Constructing legitimacy for climate change planning: A study of local government in Denmark

Global Environmental Change 24 (2014) 203–212

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Global Environmental Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha

Constructing legitimacy for climate change planning: A study of local government in Denmark Matthew Cashmore a, Anja Wejs b,* a b

Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, DK-2450 Copenhagen, Denmark Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Skibbrogade 5, DK-9000 Aalborg, Denmark

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 24 January 2013 Received in revised form 23 September 2013 Accepted 29 September 2013

Existing research on climate change planning has tended to adopt an overly simplistic approach to analyzing how agency and structure mediate local governments’ responses to climate change. This research contributes to scientific capacity to predict and explain patterns of climate change planning by focusing on the concept of legitimacy and examining its influence upon the dialectic between structure and agency. A conceptual framework foregrounding legitimacy is developed based upon new institutional theory. An initiative to institutionalize climate change planning in Aarhus Municipality, Denmark, is used as a case study to validate four propositions derived from existing research but filtered through the conceptual framework. Validation of the propositions evidences a hierarchy in the salience of different forms of legitimacy, with moral and ethical arguments for undertaking climate change planning having limited social traction in Denmark in the absence of significant extreme climatic events. The analysis also generates thicker, more nuanced explanations for real-world patterns of climate change planning. The findings thereby provide a corrective to a number of assertions made in the literature, notably in relation to the role of agency in the institutionalization of climate change planning. ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Climate change planning Legitimacy Local government New institutional theory Social change

1. Introduction Within the literature, climate change mitigation and adaptation at the local level is increasingly portrayed as a new, discrete field of spatial planning research and practice (Bassett and Shandas, 2010; Measham et al., 2011; Meyer et al., 2010; Wheeler, 2008). Hurlimann and March (2012, p. 480) describe spatial planning as ‘‘a way of thinking and acting across spatial, temporal and governance scales while understanding and acting on local circumstances and particularities’’. Spatial planning is recognized to have a potentially critical role to play in addressing climate change, particularly for adaptation given its ‘place bound’ nature (McDonald, 2011; Wilson, 2006). The emergence and rapid proliferation of climate change planning practice, as a form of spatial planning, has made local government a principal actor in addressing both the causes and consequences of climate change. A division is sometimes maintained in research and practice between planning for mitigation and adaptation (Hurlimann and March, 2012). This is reflected, for example, in the practice of producing separate plans for mitigation and adaptation activities. This division is a consequence of historical developments, but is also rationalized on the basis that mitigation and adaptation

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 21737537. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (A. Wejs). 0959-3780/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.09.019

involve greatly differing temporal and spatial scales (Swart and Raes, 2007). Nevertheless, increasing attention has recently been given to the interrelations between mitigation and adaptation, for both planning theory and practice (Davoudi et al., 2009; Swart and Raes, 2007). Such work has emphasized the potential for realizing synergistic outcomes and avoiding undersirable trade-offs through the integrated consideration of mitigation and adaptation, at least in certain spatial planning contexts. In this article climate change planning is therefore interpreted as encompassing both mitigation and adaptation for we view a rigid dichotomy between these two concepts as practically unhelpful and theoretically unwarranted. Whilst local government is at the vanguard of climate change planning, the existence of a multiplicity of practical barriers to developing co-ordinated and comprehensive plans and securing their subsequent implementation is well documented. Climate change planning constitutes an example par excellence of the importance, and conversely the challenges, of horizontal and vertical co-ordination (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2006; Bulkeley, 2010; Kern and Alber, 2009). Co-ordination is posited to be essential if undesirable trade-offs are to be avoided and potential synergies exploited (Barker et al., 2007; Biesbroek et al., 2009; Kok and de Coninck, 2007; Larsen et al., 2012), but as Peters (2010, p. 42) concludes, ‘‘[g]overnments have had difficulties in coordinating their activities [for] as long as there have been governments’’. Various researchers have emphasized the significance of formal and informal institutional rules, such as regulatory structures,

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property rights and socio-cultural norms, as barriers to coordinated climate change planning (e.g. Adger et al., 2005; Næss et al., 2005). It has also been observed that within local government climate change expertise often remains concentrated in environmental departments, which tend to be somewhat marginalized within the organizational hierarchy of local government, plus have limited capacity to implement planning policy (Kern and Alber, 2009). Resource limitations may also constrain climate change planning activities (e.g. Bulkeley and Kern, 2006; Holgate, 2007). This article builds on previous research on the governance of climate change (e.g. Bulkeley and Kern, 2006; Jordan et al., 2012) through a detailed examination of the situated institutionalization of this emerging field in local government. The research focuses, in particular, on the issue of legitimacy and explores its relevance to understanding societal change drawing on a perspective based in new institutional theory. Empirically, we study how the construction of legitimacy for climate change planning affects and is affected by the interplay between structure and agency, and how this in turn affects patterns of its institutionalization. The concept of legitimacy is variously interpreted within the literature; indeed, a frequent problem in research on this subject is that how legitimacy is understood is not adequately explicated (Parkinson, 2003). Adger et al. (2005, p. 83) suggest that in relation to decision making, legitimacy concerns, ‘‘the extent to which decisions are acceptable to participants and non-participants’’, noting also that ‘‘[l]egitimacy can be gained as well as compromised through the evolution of [climate change] adaptation strategies’’. In this research we draw on a broader definition in which legitimacy is interpreted as, ‘‘a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’’ (Suchman, 2005, p. 574). We therefore critically examine how climate change planning is constructed as desirable, proper or appropriate (i.e. legitimized) in a particular context. The research is based on a premise that in local government, where multiple issues compete for attention, co-ordination is typically problematic and resources are limited, legitimacy is a prerequisite for climate change planning to be prioritized and for plans to be acted upon. Furthermore, legitimacy is a particularly critical issue for climate change planning given that oftentimes there are few or no regulatory requirements for it to take place. In practical terms, this means that if climate change planning is not perceived as legitimate, it is unlikely that it will be prioritized, although we note that legitimacy on its own might not be sufficient to guarantee action. There is hence likely to be a ‘legitimacy gap’ – a deficit that must be actively bridged through actions to create or enhance legitimacy – if it is to be prioritized (Connelly et al., 2006). Empirically, the research focuses on Denmark, a Scandinavian country in the northern part of Europe. Denmark has experienced various impacts thought to be attributable in part to climate change (Olesen et al., 2012). Denmark was also the geographical centre for recent discussions on international climate policy, most importantly the COP 15 in December 2009, which undoubtedly raised the profile of the issue nationally. Within this context, 74 out of 98 Danish local government organizations have made voluntary commitments to reduce carbon emissions (Danish Society for Nature Conservation, 2012), and more than 40 have produced publicly accessible climate change plans (Wejs, 2013). In this research we focus on a single local government organization, Aarhus municipality in Jutland. Having introduced the main aim of the article, the remainder unfolds as follows. Firstly, a conceptual framework for legitimacy is developed based upon a new institutional theoretical perspective. Secondly, the research design and methodology are succinctly described. As part of this, four propositions developed jointly from

