Beyond state/non-state divides: Global cities and the governing of climate change

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1 413308EJTXXX / Bulkeley and SchroederEuropean Journal of International Relations Article EJ IR Beyond state/non-state divides: Global cities and the governing of climate change European Journal of International Relations 18(4) The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permissions: sagepub. co.uk/journalspermissions.nav DOI: / ejt.sagepub.com Harriet Bulkeley Durham University, UK Heike Schroeder University of Oxford, UK Abstract This article challenges the assumption that the boundaries of state versus non-state and public versus private can readily be drawn. It argues that the roles of actors as state or non-state and the forms of authority public or private are not pregiven but are forged through the process of governing. Drawing on neo-gramscian and governmentality perspectives, it suggests that a more dynamic account of the state can offer a more nuanced means of analysing the process of governing global environmental affairs. In order to understand this process and the outcomes of governing climate change, we argue that analysis should focus on the hegemonic projects and programmes through which the objects and subjects of governing are constituted and contested, and through which the form and nature of the state and authority are accomplished. We suggest that this is a process achieved and held in place through forging alignment between diverse social and material entities in order to achieve the right disposition of things through which the will to govern climate change can be realized (Murray Li, 2007a). We illustrate this argument by examining the governing of climate change in two global cities, London and Los Angeles. Keywords climate change, environment, global governance, non-state, political economy, state Corresponding author: Harriet Bulkeley, Department of Geography, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK. h.a.bulkeley@durham.ac.uk

2 744 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) Introduction Across International Relations, political science and beyond, there is increasing interest in the notion of governance and its implications. Pierre and Peters (2000: 131) capture the essential elements of governance when they suggest that political power and institutional capability is less and less derived from formal constitutional powers accorded the state but more from a capacity to wield and coordinate resources from public and private actors and interests. Scholars have documented the role of non-state actors in the development and implementation of international regimes and the rise of new forms of private and hybrid governance arrangements for addressing global environmental issues. Many traditional assumptions about the relations between territory, sovereignty, power, authority and legitimacy are being challenged by this growing body of work. However, we argue that this work remains fundamentally limited by a reliance on particular concepts of the state and of public and private authority. As Clark (1998) suggests, the way in which the state is conceived is fundamental to the Great Divide between the national and international that pervades much of the analysis of global politics. Here, we argue that what constitutes the boundaries of state/non-state and public/private is much more dynamic, porous, fragile and malleable than current scholarship suggests. By examining the relation between state/non-state and public/private through an analysis of the governance of climate change in two global cities, London and Los Angeles, we demonstrate how, why and with what implications the process of governing continuously shapes and reshapes these boundaries. In the first half of the article, we consider how the categorical divides between state/ non-state actors and public/private authority have been used in the literature on global environmental governance. While some work in this field is seeking to cross these borders, in the main these categorizations serve to produce a reductive dichotomy of public/ private and state/non-state, which masks both the plurality of actors and practices that might be considered in such terms and also the ways in which they are the product of ongoing political processes (McGuirk and Dowling, 2009: 177). We argue that a move beyond these dichotomies is required if we are to grasp the ways in which divisions of responsibility and agency between state/non-state actors and of public/private authority are taking place in global environmental governance. We use neo-gramscian and governmentality theories as a productive starting point for such an analysis. In the second half of the article, we turn to the two case studies of London and Los Angeles to examine three core issues: (1) the dispersed nature of rule; (2) the ways in which state/non-state capacity (or effect) is produced through the process of establishing hegemonic projects or governmental programmes; and (3) the ways in which the authority to accomplish governance is achieved through building consensus and forging alignments (Murray Li, 2007a) between diverse social and material elements in order to address climate change. Rather than reading off the potential power and authority of actors from their institutional positions, we argue that what counts as the state and the non-state, or as public or private authority, is not pre-given, but is determined through the process of governing as different actors, interests, ideas and materials are variously included and excluded in order to shape climate change as a governable problem at the municipal level.

