The diffusion of climate policies among German municipalities

Abstract The German government established a funding scheme for local climate policy in 2008. The translation of this programme into climate action varies between municipalities. This article studies the drivers and barriers for the diffusion of the programme among German municipalities. A major aim is to disentangle the diffusion effects across different steps within the policy cycle by employing Event History Analysis and spatial panel autoregressive models. Geographical proximity, party channels and transnational city networks are predictors of the diffusion process. Differences in diffusion effects between policy adoption and substantial policy output indicate that emulation as well as learning influence policy activity. Furthermore, increasing deployment of solar photovoltaic systems in neighbouring municipalities is associated with an intensification of climate policy in the focal municipality. The absence of similar effects for other renewable energy technologies hints at the “conditional nature” of policy learning with respect to the policy-makers’ vote- and policy-seeking behaviour.