Germany is often viewed as a climate and environmental leader, and its model of cooperative federalism meant that public bodies at different levels of government were well-placed to coordinate an early transition away from nuclear power and towards renewable energy. However, although some German states (Länder) have highly developed green economy sectors, other areas (particularly in the eastern part of the country) are still heavily reliant on fossil fuel extraction and combustion. Given that the federal system provides different interests with multiple venues to push their cause and veto more ambitious initiatives, this has contributed to divergence in climate policy at the subnational level, largely reflecting the political and socio-economic contexts of the different Länder. Individual states are also restricted by the fact that policies in key sectors (such as emissions trading, automobile standards and transport infrastructure) are made at the EU or federal levels. Given that progress at these higher tiers of governance is often very slow in the absence of consensus, the differences between various Länder could mean that climate policymaking within the German system becomes less cooperative, and the country fails to achieve its mitigation and adaptation objectives.

Trump and his administration brazenly interpreted laws to expand the president’s powers to open public lands and seas to drilling, to limit states’ powers to protect their waters from oil and gas infrastructure, and to advance deregulation in the oil and gas sector. The district courts ruled against the Trump administration and federal agencies in several (but not all) instances, and with the Biden administration in power, many of these cases will not proceed to the higher courts. The more long-lasting legacy of the Trump administration is his reshaping of the federal judiciary, made possible with the support of the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, congressional Republicans and an array of conservative and corporate stakeholders. Judges’ views of the administrative state, i.e., as an ally in protecting individuals against powerful corporations or as a foe to personal liberty and property rights, often color their decisions. Trump nominated judges who are skeptical of the administrative state and who lean towards legal interpretations that limit Congress’s ability to enact expansive environmental laws and that limit agencies’ statutory powers. Trump’s appointments – three Supreme Court judges and more than a quarter of active federal court judges – shifted the courts toward deregulation.

This chapter provides a reassessment of competence allocation and exercise under the UK constitution. It shows how the existing allocation needs to be understood through the prism of EU membership, and supports previously provided by the EU’s governance system. In particular, the EU’s commitment to subsidiarity, under which decisions should be taken at the lowest effective level, and its openness to regional concerns, carved out space for the exercise of devolved competence within a system of cooperative multilevel governance. This is in stark contrast to the near autonomous coexistence of the different governments within the UK nation state. As the UK embarks on the process of leaving the EU, its internal distribution of power is subjected to a recentralisation of competence. Informed by the literature on comparative federalism, it argues that there is a need for an effective domestic replacement for the shared competence space previously provided by the EU’s cooperative federalist system of governance. Powerful challenges have come from an attachment to the model of autonomous coexistence of central and devolved levels of government, reinforced by a resurgent principle of Westminster parliamentary sovereignty. Without an effective commitment to shared governance however, the Union’s future is in serious doubt.