3 Bulkeley and Schroeder 745 Global environmental governance and the state/non-state divide For over a decade, scholars have drawn attention to the emergence and development of global environmental governance. Seeking to move beyond regime-based accounts of global environmental politics, work in this area focuses on both the co-ordination of states and the activities of a vast array of rule systems that exercise authority in the pursuit of goals that function outside normal national jurisdictions (Rosenau, 2000: 172). Here, as with other definitions of governance, it is the involvement of non-state actors in the governing of collective affairs that sets global governance aside from other, more state-centric, forms of international relation. 1 On the one hand, work has demonstrated the significance of scientific, corporate and non-governmental actors in influencing states and their international institutions (Betsill and Correll, 2008; Falkner, 2003; Litfin, 1993; Newell, 2000; Pattberg, 2006; Rosenau, 2000: 170). Others have argued, on the other hand, that a plethora of forms of social organization and political decision-making exist that are neither directed towards the state nor emanate from it (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2006: 191) and as a result that global climate governance should be viewed as comprising all purposeful mechanisms and measures aimed at steering social systems towards preventing, mitigating, or adapting to the risks posed by climate change (Jagers and Stripple, 2003: 385). Scholars have examined the various roles of actors from global civil society (Lipschutz, 1997; Wapner, 1996), municipal and regional networks (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2007; Selin and VanDeveer, 2005), public/private partnerships (Bäckstrand, 2008) and the private sector (Cashore, 2004; Clapp, 1998; Dingwerth, 2008; Pulver, 2007) in the direct governance of global environmental issues. Yet for all the discussion of the emergence of non-state actors and private forms of authority, and of the potential demise (or otherwise) of the state, in the main, these categorizations are largely determined by the actors and (geographical) realms of activity involved (Abrahamsen and Williams, 2007; Bulkeley, 2005; Clark, 1998; Sending and Neumann, 2006). As a result, some of the core concepts underpinning current concerns in the field, notably the rise of private forms of governance, remain curiously unexplored. In much of the writing on global environmental governance, the state is considered as a unitary, autonomous actor, a fixed territorial entity operating much the same over time and irrespective of its place within the geopolitical order (Agnew and Corbridge, 1995: 78). In essence, conceiving of the state in actor-based terms relies on a conception of the state in which it is both reified as a thing: a more or less unified entity (Painter, 2006: 754) that has independent agency and is confined to a separate sphere of the social whole which then interacts with, intervenes in, depends upon or regulates other distinct social spheres such as the economy or civil society (Painter, 2006: 753). This, in turn, leads to an impoverished conception of what the non -state entails (Amoore and Langley, 2004). While significant attention is directed at explaining and exploring how non-state actors engage in governance, rarely is the non-stateness of these actors defined or demonstrated. For example, in his discussion of private governance, Falkner (2003: 72 73) suggests that it emerges at the global level where the interactions among private actors, or between private actors on the one hand and civil society and state actors on the other, give rise to institutional arrangements that structure and direct actors

4 746 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) behavior. Building on this, Pattberg (2006: 581) similarly focuses on the processes of governance at work, suggesting a threefold definition of private governance. In both these examples, considerable effort and precision is exercised in seeking to delimit what governance by private actors entails, but its private character is determined by the actors involved. Further, the dichotomy between state and non-state actors has led to an implicit assumption that while the former are concerned with the public sphere, the latter operate within a private realm of social life, each of which commands different forms of authority (and legitimacy). This characterization of separate spheres has led some scholars to conclude that the rise of non-state actors in global governance must be leading to a decline of the state. In short, an increase in the power of non-state actors is ipso facto defined as a simultaneous reduction in state power and authority (Sending and Neumann, 2006: 652). Critics tend to reject claims of the death of the state by pointing to its continued role and presence in global environmental governance and beyond (Biermann and Dingwerth, 2004). A stalemate ensues as both camps seek to find more evidence of the importance or otherwise of non-state actors, while the boundary between the state and the non-state remains relatively intact (see also Clark, 1998). Beyond the borderlands? A growing number of scholars in this field are paying attention to the various ways in which these boundaries are being crossed and reconfigured. Three developments are particularly notable. First, attention is being paid to the ways in which non-state actors perform traditional state functions. In their analysis of non-governmental organizations, (NGOs) for example, Betsill and Corell (2008: 3) suggest that NGOs act as diplomats, and perform many of the same functions as state delegates: they represent the interests of their constituencies, they engage in information exchange, they negotiate, and they provide policy advice. Rather than being interpreted as a shift in power from state to non-state actors, scholars point to the delegation of state authority to non-state actors (Cowles, 2003), suggesting that states may be benefiting from the more widespread use of private governance mechanisms (Falkner, 2003: 78). A second, and growing, body of work departs further from a separate spheres model. Here, the focus is on the emergence of public/private and hybrid arrangements in which state and non-state actors co-govern global environmental issues, 2 driven by the promotion of so-called Type II partnerships at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (Andonova and Levy, 2003; Bäckstrand, 2008; Pattberg and Stripple, 2007) and the growing rapprochement between NGOs and the business sector in green alliances (Arts, 2002). However, the very emphasis on the notion of partnership between state and non-state actors retains a sense that these categories distinguish autonomous actors or domains of social life which are joined together for specific projects, rather than reflecting on what such arrangements might mean for the nature of the state and of authority. Efforts are, however, being directed towards these more fundamental issues, particularly with regard to the nature of public and private authority. Ruggie (2004: 504) argues that we are witnessing the emergence of a new global public domain an increasingly institutionalized transnational arena of discourse, contestation, and action concerning the production of global public goods, involving private as well as public actors. Central to

