Florian Kern

The transitions storyline in Dutch environmental policy

In 2001 the Dutch government adopted a new policy in its Fourth National Environmental Policy Plan. Its transitions approach seeks radically more sustainable socio-technical systems, and represents an attempt to reinvigorate ecological modernisation. To explain the rise of this distinct policy storyline, a coalition of researchers and policy-makers forming the transition storyline is analysed. The interpretative flexibility of the storyline in relation to prevailing institutional priorities explains its success but also builds in limits by making subsequent institutionalisation susceptible to capture by incumbent interests, as illustrated by implementation in the energy sector.

Creative Destruction or Mere Niche Creation? Innovation Policy Mixes for Sustainability Transitions

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in policy mixes in innovation studies. While it has long been acknowledged that the stimulation of innovation and technological change involves different types of policy instruments, how such instruments form policy mixes has only recently become of interest. We argue that an area in which policy mixes are particularly important is the field of sustainability transitions. Transitions imply not only the development of disruptive innovations but also of policies aiming for wider change in socio-technical systems. We propose that ideally policy mixes for transitions might include elements of ‘creative destruction’, involving both policies aiming for the ‘creation’ of new and for ‘destabilising’ the old. We develop a novel analytical framework including the two policy mix dimensions (‘creation’ and ‘destruction’) by broadening the technological innovation system functions approach, and by expanding the concept of ‘motors of innovation’. We test this framework by analysing ‘low energy’ policy mixes in Finland and the UK. We find that both countries have diverse policy mixes to support energy efficiency and reduce energy demand with instruments to cover all functions on the creation side. Despite the demonstrated need for such policies, unsurprisingly destabilising functions are addressed by fewer policies, but there are empirical examples of such policies in both countries. The concept of ‘motors of creative destruction’ is introduced to expand innovation and technology policy debates to go beyond policy mixes consisting of technology push and demand pull instruments, and to consider a wider range of policy instruments which may contribute to sustainability transitions.

Ideas, Institutions, and Interests: Explaining Policy Divergence in Fostering ‘System Innovations’ towards Sustainability:

Over the last few years a fast-growing literature has developed around the notion of sociotechnical transitions and the possibilities for governing ‘system innovations’ towards sustainability. Government policies are assumed to play an important role in such processes. However, an important critique has suggested not to see these transition processes as politically neutral but to pay more attention to the politics of these processes. With this paper I make a contribution towards this debate by analysing the underlying political processes and their institutional contexts which led to two quite different approaches aimed at promoting system innovations in the UK and the Netherlands. The main question I answer is why the two governments engage with the same challenge in such different ways. Building on a discursive – institutionalist perspective based on the work of Hajer and Schmidt, I highlight the interplay of discourses, institutional contexts, and interests in shaping policy initiatives to promote system innovations. I conclude by suggesting a typology of possible relationships between these variables and expected policy outputs which helps to explain the two case studies and is believed to be applicable more widely.

Measuring and explaining policy paradigm change: the case of UK energy policy

This paper contributes to the literature on institutional change by creating a framework, based on the work of Peter Hall, that both measures and explains policy paradigm nchange. It claims that UK energy policy did undergo a paradigm shift according to the framework used here. Two initially separate narratives, climate change and energy nsecurity, are found to have performed central functions within the process of change. This finding runs contrary to assumptions within sociological institutionalism. nFurthermore, this paper concludes that the policy paradigm change appears to have had limited impact so far on core socio-technical characteristics of the energy system.

The discursive politics of governing transitions towards sustainability: the UK Carbon Trust

A growing literature on socio-technical transitions argues that structural change in societal subsystems is necessary to move towards more sustainable societies. Proponents of policy approaches such as transition management have prescribed an important role to governments in such processes, but have so far paid too little attention to the politics of this endeavour. This paper scrutinises the politics of governing the transition to more sustainable energy systems by analysing a particular policy initiative in the UK. The paper finds that discursive struggles between coalitions of actors and the institutional contexts in which these struggles take place constrain as well as enable new policy initiatives. Policy prescriptions of transition management thus need to take into account particular institutional contexts and need to be tied to dominant or emerging discourses to be successful.

