The Structure of City Action: Institutional Embeddedness and Sustainability Practices in U.S. Cities

• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074020930362
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Structure of City Action:

Institutional Embeddedness and

Sustainability Practices in U.S. Cities

Christof Brandtner

1,2

and David Sua

´rez

3

Abstract

Cities often embrace policies to take responsibility for social problems such as battling climate change, maintaining civil and

human rights, or planning for economic development. Why cities and their administrations differ in their propensity to enact

policy innovations and public management reforms is not obvious. Drawing on sociological institutionalism, we posit that

cities adopt actions that they deem appropriate in response to institutional pressures, both local and shared. Using sur vey

and administrative data from the sustainability practices of 1,540 municipal governments throughout the United States, we

demonstrate the effects of underexplored mimetic and normative influences on cities. Cities in innovative states and regions

that embrace sustainability, cities that are characterized by organizational rationalization and have memberships in profes-

sional associations, and cities that accommodate expansive nonprofit sectors are the most likely to tackle threats to the

natural environment, controlling for a host of political, demographic, and administrative factors. We conclude by elaborating

a research agenda to further test our core proposition that nested institutional influences contribute to public sector

reform, offering an institutional theory of city action.

Keywords

institutional theory, urban sustainability, city administration, nonprofit organizations

Introduction

Cities often are portrayed as actors bearing responsibil-

ity for battling climate change, maintaining civil and

political rights, or planning for economic development

(Bae & Feiock, 2013; Kwon et al., 2009; Lubell et al.,

2005; Mazmanian & Kraft, 2009). It is not obvious,

however, why cities differ in their willingness to act

autonomously and purposively in support of policy

innovations. Public administration scholarship has iden-

tified many factors that can influence receptivity to a

proposed reform, ranging from the policy instrument

or practice itself to the substantive problem being

addressed as well as to the characteristics of govern-

ments and their context (F. Berry & Berry, 1990;

Feiock & West, 1993; Krause, 2011, 2012; Krebs &

Pelissero, 2010) This important work tends to follow a

“logic of consequence,” which means that theory focuses

on instrumental and actor-centric aspects of policy

adoption in city administrations.

Despite the considerable contributions of this frame-

work to public management theory and practice, the

effects of social structure on city innovation are

underexposed in light of the common emphasis on

public managers’ rational choices and strategic behavior

(Christensen, 2012; Frumkin & Galaskiewicz, 2004;

Gonza

´lez & Healey, 2005). In response, a growing

body of research has specified several structural factors

that spur the diffusion of innovations through a “logic of

appropriateness” (March & Olsen, 1983). Public admin-

istration research on policy expansion, or the enactment

of multiple reforms within a field, increasingly demon-

strates the relevance of peer influence, policy feedback,

and path dependence (Arnold & Long, 2019; Boehmke

& Witmer, 2004; Damanpour & Schneider, 2009;

Krause, 2011; McCabe et al., 2017; Nelson & Svara,

2012; Tolbert et al., 2008). The majority of structural

1

The University of Chicago, IL, USA

2

Stanford University, CA, USA

3

University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Corresponding Author:

Christof Brandtner, Department of Sociology and Mansueto Institute for

Urban Innovation, 1155 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Email: brandtner@uchicago.edu

American Review of Public Administration

2021, Vol. 51(2) 121–138

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020930362

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research on public sector reform, however, considers the

adoption of just one policy or practice, such as civil ser-

vice reform or a particular bill or ordinance (Steil &

Vasi, 2014; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983; Vasi & Strang,

2009). In addition, the level of analysis tends to be the

state or the country (nation-state) rather than the city

(F. Berry & Berry, 2018; Butler et al., 2017; DiMaggio &

Powell, 1983; Dobbin et al., 2007; Shipan &

Volden, 2008).

