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.

Analysis of climate change policy innovations across North America at transnational, federal, state, and local levels, involving public, private, and civic actors. North American policy responses to global climate change are complex and sometimes contradictory and reach across multiple levels of government. For example, the U.S. federal government rejected the Kyoto Protocol and mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) restrictions, but California developed some of the world's most comprehensive climate change law and regulation; Canada's federal government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but Canadian GHG emissions increased even faster than those of the United States; and Mexico's state-owned oil company addressed climate change issues in the 1990s, in stark contrast to leading U.S. and Canadian energy firms. This book is the first to examine and compare political action for climate change across North America, at levels ranging from continental to municipal, in locations ranging from Mexico to Toronto to Portland, Maine. Changing Climates in North American Politics investigates new or emerging institutions, policies, and practices in North American climate governance; the roles played by public, private, and civil society actors; the diffusion of policy across different jurisdictions; and the effectiveness of multilevel North American climate change governance. It finds that although national climate policies vary widely, the complexities and divergences are even greater at the subnational level. Policy initiatives are developed separately in states, provinces, cities, large corporations, NAFTA bodies, universities, NGOs, and private firms, and this lack of coordination limits the effectiveness of multilevel climate change governance. In North America, unlike much of Europe, climate change governance has been largely bottom-up rather than top-down. Contributors Michele Betsill, Alexander Farrell, Christopher Gore, Michael Hanemann, Virginia Haufler, Charles Jones, Dovev Levine, David Levy, Susanne Moser, Annika Nilsson, Simone Pulver, Barry Rabe, Pamela Robinson, Ian Rowlands, Henrik Selin, Peter Stoett, Stacy VanDeveer

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.