Keywords

Introduction

Cities are responsible for 70% of greenhouse emissions worldwide (UN, 2022). Urban areas have been identified by researchers as a crucial part of the efforts to tackle climate change (González Medina et al., 2018; Ostrom, 2009; Revi et al., 2014; Satterthwaite et al., 2018; Bulkeley, 2013; Hunt & Watkiss, 2011; IPCC, 2022). Since 2015, the Paris Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the rise of organizations such as the C40 global network of mayors have placed cities in the spotlight of climate action. However, urban climate policy has become a contested policy field on multiple fronts reflecting its cross-cutting and urgent nature. In large cities, public spaces are stages where climate conflict is played out, as exemplified in referenda such as “Berlin 2030 Climate Neutral.” In addition, city governments must develop policy in a context where the functional responsibility for the subfields of urban climate policy—such as building, transport, energy, and water management—is often distributed across different governmental levels. This requirement for joint action exerts pressure on IGR. Thus, city-level decision-makers face the double challenge of navigating complex vertical IGR within metropolitan institutional frameworks and coordinating action horizontally with surrounding administrative units, while at the same time channeling public discussion on climate to achieve legitimate, socially accepted, and effective climate policy.

City governments often address these challenges by developing formalized urban climate strategies bringing together the major stakeholders and involving broad citizen participation. Urban climate strategies systemize considerations for action directed toward a desired reduction in emissions (Raschke, 2002; Raschke & Tils, 2007; Ebermann, 2020), define the governance concept of the city and establish how the different actors should be steered and coordinated (Süßbauer, 2016). A notable proponent of this approach is the C40 network of mayors,Footnote 1 which has identified 66 cities with Paris-compatible strategies (C40, 2020). However, the multi-stakeholder requirements of urban climate policy often clash with the existing IGR structures, which are not primarily designed for cross-cutting policy-making.

Although urban climate strategies offer insights into the challenges of climate IGR at the sub-national level, the tensions arising from their formulation and implementation have not been explored by researchers. Systematic findings on metropolitan climate action from an international cross-country perspective are not widely available. In addition, research on horizontal and vertical IGR in metropolitan climate policy is limited (Bauer et al., 2012; Brasseur et al., 2017: 233; Romero-Lankao et al., 2018). To address this research gap, we ask the following question: How do intergovernmental relations play out in the formulation and implementation of urban climate strategies?

The cities of Berlin and Paris are embedded in two dissimilar institutional frameworks and administrative traditions—the continental European federal type in Germany and the continental European Napoleonic type in France (Kuhlmann & Wollmann, 2019). Yet, both cities face the challenge of aligning urban climate policy with their respective sub-municipal levels (Bezirke and arrondissements) as well as with the surrounding areas. Berlin is committed to carbon neutrality by 2045, while Paris plans to reach this goal by 2050. Both cities have undertaken significant commitments in developing and implementing their climate strategies to achieve their targets. These commitments place pressure on their intergovernmental relations: the cities must vertically coordinate climate strategy within administrative levels of city government and horizontally with the surrounding metropolitan area. For Berlin, this is the federal state (Land) of Brandenburg, and for Paris, the metropolis of Greater Paris. A research strategy based on a most different systems design (Seawright & Gerring, 2008) is used, underpinned by the contrasting institutional contexts, differing approaches to intergovernmental relations and shared objective of achieving climate neutrality of both cities. The case studies draw from the analysis of 21 expert interviews (13 in Berlin and Brandenburg, 8 in Paris and Greater Paris) with key representatives from public administration, politics, and civil society. Data collection took place between February and July 2022 in German and French, respectively. The interview analysis is complemented by a document analysis of the strategies, associated documents, and legal frameworks.

