“Think global, act local” is a phrase much related to green governance. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Jañeiro and its ‘Local Agenda 21’ in 1992 it is accepted that local authorities have a key role in implementing sustainable development. During the early 1990’s Local Agenda 21 diffused to many countries, including the Netherlands. As a consequence local sustainability reached the national policy agenda. Next, intergovernmental subsidy schemes and other policy instruments were implemented to support local authorities to adopt local sustainability policies. At the same time a performance measurement tool was implemented: the so-called ‘Local Sustainability Meter’. It was designed to both monitor developments and serve as an incentive by using the ‘naming and blaming’ strategy: distinguishing pioneers from laggards to achieve general progress. Since 1999 data has been collected. These data enable analysis on policy input, output and outcome indicators of local sustainability. In this paper we investigate what ‘pioneer’ status means in this regard, and explore its causal drivers. To guide our analysis we use insights from multiple theoretical viewpoints: Diffusion-of-Innovations theory, Public Management and Policy Networks. This helps us to categorize local authorities on sustainability performance and gain more understanding of what ‘pioneer'' status actually means. Next, we investigate developments in the Netherlands and the ways in which ‘pioneering’ local authorities can be distinguished from their ‘mainstream’ peers. We also investigate what it takes for ‘mainstream’ local authorities to achieve ‘pioneer’ status. Finally, we pay attention to methodological caveats that threaten valid and reliable measurement of local sustainability performance. Our paper contributes to systematic conceptualization of ‘pioneers in environmental policy’ and adds a local- and multi-level governance component to it.