5 Bulkeley and Schroeder 747 this conceptualization is the expansion of the notion of the public as a domain from its association with state-based authority towards an understanding of authority as entailing the fusion of power with legitimate social purposes (Ruggie, 2004: 504). The public domain is then interpreted as one in which expectations regarding legitimate social purposes, including the respective roles of different social sectors and actors, are articulated, contested, and take shape as social facts (Ruggie, 2004: 504). The publicness of authority comes, in such interpretations, not from the actors involved in governing, but rather from public recognition of the claims to authority. Thus non-state actors may have public authority, opening up the possibility for the emergence of private, non-state based, or non-state legitimated authority (Hall and Biersteker, 2002b: 5, cited in Pattberg and Stripple, 2007: 5; see also Jagers and Stripple, 2003). However, while such analyses have started to open up the question of how different forms of authority are constituted, they remain wedded to a notion of state/non-state as dichotomous and fixed categories, and are concerned with identifying the extent to which authority is being shared or is shifting between these realms. Thinking through the state Rather than being a zero-sum game, where power is shifted from state to non-state actors or where public authority gives way to the private sphere, work on global environmental governance is increasingly blurring these divides through drawing our attention to new forms of delegated power, hybridization and shared authority. However, despite this recognition, there has been limited engagement with what this might mean for how we theorize the state and the processes through which governing is accomplished. We suggest that neo-gramscian theories and accounts of Foucault s notion of governmentality each offer a productive starting point for opening up these debates. 3 Although there are significant differences and tensions between these bodies of work, 4 both provide insights into three key issues which we argue are central to understanding the state/ non-state, public/private dynamic of global environmental governance: a rejection of the state/society duality in favour of an account of the dispersed nature of rule (Ekers and Loftus, 2008: 703); an account of the state (and hence the non-state) as provisional and dynamic, continually forged through particular hegemonic projects or governmental programmes; and an understanding that governing is achieved practically through the alignment of social and material elements (Ekers and Loftus, 2008; Ekers et al., 2009; McGuirk, 2004; Murray Li, 2007a; Painter, 2006). Turning first to the state/non-state dichotomy, both neo-gramscian and governmentality studies move away from the notion that the state is either a unitary actor or occupies an autonomous social sphere. Within the neo-gramscian tradition, the notion of the integral state is deployed which conceives of all institutions which enable the dominant social groups to exercise power, whether formally public or private, as components of the state s institutional ensemble (McGuirk, 2004: 1022). This is a dynamic process in which the dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (Gramsci, 1971: 182). As Ekers and Loftus (2008: 703) explain, in effect the state works to develop acquiescence to its rule

6 748 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) through the system of fortresses and earthworks lying behind [and sometimes in front of] the outer ditch of its own institutions consolidating power within private institutions normally considered outside of the state. While rule is dispersed in this manner, the realms of state and civil society remain regarded as possessing a degree of internal coherence which renders them distinguishable, albeit intimately connected (Amoore and Langley, 2004; Ekers and Loftus, 2008). Accounts of rule as governmentality adopt a different starting point, based not on the idea of the state as a coherent entity but on the dispersed practices and knowledges that [constitute] everyday forms of rule (Ekers and Loftus, 2008: 703). For Foucault, the state is not an object that is always already there (Lemke, 2007: 6) but rather the product of historically distinct forms of governing, produced through the relation between sovereignty, discipline and government (Foucault, 2009; Rutherford, 2007). Modern rule, and the state within that complex, is a result of distinct practices of government, where government is understood as the conduct of conduct, modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, that were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people (Foucault, 2000a: 341). As one mode of power, government is concerned not with securing particular territories or disciplinary control, but rather with governing the population, as both its end and instrument (Foucault, 2009: 105). This, Foucault (2009: 95) argues, requires the application of economy, the establishment of an economy, at the level of the state as a whole, that is to say, [exercising] supervision and control over its inhabitants, wealth, and the conduct of all and each, as attentive as that of a father s over his household and goods (see also Nealon, 2008: 71). Governing the state as economy, in this broad sense, requires, alongside the intensification of sovereignty and of discipline (Foucault, 2009: 107; Nealon, 2008), a new art of government, or governmentality, accomplished through the construction of certain truths and their circulation via normalizing and disciplining techniques, methods, discourses and practices that extend beyond the state and stretch across the social body (Rutherford, 2007: 293; see also Foucault, 2000b: ). Seen from this perspective, as Sending and Neumann (2006: 658) argue, the ascendance of non-state actors in shaping and carrying out global governance functions is not an instance of transfer of power from the state to non-state actors, or a matter of the changing sources of, or institutional locus for authority. Rather it is an expression of a change in governmentality in which ostensibly non-state actors become integral to the project of governing global environmental change. Far from seeing the state as a separate sphere which governs over society, governing is achieved by and through individuals and institutions across the public/ private divide. Reading the emerging hybridization and privatization of global environmental governance through the lenses of dispersed rule offered by neo-gramscian and governmentality approaches requires that we not only critically examine how, by and for whom governing is accomplished, but also that we analyse how institutions and identities (of state, non-state, public and private in this case) are established through these processes. Once rule is understood as dispersed, a second key contribution of these debates is their attention to the ways in which state and non-state (effect) are produced. In neo- Gramscian accounts, the process of hegemony is central to realizing the potential of the state. Hegemony refers to a process involving the maintenance of one social group s