The cases are studied following a framework of intergovernmental relations, which distinguishes between multilayered, centralized, and conflicted policy processes (see introduction in this edited volume; Bergström et al., 2022). The typology of policy processes is operationalized for the purpose of this study in terms of the metropolitan distribution of functional responsibilities (centralized versus decentralized) and policy-making approaches (coordination versus decoupling). Centralized policy processes are dominated by higher government levels, which concentrate control over functions administered by sub-municipal governments. Decentralized policy processes, on the contrary, are characterized by a distributed allocation of responsibilities across government levels. The allocation of functional responsibilities coexists with different approaches to policy-making and conflict resolution. Sub-municipal governments, so the district governments, can be included in policy processes in a coordinated manner linked to established policy-making mechanisms through rights of participation. However, these participation formats can vary in their degree of influence from consultation to actual voting rights. Alternatively, intergovernmental relations can be characterized by a lack of coordination and conflict resolution mechanisms where sub-municipal governments are primarily excluded from participation or are only granted limited rights of consultation. This decoupling of the policy process might lead to contested approaches due to a lack of rights of participation (Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 Types of intergovernmental relations (based on Bergström et al., 2022)
Full size table

Institutional Characteristics and Legal Framework of Urban Climate Policy in Berlin and Paris

Berlin is a city-state characterized by a two-tiered administration with a central administration and district administrations. The central administration is responsible for overall functions that involve the whole city, such as finances.Footnote 2 The city of Berlin comprises a series of Senate Departments comparable to ministries in the territorial federal states in terms of structure and organization. The second level consists of 12 district administrations responsible for localized tasks. Each district administration has a district mayor, councilors, and an assembly. In terms of the wider metropolitan area, Berlin is located within the federal state of Brandenburg. Both Berlin and Brandenburg, as federal states, collaborate over certain matters within the so-called Berlin-Brandenburg region. Berlin’s 2021 strategy frameworkFootnote 3 includes cooperation over matters such as, mobility and climate protection with Brandenburg. Paris also has a two-tier local government consisting of the city level and 20 districts. Each district (arrondissement) comprises an elected council and an (indirectly) elected mayor. The arrondissements have a predominantly consultative function, hardly any decision-making rights and only a few responsibilities (Kuhlmann, 2005: 4).Footnote 4 They are not assigned their “own” responsibilities to carry out according to the principles of self-government, given that no legal distinction is made between city-wide and district responsibilities. Hence, all responsibilities are city-wide and are subject to the complete regulatory competence and supervision of the mayor of Paris (Kuhlmann, 2005: 4). This is how the arrondissements differ from the Bezirke, which fulfill their tasks according to the principles of self-administration.Footnote 5 Additionally, the horizontal relationship between Paris and its surrounding metropolitan area is different. Created in 2016, the metropolis of Greater Paris is a multipurpose inter-municipal body that comprises the French capital and over 100 other municipalities in three departments (départements). In terms of environmental protection, some functional responsibilities and operational competencies of the municipalities were transferred to the Greater Paris metropolis, such as that for the energy transition. Thus, within the French local system, encompassing the municipalities, departments, and regions (régions), the metropoles constitute a de facto fourth level of French territorial authority (Demazière & Sykes, 2021: 34).

The autonomy of the city governments to choose whether to develop a climate strategy and the established obligations regarding rights of consultation and participation vis-a-vis other actors influence intergovernmental relations in Berlin and Paris. Consultation and participation in urban climate strategy policy processes are contested and thus present challenges in the coordination and distribution of responsibilities across governments. Berlin is not obliged by federal laws to develop a climate strategy. The city has far-reaching competencies in climate policy, enjoying significant political discretion in determining the content and procedures of its urban climate strategy as long as these are compatible with federal regulations. However, these functional responsibilities are distributed between the central and district administrations. The latter has significant decision-making power in areas relevant to climate action, such as urban and land-use planning and a substantial part of transport measures. This situation puts pressure on the city administration to involve the sub-municipal level in climate strategy formulation, as their buy-in is required for the successful implementation of climate policy. Paris, on the contrary, is legally obliged to have a climate action plan. Since 2010, municipalities with over 50,000 inhabitants in France are required to formulate a climate plan (Yalçın & Lefèvre, 2012). This requirement also applies to the metropolis of Greater Paris, which geographically surrounds the capital city. Nevertheless, the central government allows cities some political discretion to consider specific local conditions and to determine their plan’s perimeter, structure, and operating principles. Additionally, the limited rights of consultation at the sub-municipal level in Paris make stakeholder buy-in less of a priority in urban climate policy compared to Berlin.