the research literature and the conceptual framework are outlined. Thirdly, the propositions are empirically tested using data from the Aarhus case. The article concludes with a discussion of the main contributions of this research. 2. Theoretical and conceptual positioning 2.1. Legitimacy for institutional change This research is based on the assumption that the waxing and waning of the legitimacy of extant institutions, and attempts to construct legitimacy for either new institutions or the reinterpretation of existing ones, are important in explaining patterns of climate change planning in local government. Our theoretical approach to this subject is grounded in new institutional theory, wherein an institution is interpreted as, ‘‘organized patterns of socially constructed norms and roles, and socially prescribed behaviours expected of those roles, which are created and recreated over time’’ (Goodin, 1996, p. 19). As this definition implies, new institutionalism is concerned with the duality of institutions: that is, that they are, at one and the same time, constitutive of social order and social products (Lowdes, 2002; Sewell, 1992). The concept of legitimacy is important to new institutional theory because an institution (new or extant) must be viewed as legitimate if it is to be reproduced (Connelly et al., 2006; Human and Provan, 2000), other than where violence or physical coercion is involved. The process whereby a social actor willingly reproduces an institution is referred to as ‘confirm structuring’ by Haugaard (2003). Maintenance of the status quo in institutional terms is premised on actors continuing to confirm structure extant institutions, in part because either they are seen as legitimate or their legitimacy is taken for granted. Our interpretation of new institutionalism is based on a belief that structure and agency are co-produced and hence, ‘‘[institutional] change never starts because it never stops’’ (Weick and Quinn, 1999). The institutionalization of climate change planning is considered to involve changes in the structural status quo in which it acquires formal or informal rule like properties. Institutionalization of climate change planning is hence analogous to institutional change in the context of this research. Mahoney and Thelen (2010) note that institutional change occurs not only as a consequence of the introduction of new rules. Change can be a consequence of the revised enactment of an existing institution in the ‘soft spaces’ that exist between institutions and their interpretation and enforcement. The discretion held by actors in the interpretation and implementation of an institution, therefore, is an important source of institutional mutability. Scott (2008) identifies a number of sources from which an institution may derive legitimacy under his tripartite categorization of ‘pillars’ of new institutionalism (see Table 1). We use Scott’s three pillars (regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive) in this research as the basis for categorizing institutions and legitimacy. A pillar under Scott’s framework is thus analogous to a category of institutions, or the formal or informal rules guiding action in a particular context. Each category of institutions is founded upon a particular form of legitimacy. Under the regulatory pillar, legitimacy is related to a belief in following explicit rules, notably the rule of law (Scott et al., 2000). The official or legal status of an institution combined with the threat of sanctions if it is not confirm structured are constitutive of legitimacy in such circumstances. As previously mentioned, climate change planning oftentimes is conducted voluntarily and so legitimacy related to regulatory institutions would be expected to be less important than is the case for many other fields of spatial planning where practices are more extensively codified. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that legitimacy for new practices

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Table 1 Scott’s pillars of new institutionalism. Regulative pillar

Normative pillar

Cultural-cognitive pillar

Basis of compliance

Expedience

Social obligation

Basis of order Mechanisms Logic Indicators

Regulative rules Coercive Instrumentality Rules Laws Sanctions Fear, guilt/innocence Legally sanctioned

Binding expectations Normative Appropriateness Certification Accreditation

Taken for grantedness Shared understanding Constitutive schema Mimetic Orthodoxy Common beliefs Shared logics of actions Isomorphism Certainty/confusion Comprehensible Recognizable Culturally supported

Affect Basis of legitimacy

Shame/honor Morally governed

Adapted from Scott (2008).

