Rüdiger K.W. Wurzel iD, Duncan Liefferink iD and Diarmuid Torney iD
Introduction
The environmental governance literature has seen a proliferation of analytical terms to describe actors who try to engender change for the improvement of the environment/climate, such as entrepreneur, forerunner, front runner, first mover, leader, lead state, pace setter, pioneer and trend setter (Liefferink and Wurzel 2017, for the general leadership literature see Rhodes and t’Hart 2014, p.3). This proliferation of concepts has inhibited the development of cumulative, theory-guided research on environmental and climate governance. Scholars widely see leaders and pioneers, which are the most commonly used terms in this burgeoning literature, as agents of change who are of central importance for climate change mitigation and adaptation (Liefferink and Wurzel 2018, p. 135). However, the precise ways in which different types of leaders and pioneers act and interact with followers in multilevel and polycentric climate governance structures have attracted much less scholarly attention (but see e.g. Torney 2015).
This introduction and the other contributions to this volume take as an analytical starting point the differentiation that leaders usually actively seek to attract followers while this is not normally the case for pioneers (Liefferink and Wurzel 2017). Although not primarily interested in attracting followers, others nevertheless may emulate pioneers. The actual impact of leaders and pioneers, which needs to be established empirically, is dependent on both their own actions and the ensuing dynamics or stalemates with followers and laggards.
Early leadership studies focused on the actions, strategies and motives of powerful individuals such as American Presidents (e.g. Burns 1978). The international relations (IR) environmental leadership literature shifted the focus to lead states and their actions in international negotiations (e.g. Young 1991, Underdal 1994). Some scholars paid early attention also to international organisations (IOs) and the supranational European Union (EU) (e.g. Rehbinder and Stewart 1985) and subnational actors (e.g. Freeman 1996). The more specialised climate governance literature quickly took on a multi-actor perspective that focused not only on states but also on the EU (e.g. Grubb and Gupta 2000, Wurzel et al. 2017), businesses (e.g. Grant 2011), NGOs (e.g. Long et al. 2002, Bäckstrand et al. 2017), unions (e.g. Räthzel and Uzzell 2013) and even individuals (e.g. Rowlands 1995). However, scholars have conducted little systematic research on subnational and non-state actors as leaders or pioneers. This volume aims to make a contribution towards closing this research gap.
Multilevel governance and polycentricity
Contemporary climate governance scholarship is paying increasing attention to a wider range of governance actors and levels, including the international, supranational, transnational, national and subnational levels. Scholars have widely used multi-level governance (MLG) and polycentric governance perspectives to analyse climate governance (e.g. Jordan et al. 2018). The shift away from a top-down climate governance approach embodied in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol partly has driven this development. While the Protocol stipulates legally binding targets and timetables, the 2015 Paris Agreement, relies?instead on voluntary pledges (so-called Nationally Determined Contributions). According to Oberthür (2016, p. 81), the Paris ‘Agreement recalibrates the role of the multilateral UN process as providing overall direction towards global decarbonisation, while leaving implementation to other international organisations, states and various non-state actors and initiatives’. Similarly, Jordan et al. (2018, p. 4) have argued that developments in climate change governance since the 2000s ‘appear to confirm the trend towards greater polycentricity’ which requires the mobilisation of a wider range of non-state actors.
Polycentric governance concepts share certain core presuppositions (e.g. multiple centres of authority and levels of governance) with MLG approaches, although conceptually they are not identical (e.g. Homsy and Warner 2014, Wurzel et al. 2017, Jordan et al. 2018). By comparison with polycentric governance approaches, MLG concepts normally assume a stronger role for governmental (i.e. state, supranational and subnational) actors (Morrison et al. 2017, Liefferink and Wurzel 2018). Most MLG-inspired EU studies – for which the MLG concept was initially developed (e.g. Marks 1993, Hooghe 1996) – emphasise the mutual dependency of supranational and subnational governmental actors. Many MLG concepts reject the idea of traditional top-down government in favour of less hierarchical governance which assumes that ‘non-state actors co-govern along with state actors for the provision of collective goods and adopt governance functions that have formerly been the sole authority of sovereign states’ (Stephenson 2013, p. 829).
Polycentric governance concepts, on the other hand, attribute a high degree of autonomy to societal actors (e.g. business, NGOs and individual citizens). Polycentric approaches claim that widespread self-coordination leads to a multitude of decision-making ‘centres’ particularly at subnational level or even at the level of firms (see Bach 2019, Biedenkopf et al. 2019, Dupius and Schweizer 2019, Eikeland and Skjaerseth 2019, – all this volume). From a polycentric governance perspective, such self-coordination, which we could conceptualise as leadership/pioneership by societal actors within relatively autonomous policy domains, is essential for the successful functioning of global climate governance (e.g. Ostrom et al. 2012, Ostrom 2014, Jordan et al. 2018). According to Dorsch and Flachsland (2017), one of the advantages of polycentric governance is that experimentation at local and decentralised levels may lead to learning-by-doing and subsequent horizontal diffusion or upscaling to higher climate governance levels (see Ostrom et al. 2012, 2014, Kern 2019, – this volume).