7 Bulkeley and Schroeder 749 dominance over subordinate groups, accomplished through relations of consent and coercion as well as through the reproduction of the social relations that are foundational to [this] social formation (Ekers and Loftus, 2008: 702). Hegemony thus presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised (Gramsci, 1971: 161). Ekers et al. (2009) suggest that two, often overlooked, aspects of hegemony are particularly important for understanding its dynamic. First, hegemony only takes on meaning in the context of the concrete, lived practices through which it is enacted and, second, although hegemonic projects consist of attempts to achieve some type of universalism, this requires the articulation of a range of dispersed elements, pointing to the multiple sites through which hegemony is forged as well as to its contested and provisional nature (Ekers et al., 2009: 289; see also McGuirk, 2004). These dynamics mean that rather than being fixed and stable, hegemony is a contingent and contested process, one which requires continual work between the state and other social groups and where, through various forms of agency and strategy, subordinate groups seek to challenge the dominant social order (Levy and Egan, 2003). As a result, the state and its capacity to govern is neither pregiven nor assured ; rather, it is a potential and can only be accomplished through activating specific conjunctures of social, economic, and political forces (McGuirk, 2004: 1022). As strategically constructed concrete programmes of action, hegemonic projects provide the means through which specific institutional state forms are generated and the agendas of dominant interests advanced (McGuirk, 2004: 1023). Conventionally, the state is seen as critical in forging and maintaining the unity of identity and interests in any given power bloc, which in turn provides the base of support for state projects (McGuirk, 2004: 1023). This is not a process open to all interests equally. Bob Jessop, in his strategic relational approach, suggests that at work is a dynamic system of strategic selectivity (Jessop, 2002: 463) where some interests, policy issues, and policy forms are privileged over others and more likely to be institutionalised, enabling them to be strategically drawn together or unified in a particular conjuncture through which governance capacity is activated (McGuirk, 2004: 1023). Rather than being a readily identifiable, a priori, categorization, what makes up the state (and by extension non-state) is constituted through the process of governing. This in turn suggests that authority does not reside with some actors and institutions because of their designation either side of a fixed state/non-state boundary, but is created in and through governing. This emphasis within neo-gramscian perspectives on the role of hegemonic projects as programmes of action, in generating the institutional, discursive and material basis of the state (and by extension non-state), has resonances with the emphasis in studies of governmentality on how governing is produced. However, rather than cohering around particular interests, as neo-gramscian accounts suggest, here government is regarded as a response to particular problematics relating to the condition of the population and has as its purpose the improvement of such conditions relating to, for example, wealth, longevity and health (Foucault, 2009: 105). Governing through the conduct of conduct requires distinct rationalities, or mentalities, dominant logics (Ekers and Loftus, 2008: 703) through which the objects of government its ends, means and limits (Lockwood and Davidson, 2010: 391) are established and pursued (Foucault, 2000a: 344).

