Sustainability governance in public administration: Interpreting practical governance arrangements in Swiss cantons

Abstract

AbstractIn order to play a key role in the governance of societal change towards sustainability, public administrations need to transform their own ways of working, that is, their internal governance. This paper complements existing research on sustainability governance in public administration that focuses on formal institutions and instruments with a practice‐oriented interpretive perspective. Drawing on an open analytical framework and using qualitative document and interview analyses, the paper reconstructs sustainability governance in public administrations from the perspective of the actors responsible for the task, that is, sustainability officers. Based on detailed case studies on sustainability governance in six Swiss cantons, four ideal types of sustainability governance are derived, which help to better structure the empirical variety of practical sustainability governance arrangements. The results show that sustain‐ability governance is designed and implemented “on the ground” in a variety of ways, with overall diversity being confined. Both research and practice can benefit from such a conceptually and empirically enriched image of sustainability governance in public administrations.