Mapping domestic climate authority: insights from the UK’s multi-scale institutional architecture
Climate governance research has underlined that different territorial scales play a role in the green transition. Across these scales, a plurality of actors mobilises in systems described as multilevel or polycentric. Such systems include private and civil society actors, but also public authorities. Indeed, a strand of research has emphasised the importance of regional and local authorities in climate policies. This article examines UK governmental authorities at different territorial scales and assesses the extent of their formal competences on climate issues. It compares how formal authority has evolved over time (1950–2017), across territorial scales (local, regional, state), throughout the legislative cycle (from initiation to implementation), and across climate-impacting domains (from agriculture to waste). It highlights that, over the past seven decades, domestic climate authority has increasingly been dispersed, but unequally. There is variation on all four dimensions (time, scales, domains, cycle). The three devolved governments excepted (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), most dispersion concerns implementation. And even there, stark differences persist between domains: energy remains mostly centralised while waste and building/planning have been significantly decentralised. These findings highlight the multi-scale nature of climate authority, but also areas where the regional and local levels have more leverage and where they have less leeway. Functional and identity pressures partly explain these patterns. In sum, polycentric and multilevel governance dynamics are at play, but to varying degrees.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-024-00268-z
