Articles | Volume 72, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-123-2017
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-123-2017
Standard article
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16 Mar 2017
Standard article |  | 16 Mar 2017

How to make them walk the talk: governing the implementation of energy and climate policies into local practices

Annika Mattissek and Cindy Sturm

Abstract. Urban policy mobility has become a lively field of research in recent years. One important argument has been that policies do not travel from place to place unmodified, but are transformed in the process of their implementation. Drawing on a research project on adaptations of climate protection policies in German cities we elaborate how discourse studies and work on governmentality can be brought into resonance with the policy mobility debate. We suggest that these theoretical concepts can be used to explain why, despite the growing number of laws and recommendations in this context, local adaptations of climate policies vary significantly between different cities. We argue that the concept of governmentality is particularly well suited to grasping the discrepancies between discursively produced guidelines and actual planning practices and to conceptualising these planning practices as effects of competing and often conflicting technologies of government.

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Short summary
Drawing on a research project on adaptations of climate and energy policies in German cities we ask why, despite the growing number of laws and recommendations formulated on the national level, local adaptations of climate and energy policies vary significantly between different cities. We explain how discourse and governmentality studies can be brought into resonance with the policy mobility debate and suggest that these concepts are particularly well suited to explain these discrepancies.
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