Environmental leaders and pioneers: agents of change?

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article distinguishes between states acting as environmental leaders or pioneers. While leaders usually actively seek to attract followers, this is not normally the case for pioneers. Dependent on their internal and external ambitions, states may take on the position of a laggard, pioneer, pusher or symbolic leader. When doing so, states employ various combinations of types and styles of leadership or pioneership. Four types of leadership/pioneership–structural, entrepreneurial, cognitive and exemplary–and two styles of leadership/pioneership–transactional/humdrum and transformational/heroic–are used to assess leaders and pioneers. The novel analytical framework put forward is intended to generate greater conceptual clarity, which is urgently needed for more meaningful theory-guided cumulative empirical research on leaders and pioneers

Climate change, the green economy and reimagining the city: the case of structurally disadvantaged European maritime port cities

The concept of the New Environmental Politics of Urban Development (NEPUD) examines the impact of international and national environmental regulation on the politics of urban development. The NEPUD concept emerged from case studies of environmental governance in entrepreneurial cities. However, little is known about the concept’s relevance for less competitive cities, especially urban centres facing profound problems associated with economic decline, social deprivation and negative external images or ‘structurally disadvantaged cities.’ This paper examines how the NEPUD has played out within two structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities in Northern Europe, Hull (UK) and Bremerhaven (Germany). Both cities face serious social and economic challenges associated with long-term industrial decline, such as high unemployment rates, low skill levels, economic peripherality, and poor external images. Nevertheless, new opportunities opened up by climate change and the green economy have prompted political actors in Hull and Bremerhaven to build new alliances between local government, business and civil society and enhance governance capacities on climate change and green urban development. Highlighting similarities and differences between these two places, the paper reveals how climate change regulations provide opportunities for certain structurally disadvantaged cities to attract ‘green jobs’ and transform their external image

The Council, European Council and Member States

Member states shape EU policy by working within the Council of the European Union (or 'Council' for short). The Council is thus a central player in EU decision making. There are different Council formations (made up of ministers responsible for particular policy areas), one of which is the Environment Council. Over the years, the number of Environment Council meetings has increased signifcantly, although recently it has plateaued at around four formal meetings per year. The member governments' top political leaders meet in a different forum-the European Council-which until recently had little direct engagement with environmental issues. Nowadays, the European Council plays an important role in EU climate change policy in particular. The well-known environmental leader/pioneer-laggard dimension among different member states goes a long way towards explaining the dynamics within the Environment Council and the European Council, and EU environmental policy making more generally

Environmental, climate and energy policies: Path-dependent incrementalism or quantum leap?

The Grand Coalition's ability to induce significant environmental policy changes was constrained by a 'dual path dependency'. First, environmental policy has developed into a relatively consensual policy field in Germany although there are also some politically conflictual issues such as the use of nuclear power. Second, the Grand Coalition accepted the cornerstones of the previous (Red-Green) coalition government's environmental policy. Environmental Minister Sigmar Gabriel's launch of the concept of ecological industrial policy constituted the clearest example of an attempted paradigm change in environmental policy which was aimed at bringing about a 'quantum leap' and a 'third industrial revolution'. The concept of ecological industrial policy has, however, its roots in the older concept of ecological modernisation of which it constitutes an extension and refinement. © 2010 Association for the Study of German Politics

Leadership and lesson-drawing in the European Union’s multilevel climate governance system

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’. The resulting ‘leadership without leader’ paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU’s multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU’s climate leadership role

The European Council, the Council and the Member States: changing environmental leadership dynamics in the European Union

The leadership dynamics between the European Council, the Council and the Member States in European Union (EU) environmental policy since the 1970s are analysed. The puzzle is that, although the EU was set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’, it is widely seen as an environmental leader, albeit sometimes as a one-eyed leader amongst the blind. While differentiating between leadership types, it is argued that the European Council has the largest structural, the Council the most significant entrepreneurial, and the Member States the most important cognitive and exemplary leadership capacities. Most day-to-day environmental policy measures are negotiated by the Environment Council (in collaboration with the European Parliament). The European Council’s increased interest in high politics climate change issues is largely due to the EU’s global leadership ambitions. Member States have traditionally formed environmental leadership alliances on an ad hoc basis although this may be changing

Environmental Governance in Europe:A Comparative Analysis of New Environmental Policy Instruments

European governance has witnessed dramatic changes in recent decades. By assessing the use of ‘new’ environmental policy instruments in European Union countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, this timely book analyses whether traditional forms of top-down government have given way to less hierarchical governance instruments, which rely strongly on societal self-steering and/or market forces. The authors provide important new theoretical insights as well as fresh empirical detail on why, and in what form, these instruments are being adopted within and across different levels of governance, along with analysis of the often-overlooked interactions between the instrument types

Leaders, Pioneers, and Followers in Environmental Governance

The authors explore the role of leadership in environmental governance. During recent decades, insights from the International Relations and Comparative Politics literature have been combined to improve our understanding of the different motives, positions, types and styles of leadership. A basic distinction can be made between leaders, who actively seek to attract followers, and pioneers, who focus mainly on stringent internal policies. The complex ‘polycentric’ dynamic of global and European climate politics has given an important additional boost to the study of environmental leadership. The initial focus on states as leaders has been gradually widened to include the role of followers, as well as leadership by sub-national and non-state actors. However, leadership in and by the Global South still remains largely unexplored

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation