How the national level supports local implementation of mission-orientated policies – A multi-level governance perspective

Missions such as the “climate neutral and smart city mission” are directed towards tackling grand societal challenges. These challenges point to the need of systemic societal transformation not only technologically but also institutionally and behaviorally (Wanzenböck, et al. 2020; Mazzucato, 2018). This is recognized most prominently in the sustainability transitions literature (Geels, 2004; Geels & Schot, 2010; Rotmans et al. 2001) which, over the last decades, has shed light on underlying dynamics and leverage points for fundamental societal
changes. This paper draws upon three important starting points from literature, namely (1) Transformative
changes are taking place in complex adaptive systems and are therefore characterised as multi-actor processes
(Köhler et al., 2019). The complexity of such change dynamics implies that they cannot be maneuvered by
means of direct control by a single actor but require more distributed and decentralized governance structures
and processes (Kuhlmann & Rip, 2018). (2) The role of democratically legitimized public authorities and public
policy at large is key in creating the institutional framework conditions for the emergence, acceleration, and ultimately, the establishment of more sustainable systems (Johnstone & Newell, 2018) and (3) Public actors need innovative governance, policy and urban management models if they want to advance transformations because they need to challenge entrenched structures, bring in important new actors and support the accelerated diffusion of new practices (Matschoss & Repo, 2018). Consequently, this paper focuses on the Horizon Europe
Mission to supporting 100 cities to become climate neutral and smart by 2030 and draws upon empirical work
conducted in the frame of two ongoing EU projects, namely TRAMI and CapaCITIES by discussing the main research questions: How to shape a European environment conductive to urban climate neutrality transitions for national, regional and local authorities? How are national change processes and platforms/networks initiated
and how can they support local public authorities to put enabling conditions and measures for cities in place to
achieve the mission? Are there new governance structures in place for mission implementation and what are
their characteristics? Do intervention portfolio differ across different countries?