Cities and climate change: How historical legacies shape policy-making in English and German municipalities
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395716670412 |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| Author | Peter Eckersley |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395716670412
Politics
2017, Vol. 37(2) 151 –166
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395716670412
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Cities and climate change:
How historical legacies shape
policy-making in English and
German municipalities
Peter Eckersley
Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Abstract
This article draws on secondary historical sources and primary interviews to highlight how the
legacy of the creation of local governments in England and Germany has significant implications
for policy-making in the present day. By employing an institutionalist perspective to analyse how
one municipality in each country tries to promote renewable energy and retrofit private housing,
it demonstrates how historical factors have resulted in the German Council having more capacity
to act hierarchically in local governance arrangements than its English counterpart. These findings
have notable implications for how governments at all levels seek to tackle major challenges such
as climate change.
Keywords
climate change, historical institutionalism, local government, multi-level governance,
organisational capacity
Received: 29th January 2016; Revised version received: 24th May 2016; Accepted: 29th July 2016
Introduction
Geographers such as Harriet Bulkeley (2005) have emphasised that cities need to play a
key role in combating climate change for many years and have also stressed how munici-
pal capacity plays a key role in determining governance approaches (Bulkeley and Kern,
2006). However, political scientists have only recently begun to analyse how and why
subnational actors are tackling this crucial issue (Heinelt and Lamping, 2015; Hughes,
2016; Krause, 2013). Furthermore, few studies have compared municipalities in differ-
ent countries, which means that we do not know a great deal about how contrasting local
government systems may influence climate policy-making arrangements. At the same
time, comparisons of subnational systems have not drawn explicit links between the
Corresponding author:
Peter Eckersley, Newcastle University Business School, 5 Barrack Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 5SE, UK.
Email: peter.eckersley@ncl.ac.uk
670412POL0010.1177/0263395716670412PoliticsEckersley
research-article2016
Article
152 Politics 37(2)
reasons why nation-states created modern-day municipalities in the first place and con-
temporary governance arrangements at the local level. In other words, how have histori-
cal legacies shaped the nature of contemporary multi-level systems and what impact do
they have on local climate policy-making?
Drawing on both secondary historical analyses and primary fieldwork interviews in
two medium-sized cities (Gelsenkirchen and Newcastle upon Tyne), this article will
address these questions in the German and English contexts. By focusing on two strands
of policy that relate to both municipalities’ climate change strategies (namely renewable
energy and improving the thermal efficiency of privately rented housing), it shows how
Gelsenkirchen Council has more capacity to act as a genuine local authority and rely on
hierarchical implementation techniques compared to its counterpart in Newcastle. This is
because German municipalities were established as civic institutions that had significant
autonomy to stimulate economic development and foster local pride, whereas the British
Government1 created councils primarily for reasons of politically expediency – namely to
deal with the negative side-effects of the industrial revolution. Such contrasting govern-
ance approaches have significant implications for local democracy and policy outcomes
because they result in a different balance of power between state and non-state actors.
The article uses historical institutionalism as a theoretical lens to make the link between
local government’s creation and contemporary subnational arrangements in the two cit-
ies. Following the methods section, it will examine historical institutionalist perspectives
and their implications for path-dependency in decision-making, before outlining how
modern local government has evolved in both countries since the early 19th century. The
article then incorporates these historical legacies into an analysis of how Gelsenkirchen
and Newcastle Councils have sought to reduce their cities’ reliance on fossil fuels and
improve the thermal efficiency of privately rented housing. This leads into a discussion
about the nature of policy-making in the two cities, before the arguments are summed up
in the conclusion.
Methods
The historical analysis of the creation of local governments relies on a synthesis of exist-
ing secondary literature, while the examination of contemporary governance arrange-
ments is based on a total of 34 fieldwork interviews with 37 people in the ‘twin towns’ of
Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen, as well as municipal policy documentation in
both cities. I conducted the Newcastle interviews between early 2012 and autumn 2015
and carried out the Gelsenkirchen fieldwork in summer 2013. The interviewees were
predominantly senior council managers (from the environment, planning, economic
development, corporate procurement and policy departments), although they also
included staff in a number of other public bodies and representatives from the local vol-
untary sector in each city. Fifteen of the discussions, which covered 19 individuals, were
in Gelsenkirchen and the surrounding area, and the remaining 19 interviews involved 18
different people in Newcastle. I analysed the interview data to identify policy-making
processes in each city, including their approaches to promoting renewable energy and
improving the thermal efficiency of privately rented housing. Both councils prioritised
these issues in their climate protection strategies, and therefore they represent particularly
useful cases for comparison.
The cities have similar populations (around 270,000), a shared heritage of heavy
industry (particularly coal mining), and both have experienced significant economic
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