Institutional Pressures and Local Climate Policy Isomorphism in Ireland

Local governments and policymakers play a crucial role in climate action because of their work in translating national and global policies into practical initiatives that enable communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In countries with highly centralized public administration systems, such as Ireland, local governments have limited autonomy, and their climate policies are heavily influenced by the external institutional pressures that shape the rules, norms and behaviours of the multi-level climate governance system of which they are a part. Institutions achieve this through the imposition of governmental mandates and regulatory obligations, via the spread of professional norms, and by leading local policymakers to react to any ambiguities by imitating the policy ideas of their peers. The combination of these coercive, mimetic and normative pressures contributes to local-level policy isomorphism - the tendency for local governments operating in the same institutional environment to develop similar policies. This study uses computational text methods to investigate the impact that institutional pressures have had on Ireland’s 31 local authorities climate policies over time. Results show that the share of commonly used words in local climate policy documents increases over time, while the proportion of unique words in each document decreases. The proportion of positive language in local climate policies has increased over time, and the sentiments and the policy topics present in the documents have become more homogenous. Finally, local climate policy documents in Ireland have become more homogenous in the policy agenda topics that they cover over time. The observed increase in local climate policy isomorphism makes it easier to align local and national goals and to facilitate productive collaboration between different sectors. However, an increasing similarity in the organisational language used by local authorities is indicative of groupthink, which can stifle policy experimentation and innovation.