The key to improving local governments’ risk governance capacity lies in properly managing the relationships between government, market and society, especially in clarifying the objectives and characteristics of the roles of local governments in the risk society governance. Most of the existing studies are normative analyses of governments’ roles, and fail to give adequate attention to the special interests of local governments, with the public good and self-interest roles constantly intertwined. Based on the resettlement houses property rights disputes in city X, this article conducted an empirical study of the characteristics of the local government’s role in risk governance and its conflict changes, and found that the local government has four roles in different stages: cooperation-regulation, conspiracy-permissiveness, and negotiation-governance. This article concludes that the roles and requirements of local governments in risk society governance need to be practically defined, and the behaviour of local governments needs to be systematically regulated and adapted.