In this guest post, Jennifer Bergman discusses the research from her recently published article in Environmental Politics: The multilevel governance of polarised climate politics: how a pioneer city navigates a dynamic political context, co-authored with Alexandra Buylova, James Jackson, Naghmeh Nasiritousi, Lisa Sanderink & Paul Tobin.
Cities hold a central role within climate governance – they both significantly affect and are affected by climate change. While climate change is a global issue, the effects of climate change are experienced locally, with cities being particularly vulnerable to effects such as rising sea levels, heat waves, and air pollution. At the same time, cities are one of the main contributors to climate change, a share that is likely to increase with the growing urbanisation around the world.
While the responsibility to enact mitigation policies has historically been the remit of nation-states, in practice climate governance takes place at several levels of governance. Cities are considered to possess several advantages in addressing climate change, as they have strong links with stakeholders and can act through experimentation and trust-building measures. Despite this, cities face several challenges in their work to mitigate climate change, one of these being an increasing backlash against climate policies, even in countries that were previously seen as frontrunners on climate action.
In our article, titled The multilevel governance of polarised climate politics: how a pioneer city navigates a dynamic political context, we employ a framework of multilevel governance to investigate how a pioneer city like Stockholm navigates the changing political circumstances. In so doing, we address the lack of research on how cities in unitary countries in particular undertake climate action when political polarisation leads to lower climate ambition at the national level.
What strategies does Stockholm employ to maintain climate action?
Stockholm, a pioneer within climate action, is operating in a context of growing polarisation in the climate debate among political parties in Sweden. To understand how the City worked to maintain climate action within this context we conducted interviews with stakeholders.
The respondents identified a growing gap in the level of ambition on climate action between the City level and the national level following the 2022 election. Stockholm, seeking to maintain its historically ambitious level of climate action, employed several strategies to uphold a level of ambition. Even though many of these strategies have been in place even before the growing polarisation, some respondents highlighted the need to rely more on such strategies due to recent changes in national climate politics. They also highlighted that due to consensus-building being made more difficult in the new political landscape, there is a need to reach out to a broader set of actors. We identified four overarching ways in which the city sought to work around its dependency on national level-support.
Multi-level network membership and resources (national, transnational and European) – Stockholm has long participated in climate networks, being one of the founding members of the C40 climate cities coalition in 2005. The city also participated in other networks such as Viable Cities, Eurocities and Local Governments for sustainability. We find that the city used participation to access funding and establish collaborations. These organisations also successfully pushed back against previous attempts to cut back on climate work after a political shift in the 2014 elections, by arguing that Stockholm has a crucial role as EU environment capital. In this way, they worked as commitment devices locking in climate policy at the city level.
Multi-actor collaboration – Aside from city networks, Stockholm collaborated on climate action with a wide range of actors, including citizens, companies, government agencies across levels and other entities. For example, through the EU Cities Mission, Stockholm has developed a climate city contract that is signed between the city and the European commission. The Mission provides Stockholm with access to NetZeroCities, a consortium with expertise and organisations throughout Europe. The City has also started several collaborative initiatives on different topics with a range of stakeholders. For example, through the Electrification Pact, the City engages with more than 60 companies and experts from academia, the Swedish Energy Agency and others on topics related to electrification. Through these initiatives, Stockholm employs networked governance to further climate action.
Internal city collaborations and independent climate plans – The recent involvement of Stockholm in Viable Cities and the EU Cities Mission has also stimulated new ways of working within the City administration. Climate work now involves the executive office, environment and health department, the finance division, traffic department, City development department, planning division, and municipal companies. Integration of climate considerations into the broader city planning could help Stockholm to safeguard against future climate action retrenchment, by institutionalising climate action.
National and international political advocacy – Lastly, we found that the City uses political advocacy to influence regulation to enable implementation of their climate action plan. A strategy that was of particular importance in the area of transportation outlined in the City’s climate action plan is the s intention to lobby for instruments such as on a reduction obligation and an environmentally differentiated congestion tax to drive down emissions that are beyond the City’s jurisdiction.
What does this tell us about the role of cities in multi-level governance networks?
Situating Stockholm in a multi-governance network, our findings demonstrate how the City of Stockholm engages in climate action through collaborative and unitary initiatives while connecting these horizontally (to other cities and private actors) and vertically (to national and EU levels). This highlights the importance of networks, multiplicity of actors and strategies, and the significance of the EU for cities to gain additional channels of influence. This diversity implies that the context in which cities are situated matters for their ability to deal with polarization, as not all cities have access to the same strategies. For Stockholm, the fact that the city has institutionalised climate action within international and national networks seems to help it maintain climate action despite political changes.
Despite Stockholm’s efforts, the political shift and changes in national policies have made it harder for the city to achieve their set climate goals, a finding that problematises the argument that a multi-level governance context allows cities to outflank their national government. Instead, it highlights the importance of the need to situate a study of multi-level governance networks within a broader political context, to understand the limitations and opportunities available to actors. This emphasis on political dynamics is particularly needed because of the limited analysis of cases where different levels and actors are moving at differing speeds or directions and are driven by diverging interests and ambitions.
The study demonstrates the importance of climate networks at times of polarisation. We also show the importance of emphasising political dynamics when analysing multi-level governance structures, which extend beyond an actor-focused study and include the political context in which these actors operate to understand the actions available to them.
Bio: Jennifer Bergman previously worked as a Research assistant at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. In her role she focused on questions of local climate governance, looking at how cities implement international initiatives.
