Greening the state? The framing of sustainability in Dutch infrastructure governance

•We found how sustainability is framed when entering the policy debate by policy ‘gatekeepers’.•Sustainability takes multiple meanings when enters the policy arena.•Sustainability frames concern substantive (e.g., more focus on ecology), process and organizational aspects.•Multiple sustainability meanings manifest the variety of debates on coordination and directionality of governance

This paper investigates how the notion of ‘sustainability’ is strategically framed in the context of Dutch infrastructure governance in the Netherlands. By conducting a frame analysis (based on policy documents, websites and semi-structured interviews), the paper discerns six sustainability frames. These frames concern substantive (e.g., more focus on ecology), process (activating new networks) and organizational (e.g., new practices of work) aspects. The paper also illustrates how these sustainability frames relate to the changing institutional context of infrastructure policy and governance more broadly. The paper discusses some of the productive and challenging implications of the dynamics of sustainability in today’s complex and multi-dimensional world of governance.