Multilevel Climate Governance In Europe: Are Cities Undermining Nation-States Role In Climate Policy?

Global environmental problems are increasingly showing the nation-states lack of will, as well as their inability, to take the path of sustainability. Climate change is probably the best example of the downsizing role of the nation-state in the pursuing and diffusion of environmental policies and actions. That’s the case in Europe, where the European Commission is becoming a global leader in this field, and, at the same time, an increasing number of cities and regions are getting involved in climate governance. Furthermore, climate initiatives like Covenant of Mayors are showing how sub-nationals and supranational institutions interact with each other by circumventing national governments. Starting from these considerations, this paper presents an empirical study on the involvement of Italian cities in the Covenant of Mayors. Taking a multi-level governance perspective, its aim is to understand the role of the nation-state with respect to that of a supranational institution like the European Commission. Our results show that the inaction of the Italian government in the past years related to environmental and climate issues, as well the proactive role of the European Commission, explain the massive participation of Italian cities in the Covenant of Mayors. The Italian case is paradigmatic, to the extent that of 5000 signatories of the Covenant, half of them are Italian. However, even if the role of Italian cities in climate and energy sectors is shifting from that of policy-takers to that of policy-makers, and that what it means to be the “state” is being reconfigured and contested, the nation-state remains a key actor, notably with respect to national policies that can foster and strengthen local and global climate actions. Nation-states scope and powers remain crucial in climate policy, and the day when local institutions take their place in the environmental domain still seems distant.