Governance and the Geography of Authority: Modalities of Authorisation and the Transnational Governing of Climate Change

Bulkeley, Harriet

doi:10.1068/a44678

Cited by 93 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This might move beyond the rationales of what has come to be understood as liberal or neoliberal governance and include searches for a more socially and environmentally progressive subnational politics (North, 2011). This is covered in detail elsewhere (see Bulkeley and Betsill, 2003;Schreurs, 2008;Bulkeley, 2012): the intention here is to set such developments specifically within the multi-level governance frameworks that shape such activity. Throughout these sets of challenges run themes regarding the prioritisation of different actors and spaces in creating new governance objects; the capacity and capability of sub-national organisations to enact or resist new governance logics; and the legitimacy of the constructed spaces, governing actors and policy themes involved.…”

Section: Energy-carbon Transitions As a Process Of State Enrolmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This opens up questions regarding the legitimacy of the actors involved and of energy-carbon restructuring as a policy goal. For Bulkeley (2012), legitimacy foregrounds authority, a central pillar of governance. An absence of authority potentially promotes territorialisation by stealth: the use of light touch instruments, co-ordination and facilitation to steer sub-national actors towards production of a carbon governance object rather than use of instrumental coercion through targets, significant fiscal provision or authoritative reconfiguration of existing governance structures.…”

Section: Energy-carbon Transitions As a Process Of State Enrolmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State enrolment and energy-carbon transitions: Syndromic experimentation and atomisation in England

Eadson

2016

Environ Plann C Gov Policy

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IntroductionAcross the global North, governments are engaged in restructuring around the increasingly linked agendas of carbon management and energy security (While et al., 2010; Lovell et al., 2011). These agendas are characterised by complexity, uncertainty and all-pervasiveness. In order to meet these goals governments necessarily implement programmes to enrol a range of institutions, institutional spaces and individuals to act on energy-carbon restructuring. Enrolling territorial subjects and objects raises significant challenges for government, including dealing with path-dependencies created by existing socio-technical societal, economic and infrastructural configurations; and developing specific means to (re)construct objects and enrol subjects on energy-carbon goals. Addressing these challenges requires consideration of the forms of power to be exercised in doing so, ways in which new policy interacts with existing institutions, and determining the balance of responsibilities between different institutional and non-institutional actors. It also necessitates engagement with different actors through different means and different territorial and institutional configurations. This paper sets out to explore these challenges and responses by explicating how national governments have sought to govern at a distance to embed energy-carbon rationalities in sub-national subjects and objects. The interrogation of governing at a distance, already the subject of extensive discussion (see Rose, 1996;Miller and Rose, 2008;Dean, 1999;Mackinnon, 2000) lends itself well to reflection on governmental action in rolling-out state goals. The notion has particular appeal to studies of energy-carbon governance, owing to the complexity and ubiquity of energy-carbon entanglements, which require the embedding of new governmental rationalities across numerous subjects. To date, explicit consideration of this literature in relation to energy and/or carbon governance has focused on specific subjectivities: for instance, governing individuals at a distance (see Paterson and Stripple, 2010;Letell et al., 2011). In order to more explicitly draw out relationships between governing at a distance and energy-carbon governance it is important to consider a broader agenda, exploring the range of different modes of engagement between national government and the objects and subjects of transition strategies. 3In taking this approach, this paper also fleshes out notions of governing energy-carbon at a distance through engagement with literature on the creation of new policy domains, considering how policy might map onto existing governmental regimes. This complements work investigating the prospects for national governmental engagements with different institutions and actors (see While et al., 2010;Hodson and Marvin, 2013), and takes forward the concerns of Bulkeley et al. (2005, 2007) for the forms of power utilised and the institutional configurations involved. Through engagement with these bodies of work, a conceptualisation of 'modes of en...

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Section: Energy-carbon Transitions As a Process Of State Enrolmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Energy-carbon Transitions As a Process Of State Enrolmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State enrolment and energy-carbon transitions: Syndromic experimentation and atomisation in England

Eadson

2016

Environ Plann C Gov Policy

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“…Narrating BSC into alignment worked through distinctive narrative threads, then, whose capacity for configuring worked discursively and through particular devices embedded in project outputs and through the installation and development of particular technologies and artefacts. Collectively the storylines, and the devices that enabled them, enacted and maintained the project's relational configuration insofar as they performed coherence and, significantly, provided an ongoing basis for authorizing the project (Bulkeley 2012).…”

Section: Insert Image 4 Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights from Sydney, Australia

