Addressing public-value failure: Re-municipalization as acts of public entrepreneurship

This paper theorizes public entrepreneurship, i.e. endeavours characterized by searches for dynamic rather than static efficiency, as driver for re-municipalization when markets fail to invest in and provide public values. Theoretical arguments are corroborated in a single case-study of the re-municipalization of a power plant by the City of Aalborg, Denmark in a situation where market players declined to engage in a long-term green transformation of local energy supply. In perspective, the paper contributes to research exploring the diversity and range of motivational and strategic mechanisms driving remunicipalisation as a pragmatic rather than ideological phenomenon in the twenty-first century.