Broadly speaking, we argue that proponents of polycentricity favour societal self-coordination within market-like governance structures (e.g. Ostrom et al. 2012, Ostrom 2014) while MLG advocates support the creation of networks in which governmental actors (including supranational EU actors) play an important, if not dominant, role to correct negative market externalities (e.g. Marks 1993, Hooghe 1996, Homsy and Warner 2014). This also has consequences for the conceptualisation of leadership and pioneership. A polycentric governance perspective in principle could see any successful self-coordination or experimentation at any governance level as pioneership. Polycentricity can help us understand why and how such initiatives emerge and flourish (Dorsch and Flachsland 2017, Jordan et al. 2018). However, due to the relative autonomy of polycentric sub-systems, the number of potential followers may be limited (Liefferink and Wurzel 2018). For the wider leader/pioneer–follower dynamic, the overarching MLG context in which polycentric systems may be embedded is important (Morrison et al. 2017).
Within the broader context of MLG and polycentric approaches, we provide a critical assessment of the climate leader and pioneer literature. We do so by proposing answers to the following four core research questions: Who can be a leader/pioneer? Why do actors become leaders/pioneers? How do leaders/pioneers act? and How do leaders/pioneers attract followers? Earlier studies have addressed some of these questions, but not in a specifically MLG and polycentric governance context. In particular, by focusing on the EU, business and subnational actors (including cities) as potential leaders and pioneers, the contributions to this volume provide new answers to the who, why and how questions of leadership and pioneership. Moreover, the focus on followership opens a new dimension to the leadership/pioneership literature. By focusing on agents of change (i.e. leaders and pioneers), we draw heavily on actor-focused approaches (which are compatible with MLG and polycentric governance concepts) although we do not ignore structural factors (e.g. structural leadership).
Who can be a leader or a pioneer?
Although states, IOs, the supranational EU, subnational actors and societal actors have all been identified as potential environmental leaders or pioneers, the early climate governance literature focused primarily on states. However, competing conceptual approaches have emphasised the relative importance of particular types of actors who, as we explain below, may offer different types of leadership/pioneership and followership.
State-centred approaches still dominate both IR and comparative politics (CP) research on environmental/climate leaders and pioneers. The early IR literature focused on the leading role of states in international environmental/climate regimes (e.g. Young 1991, Underdal 1994) while CP studies have assessed the political characteristics and institutional capacities of states that transform into environmental leaders/pioneers (e.g. Jänicke and Weidner 1997, Weidner et al. 2002). In contrast to international regimes, institutionalist approaches have seen IOs as being capable of exhibiting independent ‘actorness’ capabilities.
Single country studies differentiated early on between internal and external (i.e. domestic and foreign) environmental/climate policy ambitions (e.g. Prittwitz 1984). For example, for much of the 1970s/1980s, the USA acted as an environmental leader on both the domestic and international levels (e.g. Rowlands 1995), while Japan’s international ambitions did not match its progressive domestic environmental policy (e.g. Imura and Schreurs 2005). Importantly, CP state-centred and single country studies initially focused exclusively on highly developed liberal democracies. Studies did not initially view the transitional Central and Eastern European states, rapidly developing countries and developing countries as being capable of exhibiting environmental/climate leadership/pioneership, although scholars gradually are challenging this view (e.g. Torney 2015, Wurzel et al. 2017).
The EU seems to have provided particularly fertile ground for climate leadership/pioneership (e.g. Grubb and Gupta 2000, Jordan et al. 2010, Torney 2015, Wurzel et al. 2017, see also Jänicke and Wurzel 2019, – this volume). Schreurs and Tiberghien (2007) have argued that the EU’s climate policy-making processes provide multi-level reinforcement mechanisms which can trigger the ratcheting upwards of the environmental standards set by the leaders or pioneers (see already Rehbinder and Stewart 1985). From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, the so-called Green Troika – Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark – acted as major driver for EU environmental policy development. The EU accession by Sweden, Finland and Austria in 1995 transformed the Green Trio into a green sextet and triggered a more systematic investigation of environmental leaders and pioneers and their impact (e.g. Héritier 1996, Andersen and Liefferink 1997, Liefferink and Andersen 1998, Börzel 2002, Wurzel 2008).
Within the climate leadership/pioneership literature the subnational level attracted scholarly attention only at a relatively late stage although there are exceptions (e.g. Freeman 1996, Bulkeley and Betsill 2005). One reason for this is the strong initial focus of the social science literature on international climate negotiations. As these negotiations became more protracted over time the scholarly search for evidence of climate leadership/pioneership shifted from the international level to national and subnational levels (e.g. Eckersley 2018, Kern 2019, Wurzel et al. 2019, – this volume).
Business is important for developing technological innovations and creating ‘green’ markets (e.g. Jänicke and Jacob 2002). However, businesses operating in jurisdictions with high regulatory standards may also have a more direct influence on policy by promoting the adoption of stringent standards at the international and/or supranational level for reasons of competitiveness (e.g. Vogel 1997, Liefferink and Wurzel 2018, Dupuis and Schweizer 2019). Moreover, business has frequently propagated the adoption of voluntary agreements and ‘self-regulation’ which theoretically fits polycentric approaches. However, business often ‘remains the elephant in the room or perhaps just outside the door’ (Grant 2011, p. 212) when it comes to the adoption of ambitious climate governance measures. We see this, for example, in the German automobile industry’s resistance to more ambitious EU standards for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the 2010s. As the literature remains ambivalent on whether business can effectively act as a climate leader or pioneer, this volume pays particular attention to the ability and/or wi...