may be derived from aligning them with existing regulatory requirements (c.f. Hargadon and Douglas, 2001; Maguire et al., 2004). Under the normative pillar, legitimacy is founded upon a belief in the appropriateness of certain societal norms, such as not causing harm to sentient beings, and normative institutions are reproduced through a perceived social obligation or contract. Normative institutions might appear of peripheral relevance to climate change planning, but planning is for many practitioners an acutely political and moral activity. Thus, climate change planning might conceivably draw legitimacy from social obligations to, for example, protect vulnerable members of society (e.g. the poor or infirm) and future generations. Finally, the basis of legitimacy under the cultural-cognitive pillar is the orthodoxy of an institution within a particular organizational, political or cultural setting. Institutions are constituted as taken for granted codes of conduct, cultural practices, and embedded in ways of knowing, with the consequence that their legitimacy tends to go unquestioned under routine circumstances (Haugaard, 2003). This could include, for example, contemporary expectations that democratic governance involves transparency, accountability and participation (Ba¨ckstrand, 2006; Kronsell, 2013). Cultural-cognitive institutions are essentially unconsciously reproduced for as long as their legitimacy remains beyond question. 2.2. Agency and institutionalization How might agency be brought to bear on bridging what we have described as a legitimacy gap in the institutionalization of climate change planning? One dimension of agency that has attracted particular research attention in new institutionalism is the notion of institutional entrepreneurship (Garud et al., 2007). This is a broad concept used to refer to the ‘‘activities of actors who have an interest in particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones’’ (Maguire et al., 2004). Entrepreneurs are said to ‘‘seek ways to do things which until now have been impossible. They cast around for elements of institutions that they could recombine in unusual

ways at opportune moments in order to produce change’’ (Crouch, 2005, p. 3). Research has indicated that institutional entrepreneurs may play a key role in the institutionalization of climate change planning (e.g. Bulkeley, 2010; Castan Broto and Bulkeley, 2013; Gustavsson et al., 2009; Wejs, 2013). Yet as typically employed in research, the concept of entrepreneurialism could encompass many expressions of agency. The literature has had little to say about precisely what makes an expression of agency entrepreneurial and vice versa. In response to this shortcoming, we employ a different approach to describe and categorize expressions of agency that may be brought to bear on bridging the legitimacy gap. The typology used is derived in part upon a critical examination of the way in which the term institutional entrepreneurship has been used previously. Firstly, what appears to be important in definitions of entrepreneurialism is the idea that agents have a strong motivation for, or commitment to, initiating institutional reform. This is reflected, for example, by Huitema and Meijerink (2010) in their suggestion that entrepreneurs ‘‘work hard to develop and sell alternative approaches’’ or DiMaggio’s (1988, p. 14) assertion that entrepreneurs are pursuing ‘‘interests that they value highly’’. We use the term ‘driver’ in our conceptualization to encapsulate the idea that motivation is important in understanding expressions of agency, particularly where theses are intended to alter the institutional status quo. Secondly, the term entrepreneur implies that the actors concerned employ particular approaches or strategies to change the institutional status quo; there is something particular that makes an action entrepreneurial. Hence, the second category in our classification of expressions of agency is strategy. Drawing upon the work of Mahoney and Thelen (2010), four strategies employed by actors are delineated: insurrectionist, symbiotic, subversive and opportunistic. The characteristics of each of these four strategies are summarized in Table 2. The selection of a particular strategy may be either or both a function of: (a) the size of the legitimacy gap and the forms of legitimacy upon which an actor can draw; or, (b) the type of legitimacy they want to construct (i.e. regulative, normative, or cultural-cognitive).

Table 2 Expressions of agency. Strategy

Seeks to preserve institution

Follows rules of institution

Allies with institutional supporters

Allies with institutional challengers

Insurrectionary Symbiotic Subversive Opportunistic

No Yes No Yes/No

No No Yes Yes/No

No Yes No Yes/No

Yes No No Yes/No

Adapted from Mahoney and Thelen (2010).

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Thirdly, some authors have linked entrepreneurialism to the ability of actors to access or mobilize the resources needed to achieve institutional reform (e.g. Garud et al., 2007; Termeer et al., 2012). This highlights the importance of resources in explaining institutional mutability. Resources can be understood as phenomena that serve as a source of power in social interactions by providing actors with the, ‘‘capabilities of making things happen’’ (Giddens, 1981, p. 170). They include human resources (e.g. knowledge, strength, means of propagating resources, etc.) and non-human resources (e.g. land, capital, IT, legislation, etc.) (Sewell, 1992). The third category in our classification of expressions of agency is therefore resources. 2.3. A conceptual framework for legitimacy and its role in institutional change Fig. 1 summarizes the conceptual framework for legitimacy and its role in institutional change used in this research. As previously discussed, the framework divides structures and legitimacy into three types (regulative, normative and cultural cognitive) and classifies expressions of agency by drivers, strategy and resources. It emphasizes our belief that institutional change is a continuous process through the inclusion of a temporal dimension in the framework (i.e. T1, T2, etc.). Four propositions were established for empirical validation as a mechanism to test the explanatory power of the conceptual framework, in part by reevaluating the findings of previous research. The propositions focus on various aspects of our conceptual framework: proposition 1 addresses the salience of different categories of legitimacy; propositions 2 and 3 deal with questions of strategy and resources, respectively, in relation to

linkages between agency and legitimacy; and proposition 4 concerns the macro context within which discourses on legitimacy are situated. The propositions and their theoretical and empirical underpinnings are now succinctly described. Proposition 1. In the absence of regulative legitimacy for undertaking climate change planning, recourse to normative legitimacy is key to institutionalizing climate change planning. Schouten and Glasbergen (2011) suggest that moral justification (which can be equated to normative legitimacy in our conceptual framework) is critical to legitimization processes. The moral and ethical dimensions of climate change are broad ranging (reflecting far more than simply an environmental ethic (Howell, 2013)) and far reaching (e.g. in terms of potential impacts on vulnerable societies). It might be assumed, therefore, that normative legitimacy would be central to the institutionalization of climate change planning in situations where there is no regulatory requirement to undertake it. Proposition 2. Patterns of institutionalization of climate change planning are a function of the relative ease with which legitimacy can be constructed amongst particular actor groupings. Mahoney and Thelen (2010) argue that an actor’s strategy for promoting institutional reform is affected by two main variables: the existence of veto rights, and space for discretion in implementation and enforcement of an institution. In local government, responsibility for planning is often divested amongst multiple departments. Hence, it is to be expected that strong veto rights exist over the adoption and implementation of nonregulative institutions. The same argument applies, although for

Fig. 1. Conceptual framework for legitimacy and its role in institutional change.

