Developing governance capacities for regional energy transition: The case of Eindhoven Metropolitan Region

• We present an integrative analytical framework to study governance capacities for transformative change. • We illustrate the framework with a case study of the Eindhoven Metropolitan Region in the Netherlands. • We introduce the notion of shared intentions as a core aspect of collective agency through which governance actors develop governance capacities. • The framework allowed us to identify two underlying forces of capacities development: path dependence and social learning. • National policy instruments can provide strong directionality to pathways of regional capacities development. While the literature increasingly highlights the importance of governance capacities for transformative change, their development remains understudied. This paper responds to this research gap by proposing an integrative analytical framework to study how governance actors exercise their collective agency to develop governance capacities for transformative change. We introduce shared intentions as a core aspect of collective agency through which governance actors develop governance capacities and integrate this notion with a perspective of strong structuration. We illustrate the framework's application with a case study of the Eindhoven Metropolitan Region, drawing from a set of in-depth interviews with key civil servants, policy document review and participant observation. Application of the framework allowed us to identify two key underlying forces driving governance capacities development: (1) social learning processes through which governance actors learn about how to collectively respond to external developments and challenges and (2) path dependence, which provides directionality to capacities development.