Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Significant policy-making authority exists within local governments in the United States that are amenable to taking action to mitigate climate impacts.  Local governments continue to act as the primary policy innovators on climate in the US and bridge state, regional and even international boundaries as they seeks information on successful strategies, look outward for cooperation with other partners, and attempt to scale-up the impact of local actions.  While significant research exists on local climate policy entrepreneurship, less work has been done examining the structural conditions that allow policy innovations to emerge.  This paper examines the combination of horizontal and vertically structural interaction of local governments and the impact on the types and intensity of climate change policies.  It looks at structures of vertical nested governance and state policy environments, as well as participation in horizontal peer networks, regional and international organizations.  It uses a recently collected dataset of climate policy actions from 1,336 local government officials across the United States.  The research examines the extent that local climate action is facilitated or hindered by state and regional level activities, coordinated across jurisdictions, or develops independently.  The influence of local climate vulnerability, political partisanship, state and local government capacity, and type of policy responses are also examined.  The research has implications for the design of climate change policies within polycentric systems, and contributes to our broader understanding of decision making within nested governance arrangements.