Grand challenges in data integration—state of the art and future perspectives: an introduction

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Entrepreneurship in climate governance at the local and regional levels: concepts, methods, patterns, and effects

This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels. To make climate governance work, much policy activity is needed at the local and regional levels. Entrepreneurs are actors who aim to affect change by using their agency. They target policy decisions at the local and regional levels, which might subsequently turn to other governance levels to expand their influence. The scientific discussion about governance entrepreneurs is characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity, by methodological challenges, and by several research gaps. Regarding the latter, at present, it is especially unclear when and why entrepreneurs become active, which factors they take into account when they select their strategies, and what explains the effects of entrepreneurial activity on the emergence of innovations in climate governance. All contributions to this special issue engage with one or several of these conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, thus advancing the state of art in the field. Highlights from the special issue include the development of a simple conceptual frame that connects actors, contexts, strategies, and outcomes in a systematic way. Some promising methodological avenues are described, since the special issue contains not only some qualitative case studies but also some studies that take a long-term perspective by following policy development for decades, and a study that proposes a census approach. Empirically, the contributions in this special issue shed light on a range of factors explaining levels of entrepreneurial activity, and they carefully trace impacts over time. We conclude by sketching an agenda for further work in this realm

Introduction

This introductory chapter aims at setting the background of the analyses presented in the chapters of this edited volume. It explains in which context brexit has intervened, and why it has been such an important issue for the british parliament, as well as for the european parliament and the parliaments of the other european union member states. Citizens’ participation is examined too. It also draws general conclusions as to the impact of brexit on parliamentary democracy, and parliaments’ participation in eu affairs

Emergence of polycentric climate governance and its future prospects

Governance responses from the international climate regime have been widely critiqued. But fresh research is revealing that ‘new’ and more dynamic forms of governing are appearing in alternative domains, producing a more polycentric pattern. Some analysts believe that these ‘new’ forms will fill gaps in the regime, but this optimism is based on untested assumptions about their diffusion and performance. We conclude that the advent of more polycentric governance does offer new opportunities to govern climate change, but based on existing empirical research it is far too early to judge whether hopes about the performance of the ‘new’ forms are well founded. More time and vastly more coordinated research efforts are needed to comprehend their full potential; time that is in very short supply in governing climate change