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different reasons, to external actors. This is presumably the reason why so much research has emphasized the importance of a strong top management mandate or ‘visionary leadership’ to processes of social and organizational change. Collaborative strategies for bridging the legitimacy gap (i.e. symbiotic and some opportunistic strategies under the classification we employ) would be expected to predominate where strong veto rights exist. It follows that patterns of climate change planning institutionalization might be a function of the relative ease with which legitimacy can be built amongst different actor coalitions. We use the terminology ‘patterns of institutionalization’ to encompass variations in both the actor groupings who institutionalize climate change planning and the specific characteristics of the conception of climate change planning institutionalized. The latter is important to consider in part because the interests of those actors for whom the legitimacy gap can be bridged will influence climate change planning practices; that is to say that bridging the legitimacy gap will involve accommodating, to at least some degree, the cultural-cognitive and regulative institutions of a particular actor grouping. Proposition 3. National and international networks are an important resource used by actors to construct legitimacy for the institutionalization of climate change planning. It has been observed elsewhere that local government organizations seeking to address climate change frequently join external, often transnational, networks, such as the global Local Governments for Sustainability, the European Covenant of Mayors and the USA’s Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (e.g. Anguelovski and Carmin, 2011; Betsill and Bulkeley, 2006; Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005; Bulkeley, 2010; Gustavsson et al., 2009). Membership of such network could be symbolically significant for constructing legitimacy, but they also constitute a resource which actors can draw upon in attempting to construct legitimacy for the institutionalization of climate change planning. They may facilitate access to, amongst other things: knowledge (e.g. on international state-of-the-art practices), a community of like minded individuals to draw inspiration and support from, or sources of funding. Previous research suggests that the resource value of national and international networks is important in the institutionalization of climate change planning. Proposition 4. Power ultimately determines the context for legitimacy Mahoney and Thelen posit a key role for political context in determining strategies pursued by actors pursuing institutional change. The climate change planning literature has also noted the significance of political context in institutionalization processes. For example, researchers have commented upon the significance of the positioning of those responsible for institutionalizing climate change planning within the organizational structure and the importance of various types of leadership (e.g. Dannevig et al., 2013; Kern and Alber, 2009). At a higher level of abstraction, the analysis of such authors suggests that it is power which determines the political contexts within which legitimacy is built and contested. We interpret power as a productive phenomenon; rather than being intrinsically good or bad, power is conceptualized as capillary and facilitative (Foucault, 1995). Veto rights, space for discretion, leadership, access to resources, etc. are thus interpreted primarily as functions of power. Under this conception, power both directly and indirectly influences the presence or otherwise of legitimacy gaps, the types of legitimacy which are salient, the ways in which a legitimacy gap can be bridged, and so forth. It is postulated, therefore, that power might be the ultimate determinant of the context for legitimacy.

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3. Research design and methodology The research is based on a case study research design utilizing a single case, Aarhus municipality located in mid-Jutland, Denmark. Aarhus municipality is situated on the eastern coast of Jutland and comprises of Denmark’s second largest urban conglomeration, Aarhus city, and its surrounding area. Aarhus municipality was purposefully selected based on an initial broad review of the characteristics of Danish municipalities and a subsequent more detailed review of climate change planning activities in eight municipalities. Aarhus municipality was believed to represent an enlightening case through which to explore legitimacy for its governmental form, the magistrate regime, is the most bureaucratic used in Denmark and arguably the most challenging from the perspective of cross-departmental policy integration and co-ordination. The magistrate regime is a form of government in which political minorities are ensured political influence, and since 1998 Aarhus is the only municipality in Denmark that fully uses this system. The City Council of the municipality (the principal decision making body for the municipality) consists of the Mayor and five political aldermen who are drawn from different political parties and wings. Each alderman has authority over an organizational sector consisting of multiple departments, and they can have a strong influence on policy proposals brought to the City Council. Aarhus is also an interesting case because historically it has not had a strong focus on sustainable development, but in 2007 it introduced a headline target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. In this sense, climate change planning represents a new field of activity for this organization. Aarhus municipality was thus deemed to represent what Flyvbjerg (2006) describes as an ‘extreme’ or ‘deviant’ case within the Danish context, or one which can be interpreted more generally as a potentially rich source of information given that it is atypical in certain respects. The empirical work was initiated in August 2008 when one of the authors began a placement within the Department of Nature and Environment at Aarhus municipality as part of a pilot study. As an observer between 5 and 37 h per week during the first year of climate change planning activity, this research has gained fruitful insights and knowledge on the institutionalization of climate change planning. The research involved two linked methods of data collection: document study and semi-structured interviews. The document study involved an examination of the current (2009) spatial plan for Aarhus municipality, the affiliated strategic environmental assessment, and three climate change plans (covering the periods 2008–2009, 2010–2011, and 2012–2015). The document study also drew upon minutes of meetings held during the process of developing the 2009 spatial plan. The minutes covered meetings held by three groups involved with the formulation of the spatial plan: the project group for the spatial plan, the steering committee for the spatial plan, and the municipal Technical Committee which is one of seven standing committees in Aarhus municipality. The minutes were analyzed using coding themes derived from the conceptual framework. The document study principally provided a basis for structuring the interviews. 20 semi-structured interviews (including five follow-up interviews) were carried out to provide rich data on how legitimacy affected climate change planning and institutionalization processes (Table 3). The interviewees were experienced, and typically high ranking, staff from across a broad range of departments in the municipal bureaucracy. The interview protocol covered three principal topics: the characteristics of organizational culture and subcultures; cross sectoral collaboration and co-ordination within the organization on planning issues; and experiences of, and engagement with, climate change planning activities within the municipality. The interviews were undertaken between 2011 and