McGuirk

Bulkeley

Dowling

2015

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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In the political geography of responses to climate change, and the governance of carbon more specifically, the urban has emerged as a strategic site. Although it is recognized that urban carbon governance occurs through diverse programs and projects-involving multiple actors and working through multiple sites, mechanisms, objects, and subjects-surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which these diverse elements are drawn together and held together in the exercise of governing. These processes-termed configuration-remain underspecified. This article explores urban carbon governance interventions as relational configurations, excavating how their diverse elements-human, institutional, representational, and material-are assembled, drawn into relation, and held together in the exercise of governing. Through an analysis of two contrasting case studies of urban carbon governance interventions in Sydney, Australia, we draw out common processes of configuring and specific sets of devices and techniques that gather, align, and maintain the relations between actors and elements that constitute intervention projects. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of conceiving of governing projects as relational configurations for how we understand the nature and practice of urban carbon governance, especially by revealing the diverse modes of power at work within processes of configuring. AbstractIn the political geography of responses to climate change, and the governance of carbon more specifically, the urban has emerged as a strategic site. While it is recognised that urban carbon governance occurs through diverse programs and projects-involving multiple actors and working through multiple sites, mechanisms, objects and subjects-surprisingly little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which these diverse elements are drawn together and held together in the exercise of governing. These processestermed configuration -remain under-specified. This article explores urban carbon governance interventions as relational configurations, excavating how their diverse elements-human, institutional, representational, material-are assembled, drawn into relation and held together in the exercise of governing. Through an analysis of two contrasting case studies of urban carbon governance interventions in Sydney, Australia, we draw out common processes of configuring and specific sets of devices and techniques that gather, align and maintain the relations between actors and elements that constitute intervention projects. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of conceiving of governing projects as relational configurations for how we understand the nature and practice of urban carbon governance, especially by revealing the diverse modes of power at work within processes of configuring.

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“…But beyond this, viewing states' powers of rule as distributed also means taking a wider view of governing authority. It means accepting that legitimate governing authority may be generated 'outside' states through processes of authorisation generated through the process of governing (Bulkeley, 2012).…”

Section: Hegemonic Projects In-the-making: Governmental Programs and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Practices, programs and projects of urban carbon governance: Perspectives from the Australian city

2014

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This paper addresses the governance of transitions to lower carbon cities. Drawing on both governmentality and neo-Gramscian perspectives, we chart and explore the diverse objects, subjects, means and ends evoked as governmental programs, or hegemonic projects in-the-making, are shaped to orchestrate urban carbon governance. We ask about the diversity of what is being sought through the governance of carbon in the city, how this is rendered and how carbon is being made to matter in the city. We do so through analysis of an audit of carbon governance initiatives in Australian cities, and a characterisation of these initiatives as four distinctive governmental programs. To make sense of the diverse ecology of initiatives revealed, we adopt a typological approach to suggest four distinctive governmental programs-Behaviour change; Demonstration; Transition; and Advocacy. We suggest that Australia's emergent landscape of urban carbon governance both reproduces existing governance orderings and contains openings-via fragile emergent hegemonic projects-that might produce more transformative orderings: not least because of the demands and politics the low carbon subjects being invoked might be empowered to pursue but also because of the potential reconfiguration of the 'integral state' as new governmental programs are imagined and enacted. Abstract: This paper addresses the governance of transitions to lower carbon cities. Drawing on both governmentality and neo-Gramscian perspectives, we chart and explore the diverse objects, subjects, means and ends evoked as governmental programs, or hegemonic projects in-the-making, are shaped to orchestrate urban carbon governance. We ask about the diversity of what is being sought through the governance of carbon in the city, how this is rendered and how carbon is being made to matter in the city. We do so through analysis of an audit of carbon governance initiatives in Australian cities, and a characterisation of these initiatives as four distinctive governmental programs. To make sense of the diverse ecology of initiatives revealed, we adopt a typological approach to suggest four distinctive governmental programs -Behaviour change; Demonstration; Transition; and Advocacy. We suggest that Australia's emergent landscape of urban carbon governance both reproduces existing governance orderings and contains openings -via fragile emergent hegemonic projects-that might produce more transformative orderings: not least because of the demands and politics the low carbon subjects being invoked might be empowered to pursue but also because of the potential reconfiguration of the 'integral state' as new governmental programs are imagined and enacted.

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Governance and the Geography of Authority: Modalities of Authorisation and the Transnational Governing of Climate Change

Cited by 93 publications

References 43 publications

State enrolment and energy-carbon transitions: Syndromic experimentation and atomisation in England

State enrolment and energy-carbon transitions: Syndromic experimentation and atomisation in England

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights from Sydney, Australia

Practices, programs and projects of urban carbon governance: Perspectives from the Australian city

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