Policy adoption and implementation have been widely studied and a considerable amount is known about the factors that facilitate these actions in different issue areas, which often include interest group pressure, government capacity, and problem severity. Less is known, however, about the factors that influence governments to abandon or terminate policies prior to reaching their stated objectives or originally specified end-point.

            This paper examines policy termination in the context of local climate protection initiatives. In the face of national inaction, over 1,000 U.S. municipalities have voluntarily committed to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The majority of these climate active cities publically expressed their commitment to the issue through membership in local climate protection organizations. ICLEI-Cities for Sustainability is the most substantive of these organizations operating in the United States. Membership in its Cities for Climate Protection program requires local governments to commit to take action to achieve five pre-determined milestones for GHG reduction. Members also pay annual dues in exchange for technical assistance and implementation support. Participation in ICLEI therefore represents a meaningful policy commitment to climate protection and its membership is often considered synonymous with this policy goal. Membership also provides clear termination points that reveal that over 20 percent of cities withdrew in a 2 year period. After a steady increase for nearly a decade, ICLEI reached its largest membership size in 2010 with just over 580 cities. By 2012, however, this number had dropped to approximately 450 cities.   

            Positioned in the literature on policy change, this paper examines and empirically tests four hypotheses for why a substantial portion of cities dropped their ICLEI membership and terminated their explicit climate policy objectives: (1) Interest group pressure; (2) Fiscal constraints; (3) Perceived policy ineffectiveness; (4) Perceived policy completion. Data is gathered from a variety of sources including ICLEI, the U.S. Census, and the International City/County Managers Association (ICMA). Preliminary findings point to the influence of interest group pressure, and particularly the strength of local Tea Party activity, in shaping cities’ decisions to terminate their explicit climate protection efforts. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of civic engagement and identify approaches that may enable the continued spread of greenhouse gas-reducing initiatives on the local level.