Transitology in transition: what role for the state?
Folks! Life happened while I was making other plans for this newsletter, so I’m stitching in a brief meta-reflection (the best kind of reflection, if you ask me) on the social science of a rapid and fair energy transition. Expect the next SLE newsletter on Monday 26.
Given that Markey and Ocasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal is a resolution for the US Congress, it’s perhaps not surprising that it calls for a central, driving role of the federal government. Similarly, this proposal for a European Green New Deal envisions… the EU’s (financial) institutions and instruments as a main engine for the transformation.
The EIB. A last glimmering reflection of hope as the sun sets on Europe?
Yet, of course, such emphasis on central authorities is more than a simple outcome of the level at which these policy ideas are presented. There is good reason to assume that some prime mover is needed to create acceleration beyond what Drawdown has called the “plausible scenario”: the acceleration of carbon emission reductions at business-as-usual rates. That acceleration, its researchers forcibly argue, will not get us to where we need to be fast enough. We need to accelerate faster. And so:
There is a growing recognition that from protecting niches, nurturing research and technological innovation through to industrial policy, regulation and enforcement, the range and depth of powers that only the state can call upon will be required if radical and rapid transitions are to be achieved which allow humanity to operate within planetary boundaries (Johnstone & Newell 2017: 78)
Below, then, you will find a mini-anthology of one of the latest developments in the “sustainability transitions” field: how should we understand the role of politics and the state in the energy transition?
Transition Science Anno Domini MMXVII
Let’s start with Loorbach et al’s 2017 review of the literature. The “main driver” behind research into sustainability transitions, they recap, has always been “how to understand how to steer clear from unsustainability lock-in”, on the one hand, and “how to mobilize and empower disruptive innovations”, on the other (612). In a word, transitions research has always concerned itself with the question of agency: who is able to what under which circumstances to further (or hinder) sustainable societies?
The authors subtly suggest that the answers scholars have thus far come up with may be insufficient. They cull the following conclusions, shared among the various approaches:
Many different actors are involved in a transition and it is crucial to understand the distribution of power between them;
A shift in the understanding and framing of the problem on a society-wide level needs to pave the way for the transition to occur;
Reframing the problem includes introducing an alternative vision for the future, one that can give direction to efforts to the address the problem;
Actually resolving the problem can only occur through experimentation, evaluation, learning and readjustment.
Three approaches to governance in transitions research (for original see here).
While the authors certainly do not deny the value of these insights, they are still left with the question whether it is (still) enough for what we have to do now, especially after the 2015 Paris Agreement.
How resilient is the transition theory itself as ideas on experimentation and analysis seem to be rather insignificant in the context of large-scale disruptive change? (618)
Unity in diversity
Several authors have since jumped on this question. Thus, Roberts et al (2018) agree that the current situation requires us to go beyond the usual “appeals for more ‘political will’” (304). We need to understand what actually moves the needle and then support that. Their programmatic article is short on detail, but they make two important points.
One: agency resides in coalitions – coalitions “across government, business, and civil society, united by common interests or ideas” (305). By that they do not mean that all the tree-huggers need to get together. No, their point is different – and resonates strongly with the core idea behind the GND:
“the deliberate acceleration of low-carbon transitions is most politically effective when climate benefits are combined with more politically resonant issues, such as personal health, jobs, or security” (304).
Nothing against tree huggers, by the way.
Two: governments should think about their policies in terms of the positive feedback mechanisms these policies set in place. Every policy should create new opportunities for zero-carbon advocacy in the future. Thus, the government’s active promotion of renewable energy in Germany led to reduced costs and distributed ownership, both of which created “supportive constituencies [and] industrial policy” in Germany (306). However, the authors recognize that systemic complexity makes it quite difficult to predict policy feedback effects. ‘Further research is required’.
Get Machiavelli on the line, please
Fine. But what kind of research? In the socio-technical tradition of transition research, the political has precisely been treated pretty abstractly, so scholars might not actually have the tools to do it.
‘Fear not!’, cry Cherp et al (crying in 2018), ‘There are specialists in politics [political scientists, MB] – surely they can help us. Hey, we should make a coalition!’
The result of such a coalition could look something like the following, complete with colour codes.
What you’re seeing is a dissection (p 187, see here for original) of why Japan doubled down on nuclear energy after the 1990s, passing over renewables, whereas Germany, until then in a quite similar position, moved away from nuclear and embraced renewables instead. You could identify “techno-economic” explanations for that (shown here in black), “socio-technical” factors (in blue) and “political” ones (in red). It’s all about getting the right mix.
And the state?
So far, we’ve seen some references to governments, to politics and to coalitions, but very little on the state as ‘agent’. For that, we return to the authors of our opening quote, who did some serious perusing in the literature of non- “socio-technical” social scientists.
They cite a number of examples of how the state’s agency can be circumscribed.
Through global deregulation and privatization, (energy) ‘capital’ has become more mobile and fossil fuel incumbents often threaten to re-locate if a government is becoming ‘overly ambitious’ in its climate policy.
Fossil energy actors and states are often dependent on another in historically grown political… coalitions. That means the former’s plea for support will sooner be heard than that of the newcomer in renewables.
The political philosophy of a government – how it ideally governs – also extends into energy policy: thus, the dominance of finance in neoliberal economic policy means that something like carbon trading – a financial instrument – can get (and keeps getting) the benefit of the doubt. (Johnstone & Newell 2018: 76ff)
These examples serve of course as encouragement to change the structures within which governments and states institutions operate and thus shore up their potential.
The South-African Mining-Energy Complex.
Strong democratic states
The neglect of the role of the state and the political, thus far, was not merely a question of a different sense of urgency, Johnstone and Newell argue, it was also the spirit of the times. Ideas like ‘reflexive governance’ and ‘horizontal governance’, which came up in the 1990s,
“were, in part, underpinned by the ideological preference for the ‘hollowing out’ (Rhodes, 1994) and ‘retreat’ of the state (Strange, 1996). Here, the democratic potential of transitions arenas was thought to lie outside the formalised institutions of the state (Jhagroe and Loorbach, 2014). (2018: 74)
The association with the local and the democratic is still pretty strong in the energy sector. However, as Roberts et al. also conclude, we will need to take top-down action much more seriously, without, however, sacrificing democracy. Coalitions rule, in the end – but they should include a strong and pro-active membership of the state (2018: 307f.).
Sources
Cherp, Aleh, Vadim Vinichenko, Jessica Jewell, Elina Brutschin, and Benjamin Sovacool. 2018. "Integrating techno-economic, socio-technical and political perspectives on national energy transitions: A meta-theoretical framework". Energy Research & Social Science. 37: 175-190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.015 (Open Access)
Roberts, Cameron, Frank W. Geels, Matthew Lockwood, Peter Newell, Hubert Schmitz, Bruno Turnheim, and Andy Jordan. 2018. "The politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions: Towards a new research agenda". Energy Research & Social Science. 44: 304-311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.06.001
Johnstone, Phil, and Peter Newell. 2018. "Sustainability transitions and the state". Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 27: 72-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2017.10.006
Loorbach, Derk, Niki Frantzeskaki, and Flor Avelino. 2017. "Sustainability Transitions Research: Transforming Science and Practice for Societal Change". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 42: 599-626. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102014-021340
If you do not have the appropriate credentials to cross the paywall to these articles, maybe you can check out https://sci-hub.tw (just copy past in the doi number), or if you are uncomfortable with that, send me a message and I’ll lend you a copy.