Abstract
This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels. To make climate governance work, much policy activity is needed at the local and regional levels. Entrepreneurs are actors who aim to affect change by using their agency. They target policy decisions at the local and regional levels, which might subsequently turn to other governance levels to expand their influence. The scientific discussion about governance entrepreneurs is characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity, by methodological challenges, and by several research gaps. Regarding the latter, at present, it is especially unclear when and why entrepreneurs become active, which factors they take into account when they select their strategies, and what explains the effects of entrepreneurial activity on the emergence of innovations in climate governance. All contributions to this special issue engage with one or several of these conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, thus advancing the state of art in the field. Highlights from the special issue include the development of a simple conceptual frame that connects actors, contexts, strategies, and outcomes in a systematic way. Some promising methodological avenues are described, since the special issue contains not only some qualitative case studies but also some studies that take a long-term perspective by following policy development for decades, and a study that proposes a census approach. Empirically, the contributions in this special issue shed light on a range of factors explaining levels of entrepreneurial activity, and they carefully trace impacts over time. We conclude by sketching an agenda for further work in this realm.
Highlights
This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels
It is useful to zoom in in governance entrepreneurship when we aim to enhance our understanding of questions such as the following: How do communities get going? Where do communities get their ideas from? How do they build the required networks and coalitions to break down established routines and cut to size incumbent interests? How do they evaluate their initiatives? And how do they connect to other communities and governance levels, compare notes, and exchange lessons with other communities? Who will take the initiative to develop overarching norms and standards, to create mechanisms to resolve conflicts, and bring such conflicts to the attention of for instance courts?
The focus of this special issue is on a special kind of actors in these processes, namely governance entrepreneurs, and we focus on those operating at the local and regional levels
Summary
The term entrepreneur refers to a person taking action or to take the initiative (“entre prendere” means to undertake), and in common language, it is usually associated with business and the private sector (business entrepreneurs). Idea development (e.g., by experimenting and piloting), coalition building (entrepreneurship as a group process), venue shopping and creation (moving discussions to other or new jurisdictions), networking (making sure how other actors think), and framing (making sure problems get interpreted in a certain way) In this special issue, we refer to governance entrepreneurs rather than policy entrepreneurs. Local and regional entrepreneurs have aimed to change policy at the local and regional levels, or—after affecting local and regional governance—in turn they have sought to expand their influence to the national, or even global, levels In this special issue, we will see that local and regional actors have developed novel approaches to climate change (e.g., setting new goals, inventing new means), and how they have tried to diffuse them more widely (by getting others to adopt them), and how they have tried to ensure that these approaches have an impact (Jordan and Huitema, 2014a, b). We should not forget that sometimes entrepreneurs must work against certain policy changes (for instance, initiatives that seek to dismantle climate governance arrangements), and we must keep in mind that even successful entrepreneurs will not always succeed, for instance when the odds are stacked against them
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