Enacting neutrality or enabling change? The contested role of city administration in socio-ecological transformation

• Under-researched role of public administration in socio-ecological transformation. • Ethnographic case-study; Perspective of Institutional Theory and Systems Thinking. • Exercise of discretion by intra-organisational change agents. • Performance of neutrality obscures power processes of municipal administrations. • Performance of neutrality limits transformative potential of city administrations. Research on sustainable transition and sustainability governance often focuses on informal niche actors and non-institutionalized networks. By contrast, the role of public administration (PA) in socio-ecological transformation processes remains underexplored. Similarly, sustainability has not been a prominent issue in PA research. This paper aims to contribute to filling in these gaps through an exploratory qualitative case study of the planning departments in three medium-sized German cities recognized as pioneers in climate action. The findings highlight that, although daily practice necessarily involves the exercise of discretion and thus creates room for maneuver for municipal employees, a prevailing paradigm of neutrality exists within PA. This paradigm imposes significant constraints on transformative institutional work. It leads to the obscuring of power dynamics and limits the transformative potential of PA by inhibiting the explicit discussion, development, and dissemination of relevant knowledge.