A local governance initiative for climate mitigation: the place-leading role of local government

The aim of this paper is to contribute with an understanding of the governance capacity of local public actors to be place leaders for local collaborative initiatives aimed at addressing climate mitigation, and how this agency is embedded within place-specific institutional conditions. The research design is a single case study of a climate mitigation initiative in the city of Uppsala in Sweden. The discussion based on the empirical results highlights three findings. Firstly, that the political and administrative arms of local government interact in their capacity to be place leaders in local interventions. Secondly, that the capacity of local government to provide place leadership needs to be conceived in relation to the place and the institutional structure of the local environment. Thirdly, that the role of place leader for governance is imbued with governance dilemmas deriving from how the steering role is negotiated. The concluding discussion argues for the need of a detailed understanding of place-leading agency to achieve a deeper understanding of governance capacity. This paper illustrates that place leadership is multifaceted and means different things across the cycles of collaborative governance. The concluding discussion also stresses the importance of understanding governance dilemmas in making actors prepared to strategically take position for their involvement and engagement in collaborations. This means that maintaining collaborative governance is an important strategy for meeting social challenges, but that this needs to be developed based on thorough knowledge about the intrinsic conditions for such arrangements and processes.