8 750 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) In essence, governmental rationalities like hegemonic projects provide the means through which actors attempt to organize institutional spaces and the conduct of others in line with specific aims and objectives (Raco and Imrie, 2000: 2190). Critical to the exercise of governmental rationalities are the techniques, the practices, that give concrete form to this new political rationality (Foucault, 2000c: 410), which both make rationalities visible and permit their extension through time and space whilst also reconfiguring the basis and rationality of government (Murdoch, 2000: 505). At the heart of this understanding of government as the conduct of conduct achieved through governmental rationalities and techniques is a notion of subjects as actively produced by and through the process of governing. This is critical, as Foucault (2009: 107) suggests, for managing the population does not mean just managing the collective mass of phenomenon or managing them simply at the level of their overall results; managing the population means managing it in depth, in all its fine points and details. Subjects are regarded as individuals and their institutions, which are both potentially governable through agency of their responses to direction, as well as being capable of thinking and acting in a manner contrary to that being sought by the governors (Lockwood and Davidson, 2010: 390). For Foucault (2000a: 342), power requires the possibility that things could be otherwise, of the condition of freedom, so that individual or collective subjects are faced with a field of possibilities in which several kinds of conduct, several ways of reacting and modes of behavior are available. Rather than relying on coercion or even active processes of consensus, governmentality therefore involves the creation of selfgoverning subjects. In drawing attention to the processes of problematization the ways in which the objects of governing are discerned and made known the rationalities and technologies through which conduct is shaped, and the particular subjectivities that are enacted to achieve these ends, governmentality perspectives provide a rich account of how the hegemonic projects identified in neo-gramscian analysis as critical to the foundation of the state come into being. It is through these means that the practical programmes (Murray Li, 2007b) or regimes of practice (Dean, 1999; Lockwood and Davidson, 2010) which constitute government are created and, by extension, forms of state/nonstate subjectivity and public/private authority are constituted and contested. Importantly, rather than seeing the state as a coherent entity, viewing the state as an assemblage of practices and rationales means that any unity the state might achieve tends to be no more than provisional [so that] the liberal state is likely to be multi-centred and tied into diverse sets of relations with external actors (Murdoch and Ward, 1997: 311). Like neo-gramscian approaches, governmentality perspectives therefore suggest that in seeking to examine the process of global environmental governance, analysts need to attend to the provisional nature of state/non-state subjectivities and the ways in which these are constituted through the process of governing. The third key contribution that these bodies of work provide is in drawing our attention to the practical ways in which governing is achieved. While Ekers and Loftus (2008: 706) argue that a neo-gramscian perspective can provide a means of engaging with the lived experience of hegemony, the ways in which it is created and sustained through the circulation of power within the socio-natural fabric of, in their case, the provision and use of water, it is within the field of governmentality that the analysis of the practice of governing has been most

9 Bulkeley and Schroeder 751 developed (Okereke et al., 2009). Rather than focusing on the social as the sphere of government, Foucault draws attention to the ways in which governing is conducted through the social/material/natural complex, for the things government must be concerned about are men in their relationships, bonds and complex involvements with things like wealth, resources, means of subsistence, and, of course, the territory (Foucault, 2009: 98). Developing this line of thought within contemporary work on governmentality, government is regarded as requiring the assemblage or alignment not only of diverse social actors but of materials, artefacts, infrastructures and so on, in order both to circumscribe the object to be governed and to achieve the right disposition of things within which subjectivities are forged. Liberal government, Rose and Miller (1992: 180) suggest, is dependent on the forging of alliances between political strategies, diverse forms of authority and citizens in attempts to modulate events, decisions and actions in the economy, the family, the private firm and the conduct of the individual person. This requires, as they go on to argue, that a multitude of connections are established through a complex assemblage of diverse forces legal, architectural, professional, administrative, financial, judgmental such that aspects of the decisions and actions of individuals, groups, organizations, and populations come to be understood and regulated in relation to authoritative criteria (Rose and Miller, 1992: 183). In a development of this approach, Murray Li (2007a: 288) suggests that the key dynamic is one of forging alignments, involving the processes in which social and material entities are configured around particular conceptions of a problem and the ways in which it might be addressed, in turn making particular forms of government possible (Murray Li, 2007a; Rutland and Aylett, 2008). As a result, an explicit, calculated programme of intervention [of government] is not the produce of a singular intention or will. It draws upon and is situated within a heterogeneous assemblage of artefacts, knowledge, authority, agency and so on (Murray Li, 2007b: 6). The implications for our understanding of global environmental governance are twofold. First, that material entities infrastructures, technologies, artefacts are critical to the operation of government and, following our arguments above, to the constitution of state/non-state subjectivities and the nature of authority. Second, that processes of alignment and assemblage are crucial means through which governing takes shape, in turn serving to constitute (state and non-state) subjectivities and authority. In summary, rather than seeing the state (and non-state) as real [entities] that [facilitate] and [impose] changes Gramsci and Foucault turn this conception on its head through detailing how the state is constantly reproduced through changing [social and material] practices (Ekers and Loftus, 2008: 710). Rather than focusing on the actors involved in global environmental governance, their motivations, resources, power and so on, these perspectives suggest that in order to understand the processes and outcomes of governing climate change, analysis should focus on the hegemonic projects or programmes through which the objects and subjects of governing are constituted and contested, and through which the form and nature of the state and authority are accomplished. This in turn demands attention to the discourses/rationalities and technologies of governing, and the ways in which projects (selectively) align and assemble diverse entities to achieve their aims, either directly or by ensuring the selfgovernment of relevant actors.

