Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the U.S., in the absence of federal responsibility, states and local governments have stepped forward to take leadership in climate change. However, although scholars have called attention to the importance of multi-level governance in climate change, we knew little about the vertical interaction between the sub-national states and cities nested within the states. How do sub-national states influence local governments’ climate change actions in the U.S.? To answer this question, I take four state governments’ actions and characteristics - the adoption of a state-level climate action plan, the formation of a specific governmental agency targeting at climate change, goal setting on reducing greenhouse gas, and partisan control – as major independent variables. And empirically examine how these state level factors influence local governments’ actions on climate change in three aspects, namely plan making, policy adoption, and regional collaboration on climate change.

The data of this research come from a national survey we conducted with the International City/County Management Association of 1,899 municipalities and counties in the United States in 2015. The survey measures local governments’ climate mitigation plan-making, as well as the adoption of 29 climate mitigation policies in different fields such as energy conservation programs in transportation, exterior lighting, and buildings etc. I also compile my dataset by collecting data from exterior sources such as Center for Climate Change and Energy Solutions, Georgetown Climate Center and American Community Survey.

I run multi-level models to empirically test my assumptions. The preliminary results show that 1) The state-level climate action plan does not influence local governments’ actions on climate change in any of the models. 2) The formation of a specific agency on climate change turns out to be more effective in enhancing local plan-making and policy adoption on climate change, but not on regional collaboration. 3) Setting a state-level targets on reducing greenhouse gas emission only influence local governments’ policy adoption, but not on plan-making or regional collaboration. 4) Local governments’ regional collaboration on climate mitigation is more of a political process influenced by state politics such as partisan control. Although state-level governments controlled by the Republicans are less likely to incentivize local actions on climate mitigation, but are more likely to enhance regional collaboration on climate mitigation. 5) The multi-level analysis at the local level further shows that dedicated sustainability staffing is the most important factor that leads to local climate mitigation plan-making. But local governments’ policy adoption is a more complex process influenced by other local factors such as fiscal and civic capacity. Finally, local governments that have a major governing body of republican are more likely to form regional collaboration on climate mitigation.

The current scholarship has acknowledged the important roles of cities in climate change. However, cities and communities cannot operate in isolation and usually work collaboratively under the legal and institutional frameworks of a higher level government. My contribution to the literature lies in situating theoretically and empirically the role of sub-national states in the framework of multilevel governance in climate change.