In this case, we draw on sociological institutionalism

to offer an institutional theory of cities’ divergent pro-

pensity to act autonomously and purposively in response

to social problems—city action. Even if the same pro-

cesses that influence states and countries also shape

lower levels of government, cities may respond different-

ly to those pressures, providing a clear justification for

concerted scholarly attention to indicators of public

sector reform at the city level. Moreover, atypical or

highly contextual factors can be critical for understand-

ing why a given policy or practice diffuses, limiting the

power of any such study to explain why cities might

differ in their general proclivity for reform. To better

understand the sources of variation in policy expansion

and innovation and to build knowledge on whether the

drivers and determinants of public sector reform exhibit

any consistent patterns across fields or policy domains,

we explore sustainability practices among U.S. cities.

Cities’ efforts to address environmental degradation

through sustainability have been considerable (Feiock

et al., 2014; Portney, 2003; Portney & Berry, 2010).

These activities matter a great deal because cities have

an outsized impact on the climate and cities have been

described as “first responders” to climate change; yearly

investments in climate technologies are projected to

reach some 80 billion dollars (Rosenzweig et al., 2010).

Cities are also sites of noteworthy experimentation for

how to approach local climate governance (Betsill &

Bulkeley 2007; Hoffmann, 2011). Yet, the majority of

cities do not subscribe to norms of sustainable urban

development and leave climate change effectively

“ungoverned” (Bulkeley, 2013). In the specific context

of sustainability practices, work on the institutional con-

ditions of city innovation has isolated such factors as

administrative capacity, transaction costs, and environ-

mental advocacy (Portney & Berry, 2015; Ramirez de la

Cruz, 2009; Wang et al., 2017). Cities that are larger and

more liberal face fewer political and institutional barriers

to implementing climate-related policies (Betsill &

Bulkeley 2007; Bulkeley, 2013).

While work on cities and sustainability has offered a

clear understanding of the functional constraints that

explain varying sustainability efforts, emphasis has

been placed on constraints that follow a “logic of con-

sequence.” For instance, Krause et al. (2019, p. 485)

suggest that “incentives of elected official[s] to distribute

visible and ‘localized’ benefits to residents” explain why

local governments pursue the protection of green space.

The authors acknowledge, though, that besides

“problem-solving, effectiveness-concerned decision-

making mechanisms,” local governments may also

choose environmental policies through “nonrational,

legitimacy-concerned decision-making mechanisms”

(p. 281). Consistent with the latter, neo-institutional

theory has pointed to the important set of influences

that render the adoption of policies related to the envi-

ronment legitimate (Frank et al., 2000; Hironaka, 2014;

Lee et al., 2011; Schofer & Hironaka, 2005). Like other

levels of government, municipalities respond to top-

down pressures from the state, nation-state, and global

institutions that encourage local action as well as hori-

zontal spillovers from other cities. These macrolevel

external influences play out through various mechanisms

analogous to work on isomorphic community effects

(DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Frumkin & Galaskiewicz,

2004; Marquis & Battilana, 2009).

As a result, we view cities as nested in multiple insti-

tutional fields and therefore are subject to diverse exter-

nal cultural influences that shape their behavior. Similar

to U.S. states or nation-states, cities choose their actions

not in a social vacuum but in response to institutional

pressures (Vasi, 2007; Vasi & Strang, 2009). And like

other types of organizations, cities are embedded in a

social, political, and cultural environment that influences

the form and content of their behavior (Gonza

´lez &

Healey, 2005; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). We consider var-

iation by extending public management research to pro-

pose that the embeddedness of the city administrations

in a nested institutional environment structures city

action. That not all components of this institutional con-

text are shared with other cities explain homogeneity as

well as diversity among cities.

Using survey and administrative data from the sus-

tainability practices of 1,540 municipal governments

throughout the United States, we demonstrate the effects

of underexplored mimetic and normative influences on

cities. Cities in innovative states and regions that

embrace sustainability, cities characterized by organiza-

tional rationalization and have memberships in profes-

sional associations, and cities that accommodate

expansive nonprofit sectors are the most likely to

tackle threats to the natural environment, controlling

for a host of demographic, political, and geographic

factors. These findings are consistent with our

framework.

The article proceeds by providing a brief overview of

the literature on the public administration of cities and

establishing our theory of city action. We then introduce

the conceptual frame for explaining variability in city

action, and we apply the framework to the substantive

policy domain of environmental sustainability.

122 American Review of Public Administration 51(2)