10 752 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) In the next section, we consider the potential of such insights for understanding the governance of climate change in global cities. Following our arguments above, we first consider the ways in which addressing the problematic of climate change in the city has entailed forging a hegemonic consensus, revealing the contested and provisional nature of this process and the ways in which state and non-state subjectivities have been constituted in the making of urban climate governance. We then turn to examine the ways in which governing climate change in the city has taken place through the alignment of social and material objects to achieve the right disposition of things through which authority is established. Global cities and the governing of climate change Global cities, 5 including London and Los Angeles which provide the basis for our analysis here, are an intriguing case through which to examine the implications of rethinking the divides between state/non-state actors and public/private authority. First, institutions of municipal government are charged with the responsibilities and powers of the state but their responses to climate change have involved various forms of partnership and networking in order both to discharge particular duties and to move beyond the boundaries of their official competencies. In this manner, we suggest, cities straddle the boundaries between state/non-state, public/private authority and hence provide an important window through which to examine these categorizations. Second, global cities are increasingly recognized as relevant to debates on climate change because of their potential contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases and their political mobilization around the issue (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2007; Kern and Bulkeley, 2009). Our research on London and Los Angeles was carried out between September 2007 and August Although neo-gramscian and governmentality theory entail different methodological approaches, one common point of entry is the analysis of the discursive practices involved in the creation of hegemonic projects (e.g. McGuirk, 2004) and governmental rationalities (e.g. Murray Li, 2007b). In order to access the discursive practices emerging in relation to the urban governance of climate change, in each case study documentary analysis was undertaken and semi-structured interviews conducted. We sought specifically to understand the relationship between state and non-state actors in the governing of climate change, and to ascertain the importance, or otherwise, of a post international climate agreement in these dynamics. Following the emphasis placed in studies of governmentality on the technologies of government, we also sought explicitly to understand how the process of governing was being conducted the tools, techniques, devices and so on that were being created in order to translate discourses into practical programmes. In the rest of this section, we draw upon our analyses of these discursive and material practices. First, we examine how the problematization of climate change entails the (contested) process of establishing consensus, one in which the climate subjectivities of state and non-state actors are normalized. We argue that this process is critical to the production of the effect of the state (and of the non-state). We show that this is a dynamic process, in which not only do institutions of the state seek to determine the conduct of others, but non-state actors also shape the extent and limits of the state. Second, we consider how the authority of this hegemonic project or programme of

11 Bulkeley and Schroeder 753 intervention is created and maintained, drawing attention to the work (Rutland and Aylett, 2008) of policy in aligning diverse social and material elements through which governing is conducted. In so doing, we demonstrate that the authority to govern does not emerge a priori from actors and their institutions, but is rather created through the process of alignment, in turn suggesting that the terms public and private have limited explanatory power in revealing the authority to govern. Creating consensus As indicated above, climate change has become a significant issue on the political agenda in both London and Los Angeles. While individual borough councils across the Greater London area had been involved in climate change policy and initiatives during the preceding decade, it was the formation of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the office of the Mayor of London in 2000 that provided the opportunity for the development of climate policy across the city. This led to various partnership initiatives, changes in planning requirements, the formation of the London Climate Change Agency to develop new markets and technologies, the ambitious goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by 60 percent by 2025, and the introduction of a new duty on the Mayor of London to address both climate mitigation and adaptation. In terms of mitigation, climate change has primarily been conceived as an energy problem, and the emphasis has been both on changing domestic and commercial practices of energy consumption, and on changing the infrastructures of energy supply: The Mayor s top priority for reducing carbon emissions is to move as much of London as possible away from reliance on the national grid and on to local, lower-carbon energy supply. The Mayor s goal is to enable a quarter of London s energy supply to be moved off the grid and on to local, decentralised systems by 2025, with more than half of London s energy being supplied in this way by (GLA, 2007: 105) In Los Angeles, attention was focused on climate change in 2005 with the start of current Mayor Villaraigosa s term of office. In calling to dare to imagine Los Angeles as the cleanest and greenest big city in America and advocating that the great cities of the 21st century will be places where residents are at home in vibrant, clean, and sustainable communities (Villaraigosa, 2005), the Mayor mobilized local environmental and community-based groups to form a coalition, Green LA. Green LA has aimed to provide environmental guidance and expertise to the City of Los Angeles in an exciting model of collaboration between decision-makers and advocates (Green LA, 2006: 3). As we discuss in more detail below, members of Green LA assisted in the drafting of the Los Angeles action plan, Green LA: An Action Plan to Lead the Nation in Fighting Global Warming, issued in May 2007, which commits the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent by 2030 of 1990 levels. Measures included in the action plan address both mitigation and adaptation. Energy and water consumption are not only seen as significant in terms of emissions of greenhouse gases but also in terms of security, and in relation to concerns over increasing demand for energy and water from a growing population. In this manner, climate change has been seen to resonate with other issues on the local political agenda.

