Local development practitioners in local government administration play a significant role in the governance of local development. This category of public officials – development officers, managers, strategists, secretaries, etc. – have received some attention in the local development literature. However, the directions in the literature are just as varied as the descriptions of the different aspects of local development governance they are taking part in. That means that the overarching understanding of what local development practitioners actually do is blurred, and is left to detailed case studies with very little or no conceptual ambition. Against this backdrop, the ambition of this article is to grasp what the local development practitioner role consists of at a conceptual level.

This article offers a better understanding of what local development practitioner roles in particular consist of and how these roles relate to existing theories of governance and public administration. In order to do so, we first clarify and refine what the literature has stressed about local development practitioners’ roles and functions, and cluster the findings into three theoretically separated roles: the coordinator, the creator and the inside lobbyist. Second, we bridge these roles with recent trends in public administration research. Finally, we discuss how this conceptualization informs us about governance modes of local development, as well as ‘new and modern’ public official roles in local government administration. 

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.