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208 Table 3 Interviewees and their affiliations. Magistrate

Departmental affiliation

No. of interviewees

Technique and environment

Planning and built environment Nature and environment Climate secretariat The management secretariat Planning and built environment Transport and roads

3 2 2 2 1 1

The Mayor’s office

Business Budgets and accounts Finance

2 1 1

2012. The interviews were conducted in either Danish or English, and all quotes used in this article were sent to the interviewees for verification. One interviewee withdrew permission for their interview data to be used at that stage. 4. Results and analysis The results and analysis section commences with a concise summary of the history of climate change planning in Aarhus municipality between 2007 and 2012, and the pattern of climate change planning institutionalization achieved during this time. This provides the empirical grounding for the subsequent analysis of the four propositions. 4.1. An historical overview of climate change planning in Aarhus municipality A number of Danish municipalities made commitments to climate change planning in the run up to COP 15 taking place in Copenhagen in December 2009. Aarhus municipality was one of these; in 2007 its City Council announced a policy of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. This was perceived by the interviewees to constitute an institutional ambition or vision rather than a formal institution to be adhered to, not least because many interviewees were acutely aware of the profound challenges in achieving carbon neutrality. Nevertheless, this policy commitment was essentially the starting point for co-ordinated climate change planning within the municipal organization. The Department of Nature and Environment was charged with operationalizing the policy of carbon neutrality and external consultants were initially appointed to lead the work. A full time, internal project manager was employed relatively soon after, in spring 2008, and in 2010 a Climate Secretariat was formed within the Department to spearhead climate change planning. By 2012, the Climate Secretariat had grown to encompass six full time positions (City of Aarhus, 2012). It was decided by the political elite, based on the advice they received, that the initial climate change planning tasks should comprise of mapping carbon emissions in the municipality and the production of a climate change plan. The climate change plan, which was the first of three that have now been produced, was published in 2009. It is stated in the plan that, ‘‘[a]n important direction of the first generation of the climate plan is to show the possibilities for action that the City Council has in regards to the goal of carbon neutrality in 2030’’ (A˚rhus Kommune, 2008, p. 3, translated) The primary audience for this plan was then the political elite within the municipal organization. The plan had an operational lifespan of two years. A second climate change plan was published in 2010. Although it followed a similar approach and style to the first plan, it had a less inward looking focus; corporate branding of the report and the launch of a climate change planning website to coincide with the

plan’s publication were indicative of an increasing focus upon communication with external stakeholders. The third and most recent climate change plan was published in 2012 and is intended primarily as a vehicle for external communication. It is stated that, ‘‘[t]he main focus in the climate change plan is on the external companies and citizens, which together account for 75% of the city’s CO2 emissions’’ (City of Aarhus, 2012, p. 2). Extensive emphasis is placed in the plan on concrete projects that contribute to the policy goal of carbon neutrality. The third plan also has a longer operational life-span than the previous two; four years, the same time frame as for various important municipal plans, notably the spatial plan. The two year life span for the first two climate change plans was felt to be too short and unnecessarily onerous a planning cycle (Interviewees #15), but the adoption of a longer planning cycle also reflects increased confidence about the commitment of the political elite to climate change planning. The description of the plans illustrates that the focus of climate change planning activity has shifted strongly over time towards external stakeholders. Central to this external purview is a network established by the Climate Secretariat. The network currently involves some 32 local businesses, including businesses from the clean technology sector (e.g. renewable energy, and water and energy efficiency), engineering consultancies, Aarhus University, a bank, and a housing association (City of Aarhus, 2012) (Interviewee #14). Members of the network have signed partnership agreements that commit them to certain activities, including participating in innovation projects and minimizing their energy consumption (City of Aarhus, 2012). Innovation projects undertaken under the auspices of this network include developing market opportunities for local businesses in China, investigating ways to reduce traffic congestion and improve the efficiency of goods transportation, and dissemination of advice on ‘climatefriendly’ procurement practices. Some level of success thus appears to have been achieved in bridging the legitimacy gap amongst external, and mainly commercial, actors. In comparison, very limited progress has been made in bridging the legitimacy gap within the municipal organization. Whilst the profile of climate change has been raised internally through work associated with the policy of carbon neutrality, institutionalization in spatial planning was seen to be dependent on the revision of national regulations (Interviewee #4, #10). In their absence, the legitimacy and institutionalization of climate change planning were perceived by certain interviewees to be contingent upon the development of a shared organizational culture (Interviewee #10, #14, #15). The Climate Secretariat has at times taken an approach that sits uncomfortably with the existing organizational culture and this has created tensions internally. For example, frustration was expressed that the Climate Secretariat were insensitive to, if not ignorant of, the regulatory framework for spatial planning and this created unrealistic expectations amongst their network: ‘‘The guys in the Climate Secretariat are not urban planners, they are more like entrepreneurs. They have, in a way, a freer mandate and try to make things happen. That is basically OK, but since I am a planner and have to operate inside the Planning Act, which demands a more holistic perspective, I experience conflicts that in the long run can create misunderstandings and broken dreams and projects. I would like them to relate more to the existing planning framework before they make partnerships with private companies and they commit themselves, and actually all of us, to specific programs. There could be closer cooperation at an earlier stage’’ (Interviewee #4). It was also suggested that initially a fairly authoritarian approach was taken by those seeking to institutionalize climate change planning when they did not have organizational authority

