Mobilising values in municipal governance? A case study of Gothenburg’s sustainable lifestyles strategy

Sustainability transitions research has increasingly “turned to values” as central to shaping and legitimising transformative change, often implying a reorientation away from dominant logics of individualism and economic growth towards sustainability-aligned values (SAVs) such as collectivism, care, and justice. Yet empirical accounts of how such values are mobilised through governance arrangements and practices remain limited. This article examines how SAVs are mobilised through municipal strategy work, drawing on an in-depth qualitative case study of the City of Gothenburg’s Sustainable Lifestyles Strategy. The article operationalises four modes of value mobilisation (enabling, including, shifting, and reflecting) through an interpretive analysis of municipal transition governance, understood as co-constituted through everyday governance practices. Empirically, the analysis draws on policy documents, observations, and group interviews with public officials involved in the strategy’s development and implementation. The findings show how different modes of value mobilisation operate in tandem in practice, unfolding through processes of coordination, deliberation, and experimentation, while simultaneously being shaped by institutional constraints that limit more far-reaching value shifts. In this sense, the strategy functions as a performative and exploratory governance device, altering the conditions under which actors interpret and negotiate responsibility, agency, and possibilities for change. The article contributes to sustainability transitions research by foregrounding value mobilisation as a constitutive dimension of transition governance. By showing how governance arrangements reshape both the material and interpretive conditions for action, and thus which values become actionable in practice, the study advances understandings of how sustainability transitions are governed, negotiated, and sometimes circumscribed.