Mitigating Global Warming in Global Cities: Comparing Participation and Climate Change Policies of C40 Cities

Cities face similar challenges to nation-states in coming together for climate change agreements. Cities have joined trans-municipal networks to overcome these collective action problems that provide common problem definitions, policy solutions, formal channels of communication, and publicity. Analyzing the relationship between participation in a network and cities’ mitigation policies in 57 C40 member cities using ordered logit models, the article asks what effect group membership has on actual climate change mitigation actions at the city level. The results speak to the growing importance of transnational institutions in providing assistance and visibility to subnational efforts to address international issues.