Recent IGR Policy Trajectories in Urban Climate Strategies

Berlin: the Centralized Formulation and Conflicted Implementation of the Urban Climate Strategy (BEK 2030)

In 2011, Berlin’s governing coalition committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The Senate Department for Environment commissioned a feasibility study in 2014 to work out how the city could achieve this goal. A second scientific study was commissioned in 2015 to elaborate on the Berlin Climate Protection and Energy Transition Act, which was passed in 2016. The act provides the framework for Berlin’s climate protection policy and legally anchored climate protection targets and instruments for achieving them. A draft of the strategy, called the Berlin Energy and Climate Protection Program (BEK 2030), was adopted in 2018. The city of Berlin centralized the policy process. The sub-municipal level was formally consulted through workshops and interviews. However, this consultation process was not extensive, nor did it involve instances of binding participation, given that the development of the BEK 2030 was managed mainly outside the administration by a scientific consortium created for this purpose. This configured a scenario that could be characterized as centralized in terms of the allocation of responsibilities for the development of the strategy and decoupled in terms of limited contact channels between the sub-municipal and municipal level.

Once in place, the responsibility for implementing the BEK 2030 was distributed between the city of Berlin and the districts according to the functional allocation of climate tasks. Through the BEK 2030, the city of Berlin made financial resources available for implementing projects in the strategy’s action fields. However, the districts had to develop their own initiatives and submit an application to access these funds. This design led to a series of conflicts, as the district administrations reported not having enough personnel to deal with the additional overheads required in project development and application. Issues such as budgetary restrictions and a lack of know-how reduced the capacity of the districts to make use of these funds. The limited consultation of the districts, furthermore, did not contribute to raising awareness, nor political interest in the submission of projects. Additionally, the city of Berlin faced difficulties in establishing adequate personnel measures and processes within its own administration to manage the funds. These limitations in terms of capacity, both at the city and district level, are one of the reasons for the slow execution of the BEK 2030 budget. In 2020, out of a planned 3,850,000 euros, only 21,119 euros were allocated for public institutions to carry out investments within the framework of the BEK 2030. By October 2021 (last data available), only 16,474 euros were allocated out of a budget of 3,550,000 euros for the year (SenUMVK, 2022; SenUVK, 2021). Other grants to public institutions within the BEK 2030 were more successful, but represented much smaller proportions of the BEK budget. While the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in slowing project applications, the districts demonstrated a rather low interest in the climate policy funds. Beyond issues of capacity, the lack of communication of the BEK 2030 funds and their lack of involvement in formulating the strategy was reported by district officials to be a significant factor. Furthermore, given that climate managers have limited resources, they tend to orient their work toward local requirements of the sub-municipal district council rather than city policy. Accordingly, certain districts began developing their own urban climate strategies. This scenario can be characterized as one of conflicted policy processes. As the policy process shifted from a centralized formulation of the urban climate strategy to a decentralized implementation, the decoupled approach to IGR remained, creating issues over the execution of the budget. At the same time, the city of Berlin was slow in establishing the necessary processes to ensure that funds were available in a timely fashion.

In 2021, Berlin began to re-elaborate the BEK 2030 for the period 2022–2026. A new feasibility study was developed by a scientific consortium (“Making Berlin Paris-compliant”), and the Berlin Climate Protection and Energy Transition Act was amended to set the objective of climate neutrality by 2045. City government officials attempted to address the pitfalls of the previous version of the program. Compared to the first policy formulation process, the district administrations reported being involved more closely. The primary means of involving the districts remained the use of informal, non-binding workshops. Even so, the city places a stronger emphasis on communicating and ensuring the participation of different actors in order to benefit from the expertise at the district level, as well as increase the policy buy-in to ensure the better implementation of any measures. Consequently, compared to the previous strategy formulation stage, there was a shift toward greater coordination, although some coordination difficulties remained.

Paris: Centralization Followed by a Partial Decentralization of the “Plan Climat”

