Collaborating to Address Climate Change: The Diffusion of Local Climate Advisory Committees in the State of Hesse in Central Germany

Cities and municipalities play a crucial role in developing and implementing climate policies. However, effective climate action requires substantial administrative capacity, including collaboration between different sectors and between public and private actors. Involving private actors is deemed particularly important for improving the acceptance of climate policies. Unfortunately, local authorities are often unprepared for this. One increasingly popular way to formalize local-level collaboration on climate action is to establish climate advisory committees that include public (political and administrative) and private (business and civil society) actors. Nevertheless, we still lack knowledge on how these participatory structures emerge and diffuse. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines the diffusion of local climate advisory committees in the state of Hesse, located in central Germany, from 2007 to 2024. A quantitative event history analysis of all 426 Hessian municipalities identifies diffusion patterns and potential determinants of establishing this governance instrument, including the impact of horizontal and vertical diffusion channels. Qualitative analyses of selected cases further illustrate the mechanisms underlying the formation of climate advisory committees and the challenges involved in their work. This study advances our understanding of policy diffusion processes and how to actively support collaboration for local climate action in multilevel contexts.