Overcoming institutional inertia: How cities can foster urban climate mitigation policy

This thesis investigates the situation of institutional inertia in terms of climate mitigation policy at the Federal government level of the USA, and how New York City (NYC) has been able to overcome this inertia through the establishment of climate mitigation policies at the urban level. The research aims to discover the five drivers of institutional inertia mentioned in academic literature (power, cost, path-dependency, uncertainty, legitimacy) within the real- life case study of NYC.

Therefore, it is examined how the two most recent Mayors of NYC, Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013) and Bill de Blasio (2014-present), have been reacting on the inertia by establishing their own urban legislation for climate mitigation. Thus, the main research questions of the thesis at hand are: To which extent can cities facilitate the establishment of urban climate mitigation policies? Which ones are the characteristics of institutional inertia? Through which processes is urban mitigation policy established in New York City? Which impactful climate mitigation policies has New York City come up with between 2002-2020 in order to overcome the Federal institutional inertia? Based on the fieldwork outputs of this thesis, which of the three strands of New Institutionalism describes best the institutional inertia observed at the US Federal government level?