What about the politics? Sustainable development, transition management, and long term energy transitions

Meadowcroft, James

doi:10.1007/s11077-009-9097-z

Cited by 857 publications

(513 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Uncertainty acknowledges the provisional and dynamic character of urban evolution (Simone, 2013;Silver, 2014). Unlike conventional urban governance, experiments are open to and feed upon the messy and contingent character of policymaking (Meadowcroft, 1999(Meadowcroft, , 2009. It is understood that this mess is where new low-carbon futures can be forged.…”

Section: Embracing Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating Climate Governance

Turnheim¹,

Kivimaa

Berkhout

2018

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Over the last decade, a multitude of urban climate change experiments have emerged to go beyond traditional role of the state in environmental governance. These activities provide a real world evidence base for how a low-carbon world could be realised and they have the potential to fundamentally change the way that cities are conceived, built, and managed. Most urban climate change experiments are designed to be geographically and temporally bounded to accelerate innovation activities and realise actual changes on the ground. But what if urban experiments did not scale up? What if, instead of informing existing modes of urban governance, they became the dominant approach to governing cities? What would a 'city of permanent experiments' look like and how would it function? This chapter speculates on the implications of experimentation as the new mode of governance for twenty-first century cities. Here, experiments are not interpreted as one-off trials to provide evidence and justification for new low-carbon policies, regulations, and service provision; instead, they are emerging as a new mode of governance in themselves. This emerging form of urban governance is characterised by uncertainty, recursive learning processes, and spatial fragmentation with multiple unknown implications on the politics of cities in the future.

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Section: Embracing Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating Climate Governance

Turnheim¹,

Kivimaa

Berkhout

2018

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“…In this sense, some of what are referred to here as 'external' factors are increasingly well addressed in the recent 'political turn' in sustainability transitions studies (Coenen, Benneworth, & Truffer, 2012;Geels, 2014; 8 Kern, 2012;Lockwood, 2014b;Meadowcroft, 2009;Normann, 2014). This involves attention extending away from narrower policy aspects alone, to also encompass wider political dimensions of regime dynamics and the actions of incumbents and new entrants (Baker, Newell, &Phillips, 2014;Geels, 2014;Hess, 2014;Meadowcroft, 2009;Smink, Hekkert, & Negro, 2013;Stirling, 2014a).…”

Section: The Present 'Abductive' Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This involves attention extending away from narrower policy aspects alone, to also encompass wider political dimensions of regime dynamics and the actions of incumbents and new entrants (Baker, Newell, &Phillips, 2014;Geels, 2014;Hess, 2014;Meadowcroft, 2009;Smink, Hekkert, & Negro, 2013;Stirling, 2014a).…”

Section: The Present 'Abductive' Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also crucial are 'discursive struggles' in the policy domain (Kern, 2012), and the role of social movements in influencing technological selection. This relates more to the political contestations taking place within innovation journeys (Meadowcroft, 2009), opening traditional evolutionary economic approaches up to a wider analysis involving a wider set of political and cultural factors. From the perspective of Science, Technology Studies (STS), the cultural significance of the national political contexts in which technological development takes place has been explored using concepts of 'socio-technical imaginaries' (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) and 'civic epistemologies' (Miller, 2005).…”

Section: Factors Bearing On Nuclear Discontinuity In Germany and Contmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of course, as has been discussed, there does exist a considerable subset of literature acknowledging the general importance to large scale sociotechnical change of wider political and cultural dynamics (F. W. Geels, 2014;Geels & Verhees, 2011;Kern, Smith, Shaw, Raven, & Verhees, 2014;Meadowcroft, 2009;Smith, Kern, Raven, & Verhees, 2013;Smith & Stirling, 2010). And in other areas of literature, the issues raised here might be referred to as features of a notionally singular overarching 'landscape', that helps to condition processes at the level of 'the' regime (Rotmans, Kemp, & Asselt, 2001).…”

Section: Implications Of -And For -'Democracy'mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

Johnstone

Stirling

2015

SSRN Journal

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SWPS 2015-18 ( June) DisclaimerThe works available here are the responsibility of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of other SPRU researchers. As matters of policy and practice, SPRU does not endorse individual research contributions. Guidelines for authorsPapers shall be submitted in pdf or Word format. They should contain a title, an abstract, and keywords. Papers should be submitted to one of the Editors, who will process them and send them to the appropriate Associate Editor. Two members of SPRU will be asked to provide a short written review within three weeks. The revised versions of the paper, together with a reply to the reviewers, should be sent to the Associate Editor, who will propose to the Editors its publication on the series. When submitting the authors should indicate if the paper has already undergone peer-reviewing, in which case the Associate Editors may decide to skip internal review process. AbstractThis paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a 'nuclear renaissance', promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe. Here, this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of 'sustainability transitions'. To this end, an 'abductive' approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are 'internal' and 'external' to the 'focal regime configuration' of nuclear power and associated 'challenger technologies' like renewables. It is 'internal' criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with 'external' criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. 'Internal' criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany -the reverse of what is occurring. 'External' criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics -especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader 'qualities of democracy'. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes 'democracy', a rich political science literature on t...

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An Institutional Perspective on the Low Carbon Transition

Andrews‐Speed

2015

Handbook of Clean Energy Systems

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The transition to a low carbon economy requires a change of sociotechnical regime or, in other words, a change in the way that society and technology interact. This, in turn, entails changes in economic, political, and societal institutions, the term institutions referring to the formal and informal rules and the expectations that govern the behavior of actors in a society. Tangible factors such as the availability of technology and skills and the endowment of resources and infrastructure provide significant constraints to countries seeking to undertake the transition to a low carbon economy. However, institutions also play a strong role in constraining the rate and shaping the path to a low carbon economy. As each nation is characterized by different institutions, the nature of the low carbon transition will vary from country to country, and even within individual countries. This article explains the relevance of institutions to the low carbon transition and applies this understanding to China and the United Kingdom in order to examine how different types of institution shape the way in which energy is governed, with particular reference to the consequences for the deployment of renewable energy.

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What about the politics? Sustainable development, transition management, and long term energy transitions

Abstract: Sustainable development, Sustainable energy, Governance, Politics, Transition management, Energy transition, Long term policy change,

Cited by 857 publications

References 39 publications

Innovating Climate Governance

Innovating Climate Governance

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

An Institutional Perspective on the Low Carbon Transition

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