The city of Paris was one of the first in Europe to adopt a climate action plan in 2007. At that time, forerunner cities competed for leadership on climate issues, which lent impetus to Paris’ efforts (Françoise, 2020). Additionally, a national law providing guidance on the formulation of a climate action plan was not yet in place. Consequently, according to some experts, this delay led to local representatives being “much more proactive and ambitious than simply responding to a text of a law” (Françoise, 2020). The current version of the climate strategy was adopted in 2018 with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The fact that the city of Paris hosted the 2015 global climate conference resulted in a substantial political commitment to include the agreement’s objectives and adopt a strategic vision in the city’s climate action plan. Hence, according to some interview partners, the climate plan has been perceived as a social project rather than a technical planning tool. The formulation of the climate action plan followed a centralized policy process, which did not include the arrondissements. Instead, the government levels above the municipal level come to play an essential role in the policy process and ensure that the strategy is compatible with the metropolitan climate actions and the National Low Carbon Strategy.Footnote 6 Thus, before submitting the plan to the Paris Council, the city had to obtain the necessary approval from higher levels by transmitting the draft to the regional prefect, a deconcentrated entity representing the central state. The latter conducted a strategic environmental assessment as prescribed by the Environmental Code. Compared to the previous versions of the climate action plan, the city administration has kept elements of formalized coordination to a minimum in the current version of 2018, thus closing off paths of consultation and representation for the arrondissements, configuring a scenario of a strongly centralized policy process.

The revision of the urban climate strategy for the period 2024–2030 marks a significant change from these centralized iterations of the climate plan. In 2021, a city-wide push for reorganizing functional responsibilities between the city and the arrondissements led to the Parisian Proximity Act.Footnote 7 The act aims to increase the effectiveness of the administration through decentralizing responsibilities and promoting the greater territorialization of policy processes. The revision of the climate plan is part of this territorialization of urban policy, whereby priority challenges are to be agreed upon within each district and residents consulted. For this purpose, the body organizing civic participation (Maisons de la vie associative et citoyenne) is no longer attached to Paris’ central administration, but is directly subordinate to the arrondissements. Thus providing the arrondissements, and in particular the general public inhabiting these administrative units, with rights of consultation regarding the climate plan. In addition to the increased involvement of the arrondissements, the metropolis of Greater Paris has come to play a more important role in the city’s climate plan. The metropolitan area drew up its own climate plan in 2018, the Metropolitan Climate Air and Energy Plan, with which the city of Paris must comply. This requirement takes the form of a mandatory consultation whereby metropolitan officials formally review the city-level climate plan to ensure compliance with the legal requirements. Metropolitan officials may also point out weaknesses and make suggestions for improvement. On the basis of this process, platforms for joint cooperation have been established, such as the carbon offset platform, a measure included in the climate plans of the city of Paris and the metropolis of Greater Paris. The revision is overseen by a newly created administrative unit, the Directorate of Ecological Transition and Climate (DTEC). This strategic unit exclusively deals with climate transition and addresses the topic transversally across responsibilities and functions. There was a strong political will in Paris, both by politicians such as the mayor and leading officials within the city administration, to create a separate administrative unit for climate transition both to give the subject greater visibility and centralize the functional responsibilities for the strategy revision into one unit. The Directorate of Green Spaces and the Environment (DEVE), where the climate plan was previously located, was seen by the interviewed administration officials as too operational and lacking a strategic vision and effective coordinating function. According to the interviewees, this newly established unit has contributed to decentralizing the strategy through the, albeit rather limited, inclusion of the arrondissements and the increased involvement of the metropolis of Greater Paris. Compared to the previous governing arrangements, this has enabled the decentralization of functional responsibilities with an accompanying increase in coordination mechanisms.

Berlin and Paris in Comparative Perspective

From Centralization to Decentralization and Increased Coordination: Vertical Intergovernmental Relations in Berlin and Paris

The city governments of Berlin and Paris both initially took a centralized approach to strategy development with very limited consultation with the sub-municipal level. However, the subsequent development of the policy process made leading actors within the administrations realize the limitations of a centralized approach. Berlin’s implementation faced problems with stakeholder buy-in at the sub-municipal level, resulting in a much lower execution of the budget compared to expectations. The Parisian strategy was deemed insufficient in terms of visibility and traction, and was furthermore affected by the trend toward territorialization in France and in Paris in particular. In both cities, the politico-administrative response in the re-formulation process took a turn toward more coordination and decentralization. However, the extent of this turn differs between the two. Berlin’s attempt to transition toward a multilayered policy process during the current stage of strategy re-formulation is limited to increased consultation with the sub-municipal level, whereas the Parisian changes to the policy process are embedded in a broader reform process through which the sub-municipal level has been granted new rights of consultation relating to the urban climate strategy. The French policy-making context reflected a sense of generally diminished citizen trust in state institutions and pressures on government officials to demonstrate greater effectiveness. In Paris, the mayor was more committed to territorialization than her equivalent in Berlin. Furthermore, unlike Berlin, Paris saw the introduction of a new, powerful organization in the form of Greater Paris with consultation rights. Notwithstanding, the territorialization efforts in Paris should not be overestimated, as no new functional responsibilities were transferred to the arrondissements in terms of climate, despite individual organizational changes. The long-term effects of the Proximity Act can hardly be assessed to date.

