by Aaron Deslatte, Michael D Siciliano and Rachel M. Krause
In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Aaron Deslatte, Michael D. Siciliano and Rachel M. Krause offer a new perspective on how local governments manage collaboration when implementing climate-related infrastructure—particularly electric vehicle (EV) policy. Drawing on the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, they argue that successful coordination depends not only on external partnerships between governments, but also on the internal organisation of responsibility across departments within a single authority.
The article addresses a central challenge in urban sustainability: while EV infrastructure is essential to decarbonisation goals, it requires cooperation across jurisdictions and across siloed departments such as planning, public works and sustainability units. Yet most scholarship treats internal and external collaboration separately. This study argues that they are interdependent—and that cities need to consider both types of collective action simultaneously.
Empirically, the authors draw on two sources: a 2022 survey of all U.S. municipalities with populations over 20,000 (achieving a 22.5% response rate), and a case study of the Chicago Metropolitan Mayors Caucus EV Readiness Program. The survey reveals that cities with dedicated sustainability units tend to collaborate with a larger number of other municipalities and involve more departments in EV policy delivery. For example, cities with a sustainability coordinator reported working with an average of 3.7 external partners, compared to 1.0 for those without.
The Chicago case study reinforces these insights. The Mayors Caucus launched a checklist and cohort programme to support local EV readiness, incentivising cities to commit staff time, review zoning and permitting barriers, and coordinate station placement with regional actors. These cohort programmes required both horizontal collaboration (with other cities and regional partners) and functional collaboration (across internal departments). In this way, the case illustrates how governance arrangements within a municipality can enable—or constrain—its capacity to engage externally.
One of the article’s key theoretical contributions is a visual framework linking the degree of internal centralisation and decentralisation with different types of external integration mechanisms. The authors argue that as policy complexity and risk increase, cities are more likely to adopt formalised mechanisms—such as contracts or regional authorities—but only if their internal structures can support such coordination. For example, a centralised sustainability office may help cities absorb the transaction costs of more formal partnerships.
Deslatte, Siciliano and Krause conclude by calling for greater integration of ICA theory into studies of climate governance. They note that while the horizontal and vertical dimensions of collaboration have received significant attention, the functional dimension—how responsibilities are organised within local governments—remains underexplored. Future research, they suggest, should examine how these internal and external arrangements evolve together over time, particularly as large-scale climate investments roll out across U.S. cities.
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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Deslatte, A., Siciliano, M.D. and Krause, R.M. (2024). Applying collective action frameworks to analyse local-level collaboration for electric vehicle-related policies. Policy & Politics, 53, 3, 443-463, available from: <https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736y2024d000000034>
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