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to do so (Interviewee #1, #10). Within this context, it is notable that the Climate Secretariat divested itself of responsibility for institutionalizing climate change planning internally within the municipal organization with the publication of the 2012 climate plan. Its operational focus is now solely climate change planning activities involving external actors. 4.2. Analysis of the four propositions Proposition 1. In the absence of regulative legitimacy for undertaking climate change planning, recourse to normative legitimacy is the key mechanism for institutionalizing climate change planning A notable finding of this research is that in the Climate Secretariat’s efforts to build legitimacy for the institutionalization of climate change planning, normative imperatives have not been a significant discussion point. When the municipality set itself a goal of becoming carbon neutral it was portrayed as being driven by an environmental ethic; this would seem to imply normative legitimacy would be central to bridging the legitimacy gap. Yet our analysis shows that in practice efforts to construct legitimacy for climate change planning focused primarily on cultural-cognitive legitimacy. For example, the Climate Secretariat has sought to construct legitimacy amongst the political elite by formulating climate change planning as important for the image of the municipality, nationally and internationally: ‘‘The results of these projects [in the third climate plan] must be branded so that foreign companies, employees, researchers and students learn about and perceive Aarhus as a leading energy and climate laboratory’’ (City of Aarhus, 2012, p. 32). The Climate Secretariat has also attempted to build legitimacy internally by aligning its work with existing regulative and cultural-cognitive structures. A particularly notably example of this is the production of climate change plans. Plan making was felt to be normal operating practice, the orthodox approach for any substantive professional sector (Interviewee #15). It was thus through alignment with regulative and cultural-cognitive institutions emphasizing plan making as a professional norm that the Climate Secretariat sought to render climate change mitigation and adaptation comprehensible within the organization (cf. Hargadon and Douglas, 2001). Cultural-cognitive institutions were also central to efforts to bridge the legitimacy gap amongst external actors. Exchanges with commercial organizations focused on the notions of ‘win-win’ business opportunities, efficiency gains, and green growth. The latter could potentially constitute a development strategy based upon a revised ethical code, but in Denmark and Aarhus it appears to be merely a revised meta-narrative for economic growth. Green growth is equated to international opportunities to harness Danish manufacturing expertise in the energy and water sector. This is reflected, for example, in the content of a speech given by the Danish Environment Minister: ‘‘Water is the new wind. The global water market is almost three times larger than the global wind market. We have core competencies in this area, which there has not been enough focus on and which we have not got the maximum out of. Therefore, water can become Denmark’s emerging growth adventure’’ (Ida Auken cited in Kjær, 2012, p. 1). Green growth is also a meta-narrative which has had particular salience in the context of recent economic difficulties in Europe. It is noteworthy that the Climate Secretariat’s external purview has focused primarily upon commercial organizations and it is possible that normative legitimacy is more highly valued by civil society. Recent floods occurring within Aarhus municipality provide some support for this as they have elevated debate on

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normative dimensions of climate change planning slightly (Interview #1 and #3). However, it is arguably the influence of flood events on the salience of climate change amongst civil society (Dannevig et al., 2013; Penning-Rowsell et al., 2006) which is of greatest primary importance. It is concluded that proposition one is false for the actions taken to bridge the legitimacy gap indicate that normative legitimacy is perceived to be less salient in the institutionalization of this new field of planning than other forms of legitimacy. The proposition can be reformulated to posit that there is a hierarchy in the salience of forms of legitimacy in contemporary Danish (and possibly Western) society, with regulative legitimacy being the most salient and normative legitimacy the least. Proposition 2. Patterns of institutionalization of climate change planning are a function of the relative ease with which legitimacy can be created amongst particular actor groupings Proposition two is partly supported by our empirical analysis. The Climate Secretariat in its expressions of agency employed a largely opportunistic strategy, even though its staff tended to portray themselves as insurrectionists (e.g. Interviewee #14). Its focus on commercial interests within the municipality is, in large part, a function of its success in locating a meta-narrative that could bridge the legitimacy gap amongst these actors. As previously noted, the Climate Secretariat has deployed a discourse that portrays climate change planning as a business opportunity. This discourse has successfully bridged the legitimacy gap within a core network of receptive commercial organizations by appealing to cultural-cognitive and organizational regulative (i.e. formal) institutions about appropriate goals and conducts in commerce. The Climate Secretariat has not been as successful in locating a similar meta-narrative to legitimize its work internally amongst rank and file staff. Its failure to do so has led its staff to concentrate on developing internal links on a small scale with individuals they know are receptive to aspects of their work (Interviewee #1, #10, #14, #15). This strategy is deemed opportunistic, as opposed to symbiotic, for the Climate Secretariat does not advocate the rejection of existing institutions in such interactions, but merely the revised interpretation and enactment of existing ones. The receptivity of commerce to a particular construction of legitimacy for climate change planning is arguably an important reason why they have become the focus of the Climate Secretariat’s work. The third climate change plan thus constitutes not only an attempt to legitimize climate change planning in commerce, but is also a function of the relative success of the Climate Secretariat in so doing. There is also considerable evidence that the interests of commerce have influenced the activities undertaken in the name of climate change planning in Aarhus. The business community’s receptiveness to the meta-narrative of green growth and talk of ‘win-wins’ has resulted in climate change planning activities focusing, for example, on the optimization of transport to reduce inefficiencies and the exploitation of market opportunities in China. It can be concluded that the analysis of the Aarhus case partly supports proposition two for the data indicate that institutionalization patterns were a co-product of the receptivity of commerce to a particular meta-narrative on climate change planning. Nevertheless, the need to actively maintain the legitimacy of climate change planning amongst the political elite also affected patterns of institutionalization. A perceived need to show quick results (which is discussed further under the next proposition) is part of the reason why an opportunistic strategy focusing on receptive actors was employed. Even though it has been possible for the Climate Secretariat to scope out the municipal organization from its work remit, there are some interest groups that it evidently cannot ignore.

