Policy Diffusion and Upscaling of Climate Policies in German Cities

Local climate policies represent a fruitful policy area for examining policy diffusion and upscaling of local experiments. In Germany, many cities set up climate mitigation strategies in the 1990s and supplemented them with climate adaptation strategies during the last 10 years. While the transfer of good practices in the 1990s was triggered primarily by transnational municipal networks, the development and revision of climate mitigation strategies as well as the emergence of climate adaptation strategies during the last decade have been driven mainly by national and regional subsidy programs, which have changed the dynamics between leaders and laggards. While the diffusion of policy innovations at the beginning of local climate policy in the 1990s was limited primarily to leading cities, national and state subsidies have stimulated activities even in cities, which have been passive in the past. Although policy diffusion is still an important driver of local climate policies in Germany, upscaling of local climate experiments beyond the group of leading cities has been driven by the initiatives taken by national and regional governments. Therefore, our paper traces policy diffusion of local climate mitigation policies in Germany in the 1990s and 2000s and compares this development with the upscaling of local climate policies during the last decade, i.e. since national and regional authorities have set up comprehensive subsidy programs (in particular the German Kommunalrichtlinie). We argue that upscaling of local climate policies from leaders to laggards depends on interventions by national and regional authorities.