The Impact of Political Control on Policy Instrument Choice: Local Climate Planning in German and UK Cities

In recent years, most European cities have introduced plans to mitigate and adapt to climate change (Heidrich et al 2016; Reckien et al 2018). By setting out the various policies and initiatives that municipal governments intend to adopt, these plans can tell us a lot about how local authorities seek to govern and achieve global and local climate objectives. For example, a municipality that relies more on voluntary agreements may not wish to coerce societal actors unduly, whereas strategies that emphasise regulatory instruments indicate that the local government favours hierarchical authority (Lascoumbes and LeGales 2007). (Re)distributive initiatives may aim to satisfy or incentivise certain groups in the hope that this will lead to behavioural change (Lowi 1964). Studies have pointed out how governments tend to rely on a mixture of policy types in the environmental sector: both ‘new’ instruments such as education, incentives and persuasion, and ‘traditional’ regulation (Jordan et al 2005). Building on the concept of national policy ‘styles’ (Richardson 1982), Howlett (1991) has stressed the link between the policy instruments that a country prefers to adopt and its traditional administrative approach to policymaking and implementation. The policy styles literature suggests that Germany prefers ‘old’ (or ‘hard’) regulatory instruments, whereas the UK tends to rely more on ‘new’ (or ‘soft’) voluntary measures (Knill and Lenschow 1998; Wurzel 2002). Since such a typology also reveals underlying principles about the role of the state in society, we might also expect left-wing governments to be more likely to adopt regulation, whereas their right-wing counterparts would prefer societal actors to engage in voluntary co-operation. Previous studies of policy styles tend to focus on national governments rather than municipalities. By investigating publicly-available climate change plans and strategies from 30 UK and 40 German cities, this paper will build on this literature by examining the policy instruments adopted by city governments in these two countries. Specifically, it will hypothesise and provide evidence as to whether German cities, and those controlled by left-leaning political parties, place greater emphasis on ‘old’ instruments, and whether UK and right-wing municipalities prefer to stress the role of ‘new’ environmental policy instruments. As such, it will contribute to thriving academic debates on policy styles, policy instruments, environmental policy and urban climate governance.