12 754 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) In each case, therefore, climate change has moved rapidly up the urban agenda as a problem with which government should be concerned. In keeping with the dispersed nature of rule identified in neo-gramscian and governmentality scholarship, we argue that this has involved diverse actors in the government of urban populations and political economies, in turn giving rise to new coalitions coalescing around the consensus achieved in particular programmes of intervention or hegemonic projects. Our case studies suggest that both traditional political arenas (e.g. the planning system) and new political spaces (e.g. public/private partnerships) have been central to this process. In London, the problematization of climate change in relation to energy supply and consumption has been manifest through the planning system and the emphasis on the creation of alternative energy infrastructures within new developments. In this process, the nature and responsibilities of the state in this case a municipal authority and non-state actors, particularly the business community, have been contested and reconfigured. This process was initiated in the London Plan with its requirement that 10 percent of predicted energy demand for a new development should be met through on-site generation (GLA, 2004), with the caveat that this would only occur where feasible. Subsequent alterations to the London Plan (GLA, 2008) sought to strengthen this approach such that new development would be required to demonstrate that heating, cooling and power systems were selected to minimize carbon dioxide emissions and to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent through on-site renewable energy generation. This strategy met with significant opposition from the business community, notably through London First, a body founded in 1992 by a number of major companies. Strongly represented among its principal sponsors are real estate developers, airport interests and professional services (Thornley et al., 2005: 1954). During the run-up to the first Mayoral election in 2000, London s business community through London First, the London Confederation of British Industry, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the City of London Corporation (which acts as the local government for the square mile and represents the interests of the financial and service sector businesses located there) sought to shape the strategic agenda in a number of ways and achieved a close working relationship with the Mayor s office, through which policy was determined (Thornley et al., 2005). Thornley et al. (2005) argue that the relation between state and business actors in London is one of mutual dependency, in which the Mayor was reliant on the business sector for support and finance in order to implement strategy and lobby central government for resources, but the strategic importance of decisions over, for example, infrastructure for business was such that the Mayor was also able to extract benefits and pursue his own policy agendas, particularly with respect to social cohesion. A consensus over the need to protect and promote London s competitiveness, particularly with respect to the financial and services sector, and address the issues of transport was established, while other issues and agendas were excluded or marginalized (Thornley et al., 2005). In essence, coalition between state and business actors, at the urban scale, led to the production of a hegemonic understanding of the purpose of governing London in which efficiency and competitiveness were to be pursued in order to realize (some forms of) social or environmental benefit. In this context, the pursuit of relatively radical plans for the contribution of new developments to novel energy supply technologies appears to sit rather awkwardly; lying

13 Bulkeley and Schroeder 755 outside the hegemonic understandings of what London s governance is for, that it attracted business opposition is of little surprise. What is instructive, however, is the manner in which opposition was orchestrated. In the process of the review of the London Plan, London First suggested that they were: deeply concerned about the proposed requirement for 20% CO 2 reduction through on-site renewable energy coupled with the proposed hierarchy for heating systems. The desire for 10% renewable energy, which is not currently policy in the London Plan is subject to the important caveat where feasible and has not been in place long enough to be properly tested and implemented. Policy should retain where feasible the test for which should be financial viability. (London First, 2006) Yet rather than seeking to contest the legitimacy of governing for climate change mitigation, London First sought to position itself as critical to its achievement, arguing that: Much of this agenda, especially with respect to renewable energy technology, is new and challenging and requires a partnership approach between the policy-makers and developers. London First would welcome the opportunity to work with the Mayor and his team on ensuring that the climate change objectives are met whilst still encouraging development. (London First, 2006: para. 8) At stake here was not, somewhat surprisingly, the idea that London should provide a quarter of its energy supply from decentralized sources, but rather where responsibility for achieving this end might lie. Interviewees suggested that there were lots of very good reasons to pursue this target, with climate change and energy security at the top of the list. They were not querying whether the 25 percent is right or wrong or achievable, but rather the approach in which developers would be responsible for achieving 20 percent reductions on a site-by-site basis; in effect, their construction as subjects who should be responsible for low carbon development in the emerging problematization of urban climate governance. In so doing, they sought to challenge the reach of the state and where its boundaries should lie, while also positioning the business sector as part of the integral state through which climate change should be governed. This challenge was partially successful. The final draft of the London Plan (GLA, 2008: 205) includes the caveat that the goal of 20 percent on-site generation of renewable energy is required unless it can be demonstrated that such provision is not feasible. Feasibility, then, is not something that can merely be claimed; it will need to be demonstrated in the face of a presumption that developments will achieve a reduction in carbon dioxide of 20 percent from on site renewable energy generation (GLA, 2008: 205). At the same time, London First have sought to set the agenda with respect to the development of decentralized energy through commissioning Buro Happold to examine the barriers to achieving the objective of decentralizing 25 percent of London s energy by 2025 and how they might be overcome. London First is contributing to the governing of climate change in a dual fashion, both through strategies of opposition and through seeking to establish a new consensus about what it might entail to decentralize London s energy system. This example suggests that far from being the stable

