Multilevel governance divides powers, includes many veto players and requires extensive policy coordination among different jurisdictions. Under these conditions, innovative policies or institutional reforms seem difficult to achieve. However, while multilevel systems establish obstructive barriers to change, they also provide spaces for creative and experimental policies, incentives for learning, and ways to circumvent resistance against change. As the book explains, appropriate patterns of multilevel governance linking diverse policy arenas to a loosely coupled structure are conducive to policy innovation.

This book presents pioneering work on a range of innovative practices, experiments, and ideas that are becoming an integral part of urban climate change governance in the 21st century. Theoretically, the book builds on nearly two decades of scholarships identifying the emergence of new urban actors, spaces and political dynamics in response to climate change priorities. However, it further articulates and applies the concepts associated with urban climate change governance by bridging formerly disparate disciplines and approaches. Empirically, the chapters investigate new multi-level urban governance arrangements from around the world, and leverage the insights they provide for both theory and practice. Cities - both as political and material entities - are increasingly playing a critical role in shaping the trajectory and impacts of climate change action. However, their policy, planning, and governance responses to climate change are fraught with tension and contradictions. While on one hand local actors play a central role in designing institutions, infrastructures, and behaviors that drive decarbonization and adaptation to changing climatic conditions, their options and incentives are inextricably enmeshed within broader political and economic processes. Resolving these tensions and contradictions is likely to require innovative and multi-level approaches to governing climate change in the city: new interactions, new political actors, new ways of coordinating and mobilizing resources, and new frameworks and technical capacities for decision making. We focus explicitly on those innovations that produce new relationships between levels of government, between government and citizens, and among governments, the private sector, and transnational and civil society actors. A more comprehensive understanding is needed of the innovative approaches being used to navigate the complex networks and relationships that constitute contemporary multi-level urban climate change governance. Debra Roberts, Co-Chair, Working Group II, IPCC 6th Assessment Report (AR6) and Acting Head, Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives, Durban, South Africa “Climate Change in Cities offers a refreshingly frank view of how complex cities and city processes really are.” Christopher Gore, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, Canada “This book is a rare and welcome contribution engaging critically with questions about cities as central actors in multilevel climate governance but it does so recognizing that there are lessons from cities in both the Global North and South.” Harriet Bulkeley, Professor of Geography, Durham University, United Kingdom “This timely collection provides new insights into how cities can put their rhetoric into action on the ground and explores just how this promise can be realised in cities across the world - from California to Canada, India to Indonesia.”

In this insightful book, Arthur Benz introduces a novel analytical approach to comparative research on multilevel governance. Confronting the intricate problems of coordinating local, regional, national and international policies in the face of political polarisation, he makes the case for pragmatic, sustainable and resilient multilevel governance.

Applying an innovative approach to capture varieties and dynamics of federal democracies, this collection examines the conditions, mechanisms and practices that make federal democracies work.

Originally published in 2006, this collection is the outcome of an interdisciplinary research project involving scholars in the fields of international and comparative environmental law, the sociology and politics of global governance, and the scientific study of global climate change. Earth system analysis as developed by the natural sciences is transferred to the analysis of institutions of global environmental change. Rather than one overarching supranational organisation, a system of 'multilevel' institutions is advocated. The book examines the proper role of industrial self-regulation, of horizontal transfer of national policies, of regional integration, and of improved coordination between international environmental organisations, as well as basic principles for sustainable use of resources. Addressing both academics and politicians, this book will stimulate the debate about the means of improving global governance.

Truth and power have a difficult relationship. Decision makers are often required to make judgements that depend upon specialized knowledge and thus reluctantly surrender power. They are apt to reject advice inconsistent with their perceived interests, experiences and cognitive capacities. Speaking Truth to Power aims to guide the reader through the tangled relationship between truth and power, manifesting as the interplay between experts and decision-makers in society.

Comparative Federalism: A Systematic Inquiry, Second Edition is a uniquely comprehensive, analytic, and genuinely comparative introduction to the principles and practices, as well as the institutional compromises, of federalism. Hueglin and Fenna draw from their diverse research on federal systems to focus on four main models--America, Canada, Germany, and the European Union--but also to range widely over other cases. At the heart of the book is careful analysis of the relationship between constitutional design and amendment, fiscal relations, institutional structures, intergovernmental relations, and judicial review. Such analysis serves the dual role of helping the reader understand federalism and providing a comparative framework from which to assess the record of federal systems. The second edition has been extensively revised and updated, taking into account new developments in federal systems and incorporating insights from the growing body of literature in the field. It includes two new chapters, "Fiscal Federalism" and "The Limits of Federalism."