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Explaining collaboration between actors involved in policy processes is crucial for understanding these processes and their outcomes. The policy science literature has advanced several hypotheses explicating what enables or hinders collaboration. However, only a handful of studies compare these factors across different policy contexts. This paper investigates the role of beliefs and influence in shaping collaboration under conditions of high and low conflict by estimating Exponential Random Graph Models using network survey data on the climate policy domains in four countries. Results show that both beliefs and influence are associated with the formation of collaboration ties in the high conflict contexts of South Korea and the United States, whereas neither are significant in the low conflict contexts of Sweden and Switzerland. By considering the level of conflict, our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of when beliefs and influence shape collaboration patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co‐benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]