Local climate change action plans in France: between formal compliance and grassroots appropriation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the process of producing and appropriating climate action plans in rural and semi-rural territories of Nouvelle Aquitaine, France. The aim is to ascertain whether and how the political construction of climate change as a policy issue takes place at a local scale. Based on qualitative interviews analyzed from a constructivist perspective, this research first highlights a hiatus between, on the one hand, a standardized and stereotyped process made compulsory by France’s central government and, on the other, the variety of degrees of appropriation of this state’s goals found in the localities studied. We analyze the factors explaining these differences and conclude that, crucially, even in the areas where framings of climate change are the most favorable for action by local government, politicization of the public problem to be addressed at the local scale has rarely taken place. In so doing, our analysis contributes to a comparative study of local government climate change governance, to how it is affected by national–local relations, and to a more general literature on the politicization and depoliticization of public policy and its making.