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Proposition 3. National and international networks are an important resource used by actors to construct legitimacy for the institutionalization of climate change planning Aarhus municipality has joined three networks: one European (the Covenant of Mayors) and two national (administered by the Danish Energy Savings Trust and the Danish Society for Nature). Membership of these networks involves a voluntary commitment to ameliorating the municipality’s impact on climate change. The agreements were signed in the initial phase of climate change planning primarily to reinforce the policy commitment to carbon neutrality (Interviewee #14, #15). The municipality does not appear to use, and hence value, the networks in other ways, in contrast to what has been reported for other local government organizations elsewhere in the literature. Membership of these networks therefore appears to be important in gaining some amount of cultural-cognitive legitimacy for climate change planning, but primarily during the initial stage of the municipality’s climate change planning activities. National and international networks were not used as a resource in the Aarhus case after this initial phase. In the Aarhus case it is a local network that has acquired central importance as a resource for constructing legitimacy. Its contribution is indirect, however, for its value has been in maintaining the legitimacy of climate change planning amongst the political elite and hence continuation of the Climate Secretariat’s work. This was significant because political commitment to the goal of carbon neutrality appears to have been fragile (Interviewee #1, #3, #10, #14). There are a number of reasons why external actors were an important resource for maintaining the legitimacy of climate change planning amongst the political elite. Firstly, interviewees from the Climate Secretariat emphasized that it was important that their work was perceived to create some kind of tangible added value for the municipal organization, over and above climate change mitigation and adaptation (e.g. Interviewee #11, #14). It has attempted to do this by linking climate change planning to the external branding of the municipality. Secondly, the legitimacy of the Climate Secretariat amongst the political elite rests partly on its ability to realize emission reductions given the policy objective of carbon neutrality. It has been noted that the largest sources of carbon emissions reside outside of the municipal organization. Thirdly, the importance of external actors as a resource is also a reflection of the desirability for the Climate Secretariat of securing additional revenue to supplement its internal funding. The private sector can bring financial resources to bear on the implementation of climate change planning activities directly and indirectly through opening access to various funding opportunities. The willingness of commerce to allocate financial resources to climate changes projects also enhances the legitimacy of the Climate Secretariat amongst the political elite for it is viewed as a symbol of success. Thus, as a member of the Climate Secretariat stated, ‘‘[private sector funding] is one of the ways to ensure that we will still be here in ten years’’ (Interviewee #14). It is plausible that over the longer term local networks could also form an important resource for generating legitimacy for climate change planning amongst a broader array of staff in the municipal organization than only the political elite. Concrete projects undertaken by external actors may create a perception that there is demand from society for action; that is, it will raise the salience of climate change planning within local government. Under the service-based ethic of local government, staff may feel they have a cultural-cognitive, and perhaps normative, obligation to be responsive to societal demands. Furthermore, across the municipal organization as more staff are drawn into climate change related projects and discussions, climate change planning

may become routinized through practice, with legitimacy becoming taken for granted. Further longitudinal research would be required to test these assumptions. We conclude that proposition three is not supported by the empirical data for the Aarhus case. Whilst national and international networks were initially used as a resource to engender some measure of legitimacy for climate change planning, their importance appears limited. In contrast, local networks were an important resource for constructing legitimacy in the Aarhus case, albeit their contribution was indirect. It was not possible at what is a relatively early stage in efforts to institutionalize climate change planning to ascertain whether local networks could also be significant for generating legitimacy across a broader range of actors within the municipal organization than just the political elite, but this seems plausible over the long term. Proposition 4. Power ultimately determines the context for legitimacy The Aarhus case study provides multiple examples that individually and cumulatively demonstrate the significance of power in setting the macro context in which discourses on legitimacy are situated. The Climate Secretariat propagated an image of non-conformity, of being both the ‘‘bad boys’’ and ‘‘forerunners’’ (Interview #14) within the organization. We have suggested, however, that the strategy it used was primarily opportunistic; rarely did it adopt an insurrectionist strategy because it did not have the organizational power to overtly disregard existing institutions in interactions occurring within the municipal organization. Conversely, obtaining power, in terms of achieving good results in the eyes of the political elite and acquiring additional funding, enabled the Climate Secretariat to argue for a somewhat remarkable strategy of redefining their institutional mandate to focus solely on external actors. The Climate Secretariat’s ability to achieve results in the eyes of the political elite put them in a position of relative power which in turn meant they were given operational latitude. Between what are often termed the institutional silo’s of municipal government, where competition for political attention and organizational hierarchy are important, the Climate Secretariat could make only modest progress in bridging the legitimacy gap. This is in part because they were seen to lack power due to: weak political commitment to the goal of carbon neutrality; being placed in a new and relatively weak Department; and, their lack of planning expertise in the traditional sense. Where they were successful in achieving some form of institutionalization internally they invariably relied on reformed enactment of existing institutions to include climate considerations. In this way they did not need to challenge the institutional status quo and the power dynamics it encompasses. In its interactions with its external network, in contrast, the Climate Secretariat located a meta-narrative that resonated with cultural-cognitive institutions concerning good business sense. Power was defined in their interactions with commerce more by the strength of the business argument they could construct than the organizational positioning of the Climate Secretary or the position of its staff within the municipal hierarchy. It is not that power mattered less to commerce than within the municipal organization, but that power was based on a different rationality. The results from the Aarhus case support proposition four in so far as the political context for legitimacy appears to be greatly influenced by power. Power defined opportunities to construct legitimacy in terms of what were rational strategies for particular actors, the actors who were deemed important, and the resources