It must be noted that the starting situation and motivations for this trend toward more multilayered approaches in both cities are different. In Berlin, functional responsibilities for climate policy are shared between the city and the districts. The centralized strategy formulation process did not consider how the effective distribution of responsibilities would shape implementation. The city did not manage to ensure sufficient support across the districts and did not fully recognize the interdependence of city levels in regards to climate policy implementation. Thus, the districts had little incentive to actively involve themselves in strategy implementation. This resulted in a conflicted implementation stage, strengthened by limited coordination mechanisms between the city and the districts beyond ad hoc working groups created in some policy subfields. On the other hand, in Paris, functional responsibilities for climate policy are mostly centralized at the city level and the arrondissements do not have a significant set of tasks linked to climate adaptation and mitigation. The Parisian Proximity Act has ensured that residents are more involved in the revision process, but despite this change, the district’s tasks in climate policy are still mainly limited to raising awareness among residents (Fig. 8.1). Generally, vertical conflicts of interest between the central city administration and districts tend to be less pronounced in Paris than in Berlin due to the strong political-personal intertwining of the levels. While the cumulation of offices in Paris allows for the simultaneity of functions in the city council and the district representation, in Berlin, the cumulation of state and district mandates is excluded by the state election law according to the principle of “incompatibility” (Kuhlmann, 2005: 2).

Fig. 8.1
A 4 quadrant graph. The positive y axis is for centralized functional responsibilities with negative y axis for decentralized functional responsibilities. The positive x axis is for coordinated with negative x axis for decoupled. Paris phase 2018 to 2020 in Q 2 declines to Q 4 for phase 2021 to 2023.

IGR in the field of climate policy

Full size image

Decoupling or Coordination: Horizontal Intergovernmental Relations in Berlin and Paris

A notable contrast between Berlin and Paris can be observed in the relations with their corresponding surrounding territorial units. The horizontal IGR between Berlin and the surrounding federal state of Brandenburg can be characterized as decoupled. Thus, a jointly developed cooperative approach to climate adaptation and mitigation did not occur. Consequently, the BEK 2030 and the Climate Plan Brandenburg (Brandenburg’s climate adaptation and mitigation strategy) were formulated independently of each other. Only quite limited cooperation on topics of climate relevance exists between the city of Berlin and the Land of Brandenburg, (for instance, forestry, water management, or land use). Even so, the joint Berlin-Brandenburg Region strategy framework of 2021 foresees greater cooperation in areas such as mobility and climate protection. Also, innoBB 2025, the innovation strategy of Berlin-Brandenburg, supports collaboration in relevant clusters such as transport, mobility, logistics, and energy while focusing on technological innovation. Nevertheless, none of the joint initiatives comprehensively address climate mitigation and adaptation. The main instruments in both federal states, the BEK 2030 and the Climate Plan Brandenburg, were formulated and implemented in a decoupled manner. In contrast, the relationship between Paris and its surrounding metropolitan area has followed a coordinated approach, centered on the metropolis of Greater Paris. The city of Paris is legally obliged to seek the opinion of the metropolis regarding the consistency and compliance with the broader Metropolitan Climate, Air and Energy Plan. Thus, the metropolis has a right of consultation on the city-wide strategy draft. Over the last few years, there has been a close technical exchange between the city and metropolis to formulate common objectives and have a benchmark for the coherence of the plans. The Greater Paris metropolis offers a platform for formulating climate policy and enables inter-municipal coordination through its governance institutions, the metropolitan council, and the metropolitan office. The metropolitan council consists of elected representatives. The city of Paris is strongly represented. Thus, when a decision is taken at the metropolitan level, the elected representatives of Paris are inevitably considered. In addition to these general political instruments, there are technical committees on various topics. Also worth mentioning are the steering committees, which combine political and technical aspects.

