Academic attention to local climate policy usually focuses on large-sized cities. Given the climate challenges ahead this seems unjustified. Small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) deserve scholarly attention as well. The main question is: What factors influence climate change policy and local climate actions in SMCs? In this article we present an analytical framework to analyze climate change policy and local climate actions of SMCs. The framework addresses different aspects: policy-input, -throughput, -output, -outcome, characteristics of the local environment, local action arenas, influence by higher government levels, and interaction with climate change issue networks. The framework is used to analyze and compare four case studies of SMCs in the Dutch region of Twente (two urban and two rural municipalities, and addresses both adaptation and mitigation). Results show that both ‘localist’, ‘multi-level’ and issue network membership factors influence local climate policy action. Governance modes discerned concern mostly ‘governing by authority’ and ‘self-governing’. When reflecting on the role of SMCs in climate action the study revealed the importance of local capacity building schemes issued by provincial government, inter-municipal network collaboration, and the potential for local governments to mobilize and organize citizen action.

The central questions of this book are how technologies decline, how societies deal with technologies in decline, and how governance may be explicitly oriented towards parting with ‘undesirable’ technology. Surprisingly, these questions are fairly novel. Thus far, the dominant interest in historical, economic, sociological and political studies of technology has been to understand how novelty emerges, how innovation can open up new opportunities and how such processes may be supported. This innovation bias reflects how in the last centuries modern societies have embraced technology as a vehicle of progress. It is timely, however, to broaden the social study of technology and society: next to considering the rise of technologies, their fall should be addressed, too. Dealing with technologies in decline is an important challenge or our times, as socio-technical systems are increasingly part of the problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequalities and geo-political tensions. This volume presents empirical studies of technologies in decline, as well as conceptual clarifications and theoretical deepening. Technologies in Decline presents an emerging research agenda for the study of technological decline, emphasising the need for a plurality of perspectives. Given that destabilisation and discontinuation are seen as a way to accelerate sustainability transitions, this book will be of interest to academics, students and policy makers researching and working in the areas of sustainability science and policy, economic geography, innovation studies, and science and technology studies.

Research interest: This paper aims at a better understanding of the governance of the abandonment of socio-technical regimes through the example of the incandescent light bulb phase-out in the European Union and in the Netherlands as one specific case where the EU discontinuation policy has been implemented. In particular, with this paper we focus on the active and intended discontinuation of a socio-technical regime through dedicated governance. Methods: We approached the phase-out of the incandescent light bulb from a qualitative perspective and analysed about 230 documents from the EU and Dutch level. The study has an explorative character, for we cannot claim to describe the entire policy process, but bring to surface some key issues in order to outline both governance foci and technicalities of governing the phase-out. We looked into how governance makers were actually structuring the ILB phase-out as a governance task. The specific framings we found were grouped into the (a) spectrum of governance dimensions, (b) the more detailed problem-types raised, and (c) the array of discontinuation issues addressed in policy discourse dedicated to negotiating, drafting and implementing the phase-out measures. Results: A set of frames apparent in the discontinuation discourses in the EU and the Netherlands has been reconstructed, which entails the five governance dimensions ‘policy instruments’, ‘implementation’, ‘strictness’, ‘monitoring’, and ‘policy level’. Technical details of both the socio-technical products to be banned and the replacing products have been the subject of meticulous negotiations in order to be able to implement the big picture, the lightbulb ban, appropriately and appropriately for both industry and environmental associations. The design of discontinuation governance at national and EU level are closely intertwined, but not identical in all aspects. The complexity of the governance task is therefore high. Conclusions: Discontinuation has to cope with some resistance to dedicated, forced change that takes place in a technically as well as socially highly complex context. Governing the phase-out of a technical device, a production infrastructure, and industry support policy once supposed to support the EU and Dutch ILB industry was a major techno-political challenge, where policymakers needed to grasp key technical and technological problems. These were related to ILBs as objects, to subjects such as engineers and scientists, lobbyists and disinterested experts, to civil society organisations and mass media, along with all sorts of political and administrative issues and discourses. The challenges are threefold: first, translating for each other what cannot be known from one’s own background, second, shutting down governance which so far fostered lighting industry and, third, helping to change parts of this industry from an old, incumbent one to a new, emerging socio-technical regime with a regime providing a political and regulatory framework for it.

The discontinuation aftercare question is one not only of governmental public policy, but also of markets as well as civil and socio-cultural movements. In this chapter, the author reviews the literature on Strategic Niche Management (SNM) in conjunction with the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) as a reference point for reflections on discontinuation and aftercare. Niche processes have been studied from an early stage for their role in destabilising an established regime. The only difference with aftercare niches is that the establishment of a new regime should not be based on the old, repressed socio-technical system that is still preserved in the niche for a grace period, but on a completely different one that will not feed on the niche. This involves the assumption that aftercare takes place either in a niche or after passing through a niche situation. Two exemplary cases, the discontinuation of nuclear energy production and the incandescent light bulb, are analysed in terms of how discontinuation trajectories that are almost completed lead to a phase of aftercare; this may continue for some time and present various challenges for discontinuation governance as an ongoing endeavour. Doing less with a socio-technical system that was once operational in its entirety turns out to be quite a demanding endeavour for governance-making. It takes aftercare to deal with the challenge. There are hints that discontinuation aftercare does not only know the alternatives of the very long whimper or the sudden bang.

This chapter is about the purposeful discontinuation of a socio-technical regime, no matter what stage or path of development, maturity, or age. “Discontinuation” means the rather actively pursued exit from a socio-technical regime. Discontinuation is not the opposite of innovation, but of continuation. The phenomenon itself cannot be subsumed under existing concepts, patterns, and models; existing research was too often blind for the interplay between discontinuity, socio-technical phenomena, and governance, and therefore the optics for grasping it in an adequate way need to be invented. In the chapter, an overview is developed of approaches that offer the chance to get to the bottom of discontinuation governance-in-action. A number of relevant existing concepts are introduced that can help increase the awareness of discontinuation governance. The chapter concludes with a series of challenges that discontinuation governance research is currently facing.