14 756 European Journal of International Relations 18(4) and coherent entities oft associated with the term hegemony, dominant, consensual rationalities are forged through dissent and conflict as new sites and processes, in this case energy supply and new development, are problematized as objects requiring programmatic attention in order to address climate change in the city. Rather than view power as a set of fixed capacities, this case points to a more productive account of power, of its working through actions on possible actions through incitement, inducement, seduction, and constraint (Foucault, 2000a: 341) in order to produce consensus. In this process, actors, in seeking to govern their own conduct and that of others in the urban political economy, constitute the domain to be governed and its limits: state-based institutions seek to develop particular subjectivities for elite non-state actors, while at the same time these strategically important actors seek to define the proper limits of the state. As McGuirk and Dowling (2009: 178) find in their study of the urban development of Sydney, rather than the increasing involvement of non-state actors in urban governance amounting to privatization, what can be discerned in these increasingly hybrid political spaces are complex and contingent enactments of publicness and privateness as new forms of public and private are being constituted through governance projects and practices. Critically, it is through these processes that the potential or effect of the state (and, by extension, the non-state) and the limits to government are realized (Foucault, 2008: 12). Given that neoliberal government has shown a propensity to sustain and generate hybrid practices (Lockwood and Davidson, 2010: 388), it is perhaps unsurprising to find similar processes at work in Los Angeles, though in this case it has been primarily environmental rather than business groups who have engaged in the process of establishing a (contested) consensus over what governing climate change in the city should involve. This involved the formation of Green LA: a coalition of folks that came together, 70 organizations from grassroots environmental justice groups to mainstream environmental organizations like Environmental Defense or NRDC and everybody in between. The interesting piece about that is it rarely happens if at all and especially in Los Angeles with the history of many tensions around different issues we saw folks coming together because there was leadership that would move a strong and progressive environmental agenda. (LA interviewee, September 2007). Green LA, then, became involved in the writing of the climate change action plan, orchestrated by the city government, in order to address their perceived shortcomings in reaching beyond the institutional boundaries of the state: when we were developing our climate change plan we called on their assistance and their efforts or input into our plan to frame it in a way that was real, to frame it that was doable and also to frame it in a way that would bring the vision out there to get the folks to do. Government cannot do the many things that we would like the general public to do and you know their reach is different than ours, the type of language, if you will, how you deal with folks, is different in the advocacy world than it is in the government world. (LA interviewee, September 2007)

15 Bulkeley and Schroeder 757 As Foucault suggests (2008: ), the creation of civil society is critical to the exercise of a liberal governmentality. In this case, the coalition of environmental (and labour) organizations brought together under the Green LA banner was seen as important, as this interviewee suggests, in making the plan real, and in offering a reach that government did not have in seeking to effect the governing of climate change through the development of an integral state. At the same time, non-state actors sought to anticipate and comply with the emerging consensus: Many of us who are environmental leaders in Los Angeles contributed to the development of this piece we contributed new policy ideas that could be developed. A part of this though was we knew some of the pieces the mayor was interested in. We know what area and direction he wanted to go in. So there are some policy questions that are enormous, that this administration will not face in light of some of the demands of the issue. (LA interviewee, September 2007) These enormous questions relate primarily to transport and public transit; in a context where the transport sector accounts for over half of the city s carbon dioxide emissions, it was left largely untouched at the stage of forging the LA action plan. Major barriers identified were cost, a lack of public support and in places outright opposition, and the limits of municipal jurisdiction. Raising finance was seen to be particularly problematic, given the dependence on either local taxation (which would need to be agreed in a local ballot) or the California Transport Commission, whose mission was regarded, along with the transit agency, CALTRANS, as building more roads. In knowing what area and direction the Mayor and the administration wanted to go in, and avoiding the issue of transportation, non-state actors effectively worked with the state to create a particular governmental rationality or hegemonic understanding of the nature of urban climate governance. At the same time, by effectively leaving out organized labour, the business community and the financial community, as one interviewee put it, this hegemony is only partial, and stands to be contested by other powerful actors in the city. Moreover, the key role that non-state actors played in the development of climate policy became hidden from public view in the final stages of the development of the plan when in the final edition it was decided not to include mention of the environmental organizations which had input into the plan (LA interviewee, September 2008). The reliance on and disavowal of non-state actors, and the fragile consensus created, is testament to the strategic nature of problematizing urban climate governance. Rather than this being a process that rests only with the state, this example shows how non-state actors play a critical role in delimiting the object of urban climate governance and what constitutes the state/ non-state boundary in this particular arena. Forging alignment, authorizing government if you stake out a goal what you do is you then rally the city s agency and the public behind that goal that you can accomplish this. (LA interviewee, September 2007). Using the analytical insights developed from neo-gramscian and governmentality theories in the first part of this article, our analysis of the urban governance of climate change