Challenges to a Cross-cutting Climate Policy: Institutional Capacity, Coordination, and Wider Participation

The cross-cutting character of climate policy appears to require multilayered policy processes to coordinate and integrate policy across multiple politico-administrative levels. The challenges faced by both cities in their urban climate strategy development seem to illustrate this contention. However, the attempted shifts toward decentralization and greater coordination in both cities conflict with pre-existing institutional characteristics. Berlin’s two-tiered administration, with distributed functional responsibilities, requires the inclusion of both administrative levels in climate strategy formulation to minimize multi-level conflicts in the implementation of the strategies. However, in the urban climate policy process, this occurred only in a limited manner due to, among other factors, insufficient administrative capacity hindering cooperation between Senate and districts. The department responsible for the BEK at the city level was created shortly after the strategy was launched for the first time and faced difficulties in terms of staffing in its initial stages. This was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, whose effects in 2020 further difficulted staffing, communication, and the establishment of processes in the department. At the same time, climate managers at the district level must deal with demands from both district and city levels with scarce resources. In Paris, the involvement of the arrondissements is a long process embedded in a wider push toward more territorialization beginning with the Paris Proximity Act that, according to interview partners, requires a culture change within the involved administrative units to be successful. Most arrondissements also face issues linked to administrative capacity as they do not have dedicated climate managers but ad hoc contact persons with bundled responsibilities for different projects. Hence, the distribution of functional responsibilities at the city level and the lack of personnel capacity at the sub-municipal level pose a barrier to coordination.

In terms of horizontal intergovernmental relations, the Greater Paris metropolis shares significant responsibilities for coordinating climate policy across its member municipalities, which in turn have representation rights. No such governance arrangement is present in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. A tentative explanation for this difference can be linked to the institutional framework of both countries. In France, the Paris metropolitan project was formulated at the central national level and the National Assembly passed a law creating the Greater Paris metropolis in 2016. In contrast, in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, the creation of such a governance arrangement would require the bilateral agreement of both states. It can be hypothesized that federal systems present additional challenges to horizontal cooperation between administrative units compared to unitary systems in climate policy. In addition to navigating more complex legal environments, the coordination overheads of two Land administrations, plus 12 Bezirke in Berlin and a series of municipalities in Brandenburg, might surpass that of the municipalities in the Greater Paris metropolis.

A third challenge is linked to the proliferation of actors involved in climate policy and the corresponding increase in complexity of the policy field. Both Berlin and Paris face pressures to account to other administrative units horizontally and vertically, but policy-makers also face growing pressures to include citizens and the scientific community in order to increase the legitimacy, social acceptance, and effectiveness of their policies. Indeed, the two cities have taken steps to involve citizen participation in urban climate strategies through initiatives such as awareness raising and citizen conferences in the arrondissements or Berlin’s Climate Citizens’ Assembly, launched in 2022. However, it remains unclear to what extent the recommendations from these non-binding consultations formats are incorporated as inputs in the strategy development process. Additionally, scientific actors have had important roles. For instance, the city of Berlin delegates a significant portion of strategy formulation in a scientific consortium. In parallel to these government-organized consultation formats, local climate demands have gained significant traction in the city of Berlin in the 2022–2023 period, as evidenced in the Berlin 2030 Climate Neutral referendum and the street blockades of Last Generation. This configures a scenario where the city administrations remain the dominant actors structuring climate policy, but it is in their interest to account for a different and growing number of stakeholders. In this context, intergovernmental rights of consultation and participation might compete against the demands of other groups for the limited administrative capacity of the center in a contested policy field such as climate mitigation and adaptation.

Conclusion: Centralized, Conflicted, and Multilayered Policy Processes in Urban Climate Policy