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which could be accessed. It is also the case, of course, that power partly determines the need to construct legitimacy as well as the opportunities to construct it. There is thus a circular relationship between power and legitimacy. Nevertheless, it was noted previously that salience is also evidently an important feature of political context. Salience may often be influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by power, but at least the occurrence of extreme climate events (akin to a kind of exogenous shock to the system) are independent of power. It can be concluded that power is a key determinant of political context and, hence, it is important in understanding processes of social change. Nevertheless, it is not the only important variable in the context of climate change planning. 5. Concluding discussion This research has examined the attempted institutionalization of climate change planning within a highly bureaucratic and fragmented local government organization and in a situation where regulatory incitements do not yet exist. It has analyzed the role of legitimacy in, and its explanatory power in relation to, a specific social change project through the testing of four propositions. The focus on legitimacy has provided thicker explanations for real-world patterns of climate change planning. It has provided valuable corrections to assumptions about the conditions under which certain findings from previous research hold true, and vice versa. It has also made an incremental contribution to the development of a more complex conceptual understanding of institutional responses to climate change at the level of local government. We conclude by highlighting and reflecting upon four particularly salient issues foregrounded by the research results. Firstly, the analytical foregrounding of legitimacy has led us to engage centrally with the dialectic between structure and agency in the institutionalization of climate change planning. In relation to the issue of agency, our conceptual framework has been developed in part on the basis of a critique of the way in which the concept of institutional entrepreneurship has been used in previous research. It is noted that certain actions taken by the Climate Secretariat in the Aarhus case could conceivably be viewed as entrepreneurial given the flexibility of definitions of this concept and the loose manner in which it has tended to be applied. Nevertheless, the focus on legitimacy in this article shows that the actions of the Climate Secretariat constituted a case of what Clegg (1989, p. 199) describes as creativity ‘‘imbued with positivity yet still constrained by discipline’’. Individuals within the Climate Secretariat were entrepreneurial in the sense that they found ways to align climate change planning with existing structures to legitimize it and that they were highly opportunistic in their engagement with actors. Their actions, however, were strongly influenced by structural factors and political context. A peculiar, if not somewhat perverse, result of this was the Climate Secretariat divesting itself of responsibility for institutionalization where rapid results could not be achieved. As a minimum, this highlights the importance of greater precision and clarity around the analysis of agency in future research. Secondly, it is noteworthy that in the Climate Secretariat’s work with its external network their efforts to construct legitimacy for both climate change mitigation and adaptation amongst commerce drew centrally upon a shared metanarrative; that of green growth. This observation indicates that the legitimization of mitigation and adaptation activities need not axiomatically be based on separate rationalities or arguments, at least in the particular geophysical and political context of Denmark. This will not always be the case and it is recognized that constructing legitimacy for adaptation activities may be

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particularly challenging in countries with a high adaptive capacity (Hurlimann and March, 2012). Nevertheless, the observation supports our concerns about the rationale for a strict division between mitigation and adaptation in theorizing the governance of climate change at the local level. Thirdly, the relative salience of different forms of legitimacy can be expected to vary over time (Scott et al., 2000). Nonetheless, a notable finding of the research is that in the efforts to bridge what we have suggested is a legitimacy gap in relation to climate change planning, normative imperatives do not appear to have been a significant discussion point. Instead, the imperative to build cultural-cognitive legitimacy amongst the business community, driven in part by the requirement to construct legitimacy amongst the political elite, led to the Climate Secretariat becoming essentially a moderator of economic prosperity. This resulted in what could be seen as a potentially destabilizing debate on addressing climate change becoming largely subsumed within discourses of green growth and economic prosperity. This observation is not, of course, particular to debates on climate change occurring in Denmark; international organizations such as the UN Environment Programme have also focused extensively on linking climate change to a discourse of green growth. The point we emphasize is merely that, in the absence of other structural changes, there is an empirical question concerning the degree to which marked social change can be achieved through arguments based on other forms of legitimacy than that which is normatively derived. Or to put it differently, the hegemonic discourse on the need to engage commerce through recourse to business principles should be problematized by asking what is at stake in the framing of discourse on climate change planning in terms of cultural-cognitive legitimacy? Finally, a central purpose of this research was to analyze efforts to bridge the legitimacy gap in the absence of a regulative institution for climate change planning. This should not be interpreted as implying that the introduction of regulations will lead to some kind of utopian institutionalization. It is widely appreciated that whilst generating a strong form of legitimacy for climate change planning, effective regulative institutions may be difficult to design, particularly for adaptation (McDonald, 2011). Furthermore, while local government in Denmark may be expected to comply with the spirit of regulative institutions, the practical outcomes will be contingent upon how actors operate in the soft space surrounding implementation and enforcement (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010). Legitimacy and bridging what we have described as a legitimacy gap is, of course, only one part of the theoretical and policy enigma. References Adger, W.N., Arnell, N.W., Tompkins, E.L., 2005. Successful adaptation to climate change across scales. Global Environmental Change 15, 77–86. Anguelovski, I., Carmin, J., 2011. Something borrowed, everything new: innovation and institutionalization in urban climate governance. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 3, 169–175. A˚rhus Kommune, 2008. Klimaplan 2008–2009. A˚rhus Kommune, A˚rhus. Ba¨ckstrand, K., 2006. Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development: rethinking legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness. European Environment 16, 290–306. Barker, T., Bashmakov, I., Alharthi, A., Amann, M., Cifuentes, L., Drexhage, J., Duan, M., Edenhofer, O., Flannery, B., Grubb, M., Hoogwijk, M., Ibitoye, F.I., Jepma, C.J., Pizer, W.A., Yamaji, K., 2007. Mitigation from a cross-sectoral perspective. In: Metz, B., Davidson, O.R., Bosch, P.R., Dave, R., Meyer, L.A. (Eds.), Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 619–690. Bassett, E., Shandas, V., 2010. Innovation and climate action planning. Journal of the American Planning Association 76, 435–450. Betsill, M.M., Bulkeley, H., 2006. Cities and the multilevel governance of global climate change. Global Governance 12, 141–159. Biesbroek, G.R., Swart, R.J., van der Knaap, W.G.M., 2009. The mitigation–adaptation dichotomy and the role of spatial planning. Habitat International 33, 230–237.

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