The Effect of Municipal Initiatives on State Climate Change Plans

Abstract

Faced with near-unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is being accelerated by human activity and no decisive federal policy on the issue, U.S. states and municipalities are taking the initiative to mitigate the problem despite the lack of economic incentive to do so. Traditional models of state policy adoption indicate that states take cues from either the federal government or other states, neglecting the potentially significant influence of cities. Augmenting diffusion of innovation theory with insights from intergovernmental relations and collaborative government, this paper contends that when formulating climate policies without a federal mandate, states take cues from their cities. A discrete-time event history model is used to investigate these factors, with a dichotomous dependent variable indicating whether or not the state has adopted a climate plan. The results indicate that citizen environmental ideology is a significant factor in the adoption of state climate plans, but the presence of local climate initiatives are not. Although no evidence is found to support the idea of local governments as drivers for state-level policy-making, this research indicates several potential future research avenues.