The decarbonisation of energy systems is leading to a reconfiguration of the geographies of energy. One example is the emergence of community energy, which has become a popular object of study for geographers. Although widely acknowledged to be a contested, capacious, and flexible term, "community energy" is commonly presented as singular, bounded, and localised. In this paper, we challenge this conception of community energy by considering evidence about the role and influence of three categories of actors: community, state, and private sector. We demonstrate how community energy projects are unavoidably entangled with a diversity of actors and institutions operating at and across multiple scales. We therefore argue that community energy is enabled and constituted by trans-scalar assemblages of overlapping actors, which demands multi-sectoral participation and coordination. We point to the need for further academic attention on the boundaries between these actors to better understand the role of different intermediary practices and relationships in facilitating the development of decentralised energy systems with just outcomes.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

IntroductionAcross the global North, governments are engaged in restructuring around the increasingly linked agendas of carbon management and energy security (While et al., 2010; Lovell et al., 2011). These agendas are characterised by complexity, uncertainty and all-pervasiveness. In order to meet these goals governments necessarily implement programmes to enrol a range of institutions, institutional spaces and individuals to act on energy-carbon restructuring. Enrolling territorial subjects and objects raises significant challenges for government, including dealing with path-dependencies created by existing socio-technical societal, economic and infrastructural configurations; and developing specific means to (re)construct objects and enrol subjects on energy-carbon goals. Addressing these challenges requires consideration of the forms of power to be exercised in doing so, ways in which new policy interacts with existing institutions, and determining the balance of responsibilities between different institutional and non-institutional actors. It also necessitates engagement with different actors through different means and different territorial and institutional configurations. This paper sets out to explore these challenges and responses by explicating how national governments have sought to govern at a distance to embed energy-carbon rationalities in sub-national subjects and objects. The interrogation of governing at a distance, already the subject of extensive discussion (see Rose, 1996;Miller and Rose, 2008;Dean, 1999;Mackinnon, 2000) lends itself well to reflection on governmental action in rolling-out state goals. The notion has particular appeal to studies of energy-carbon governance, owing to the complexity and ubiquity of energy-carbon entanglements, which require the embedding of new governmental rationalities across numerous subjects. To date, explicit consideration of this literature in relation to energy and/or carbon governance has focused on specific subjectivities: for instance, governing individuals at a distance (see Paterson and Stripple, 2010;Letell et al., 2011). In order to more explicitly draw out relationships between governing at a distance and energy-carbon governance it is important to consider a broader agenda, exploring the range of different modes of engagement between national government and the objects and subjects of transition strategies. 3In taking this approach, this paper also fleshes out notions of governing energy-carbon at a distance through engagement with literature on the creation of new policy domains, considering how policy might map onto existing governmental regimes. This complements work investigating the prospects for national governmental engagements with different institutions and actors (see While et al., 2010;Hodson and Marvin, 2013), and takes forward the concerns of Bulkeley et al. (2005, 2007) for the forms of power utilised and the institutional configurations involved. Through engagement with these bodies of work, a conceptualisation of 'modes of en...

Policy‐makers claim to support personalized approaches to improving the employability of disadvantaged groups. Yet, in liberal welfare states, mainstream activation programmes targeting these groups often deliver standardized, low‐quality services. Such failures may be related to a governance and management regime that uses tightly defined contracting and performance targets to incentivize (mainly for‐profit) service providers to move people into any job as quickly as possible. This article draws on evidence from third sector/public sector‐led services in Scotland to discuss an alternative approach. These services co‐produced personalized support in partnership with disadvantaged service users (in this case vulnerable lone parents). We suggest that, in this case, street‐level co‐production and personalization were facilitated by co‐governance and co‐management in the design and organization of provision. We conclude by identifying lessons for future employability services.

This article deploys the concept of "collaborative innovation" to discuss key stakeholders' and service users' experiences of innovative labor market inclusion services. We draw on work by Sørensen and Torfing (2011, 2016, 2017 to frame collaborative innovation as a distinctive approach to the coproduction of services that respond to user needs, and highlight the importance of governance and leadership practices that foster mutual learning and boundary spanning innovation. The article reports on 102 interviews with service users (in this case, unemployed lone parents) and 117 interviews with key stakeholders involved in local partnerships. We identify benefits from such collaborative approaches in terms of innovative service design and positive outcomes for service users. We conclude that policy makers should consider the potential added value of collaborative innovation in labor market inclusion. Evidence for Practice• Collaborative innovation provides a useful framework for understanding public policy stakeholders' responses to wicked problems-in this case, the need for innovative labor market inclusion programs to respond to the needs of vulnerable unemployed jobseekers. • Collaborative governance and distributive leadership practices that empower local managers and employees may be important in laying the groundwork for multi-stakeholder collaboration and service innovation in labor market inclusion. • Boundary spanning managers and "keyworkers" can be important in building trust, joining-up services, and(crucially) empowering service users. • As policy makers seek innovative solutions to high unemployment in post-COVID-19 labor markets, there is value in considering the benefits of collaborative innovation as a route to more efficient and effective services.

The United Kingdom, as an exemplar liberal welfare state, has been characterized as in the vanguard of "work-first" activationdeploying high levels of compulsion and standardized employability services that seek to move people from welfare to work as quickly as possible. However, despite the extension of welfare conditionality to excluded groups such as lone parents, government-led, work-first employability programmes have often proved ineffective at assisting the most vulnerable to escape poverty or even just to progress in the labour market. We argue that alternative approaches, defined by co-production and social innovation, have the potential to be more successful. We draw on a study of local services targeting lone parents led by third 33 sector-public sector partnerships in five localities in Scotland. Our research identifies a link between programme governance and management (defined by co-governance and collaborative partnership-working) and co-produced street-level services that deliver benefits in terms of social innovation and employability. We draw on 90 interviews with lone parents, and more than 100 interviews with delivery stakeholders and street-level workers, to identify factors associated with positive social and employability outcomes. The article concludes by identifying potential lessons for the governance and delivery of future services targeting vulnerable groups.2. Throughout this article we have used the term keyworker to refer to street-level workers performing these roles. A variety of terms were used by MIW partnerships to describe these functions including development workers, support workers and keyworkers.Co-production and social innovation in street-level employability services