This chapter presented a comparative study of the development and implementation of urban climate strategies in Berlin and Paris. Despite the different institutional contexts, both cities have followed a similar trajectory in regard to their urban climate strategies. After an initial phase of strategy formulation centralized at the city level and a conflicted implementation in Berlin, both cities have attempted more cooperative intergovernmental approaches to climate policy to improve policy implementation. The findings are consistent with Bergström et al. (2022), which highlight that centralized approaches to intergovernmental relations are at risk of becoming generally inflexible, with insufficient operational knowledge and insufficient consultation of lower levels. Especially when, as is the case in Berlin, there is a mismatch between the distribution of functional responsibilities across administrative levels and the centralized efforts to steer the policy process. Overly centralized processes can lower the incentives for the sub-municipal level to comply with stipulations from higher levels as feedback flows to the central level are blocked, preventing the alignment of policy objectives and a diminished understanding of operational issues. The city of Berlin serves as an example in this context, as it provided funds to develop climate policy at the district level. However, it encountered implementation issues related to administrative capacity, in particular insufficient personnel, which presented challenges in utilizing these resources. Additionally, city objectives were not necessarily aligned with the interests of sub-municipal politicians and administrators. This can result in conflicted intergovernmental relations, as observable in this case by the low execution of the budget in Berlin. Both cities seem to have acknowledged the pitfalls of centralized strategy formulation and aim at strengthening coordination in the re-formulation process of their urban climate strategies. Paris, furthermore, decentralized certain functions to its sub-municipal level in the context of a wider push for territorialization amidst a perceived lack of effectiveness and dwindling trust in state institutions on behalf of citizens. Although it must be noted, the institutional framework of Paris is still much more centralized than that of Berlin. Multilayered approaches have the potential to improve policy response in future stages of urban climate strategy implementation, but this merits further research.

This chapter additionally discussed the horizontal dimension of intergovernmental relations. Both cities present different configurations. Berlin follows a decoupled approach to climate policy where coordination with the surrounding state of Brandenburg is limited to a handful of concrete policy areas but without a comprehensive metropolitan or regional approach to climate adaptation and mitigation, whereas Paris, especially after the creation of the metropolis of Greater Paris and the Metropolitan Climate, Air and Energy Plan, cooperates more intensely with its surrounding region. It can be hypothesized that unitary systems face less complex paths for the creation of inter-municipal governance arrangements for climate adaptation and mitigation as decisions can be enforced in a more top-down manner compared to federal systems, which require the political will of a large set of actors at the state and municipal level. Furthermore, the chapter identified a lack of personnel capacity at both the city and district levels in Berlin due to insufficient staffing funds for climate managers and difficulties in establishing processes in newly created departments as influencing factors in the conflicted implementation phase of the urban climate strategy. Parisian arrondissements also face similar personnel issues, in addition to the uncertainty regarding the actual influence the Paris Proximity Act will have on climate policy consultation at the sub-municipal level. Finally, challenges to a cross-cutting climate policy from an intergovernmental relations perspective were analyzed. The case studies show that changes to prevailing structures in intergovernmental relations face significant institutional resistance on multiple dimensions, such as administrative culture, capacity in the field of climate management and politico-administrative institutional changes. City administrations increasingly face demands from civil society, business, and citizens to be more involved in decision-making processes. The proliferation of actors with rights of participation in combination with pressures on behalf of other administrative units may overload city administrations, particularly those with limited capacities for climate action. This can lead to the outsourcing of responsibility and coordination, or to fragmentation of the climate response across different interest groups within the administration. However, it is also important to consider how rights of participation are necessary to achieve the global goals of climate mitigation and adaptation.

The study focused on the intergovernmental dimension of urban climate governance under the conviction that a better understanding of the interplay between institutional setting and intergovernmental relations can lead to a more effective distribution of participation rights across key actors. Thus, improving local formulation and implementation of climate policy and aiding cities in their pioneering role in the fight against climate change. It must be noted however, that intergovernmental relations, particularly in crisis contexts, do not exist in a vacuum but are instead part of broader governance processes. The tensions surrounding rights of participation and obligations in climate policy formulation processes go beyond administrative units and encompass civil society, business, and citizens at large. Decision-makers must navigate complex scenarios between centralization, decentralization, coordination, and decoupling in intergovernmental relations, while also addressing demands for rights of participation from other groups in contexts of limited resources. The struggles for rights of consultation and participation can be observed in initiatives such as citizen conferences in the arrondissements or Berlin’s Climate Citizens’ Assembly, as well as the actions of activist groups such as Klimaneustart Berlin, the organization behind the Berlin 2030 Climate Neutral referendum. The involvement of actors, and the question who participates, is linked to normative goals such as effectiveness, legitimacy, and the social acceptance of measures. Understanding how IGR is linked to broader citizen, civil society, and business rights of participation is a task that should take place in further research.