked with attending and keeping objective records related to city policy deliberations [8,11,35,37]. Therefore, while they are informed about policy debates taking place around issues, they should be relatively dispassionate observers with less of a political or departmental agenda than others with such knowledge [8,11,35,37]. Because of these observations, clerks have insight into deliberations taking place around policy actions in their city [8,11,35,37].…”

“…Therefore, while they are informed about policy debates taking place around issues, they should be relatively dispassionate observers with less of a political or departmental agenda than others with such knowledge [8,11,35,37]. Because of these observations, clerks have insight into deliberations taking place around policy actions in their city [8,11,35,37]. Clerks' insight into these deliberations is suited to an exploration of climate change policy development because climate change is a nascent and fluid area of policy action that is largely informal for most cities in North America [38,39].…”

“…Ellis et al's [25] final driver was strong government leadership. This inspired me to include a binary variable describing whether (1) or not (0) a sustainability or climate change policy entrepreneur were present in the city based on my survey results (more information about the development of this variable can be found in a related study [35]). Studies have demonstrated that the presence of environmental policy entrepreneurs are not only critical in the emergence of climate change policy efforts [41,42], but in making connections between climate change efforts and other issues [1,43].…”