Deliberative Socio-Technical Transitions

Part I of Energy for the Future developed a critique of the way energy policy making is conducted, drawing attention to issues such as problem framing, institutional inertia, civil legitimacy, technological lock-in and over-reliance on competition as a mechanism to achieve energy policy goals. Part II focuses ways to tackle the challenges so that societies become better able to transform energy supply and use, making development more sustainable. This chapter sets the scene for the more detailed recommendations that follow, identifying broad approaches, principles and processes appropriate to the new energy policy agenda. It argues in favour of a new over-arching perspective on the relevant transitions, and draws out the implications for governments, expert advisors and other stakeholders.

Analysing Energy Transitions: Combining Insights from Transition Studies and International Political Economy

Energy transitions are understood as structural long-term transformations of the way energy needs are met. The ongoing energy transition poses significant challenges for analysis and theory building. It is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and complexity, a key role for public policy, strong vested interests and lock-in, simultaneous changes of technologies, organizations and institutional structures, and a variety of possible transition pathways. This chapter discusses how insights from two so far disconnected strands of literature, transition studies and international political economy, can be mobilized for addressing these challenges when studying energy transitions. The chapter also briefly introduces the other chapters in this section.

States, markets, and institutions: integrating international political economy and global energy politics

Perhaps not since the 1970s has energy policy, technology, and security been so intensely discussed as today. Whether it is the race for energy resources in the Arctic, roller-coaster oil prices, the transition toward low carbon sources of energy, or concerns over nuclear safety, energy continues to make international headlines. Today’s pressing energy challenges have opened up an incredibly vast research agenda. Sadly, political scientists and other social scientists have lagged behind their colleagues from science, engineering, and economics in addressing these issues. While some researchers directed their focus to energy matters and, especially, oil during the turbulent era of the oil shocks, the attention was short-lived. Only recently, after two decades of relative neglect, have political scientists began to rediscover energy as a major area of inquiry (Hughes and Lipscy 2013; Falkner 2014). Given the sheer magnitude, social pervasiveness, policy salience, and long-term nature of today’s energy problems, their interest is likely to persist.

CMV Subversion of the Immune System in Later Life

Subversion of the immune system by Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is an old story but usually refers to immune evasion. CMV has developed many specialist strategies in evading the immune responses of its hosts. But it appears that CMV also has ways of “hijacking” immune responses by causing massive but potentially useless T-cell expansions at the expense of immune system adaptability and response breadth. At the same time, these large CMV-specific responses are thought to lack polyfunctionality and therefore to be degenerate. These problems are further accentuated by the decline of thymic function relatively early in life, drastically reducing the availability of fresh naive T-cells in later life. The observation of CMV-related “exhaustive” T-cell expansions in a number of studies has caused alarm to the extent that CMV is sometimes portrayed as actually causing immune senescence rather than just contributing to it. While many of these observations appear to be valid, there is an element of over-interpretation of findings too. This review aims to provide a balanced summary of such observations by carefully evaluating the evidence provided in the literature.

The acceleration of transitions to urban sustainability: a case study of Brighton and Hove

ABSTRACT Cities raise major challenges and opportunities for achieving sustainability. Much literature on urban sustainability focuses on specific aspects such as planning practices, urban policy or the diffusion of more sustainable technologies or practices. However, attempts at understanding the mechanisms of structural change towards sustainability have resulted in the emergence of an interdisciplinary field of sustainability transitions research. Transitions research has developed a phase model of transitions in which predevelopment, take-off, acceleration and stabilization phases are distinguished. However, the acceleration phase has received limited attention so far. This is a crucial gap as policy-makers are keen to accelerate transitions. This paper aims to enhance our understanding of how local actions contribute towards accelerating urban sustainability transitions. It does so by testing an acceleration mechanisms framework through exploring the collective agency of local initiatives in urban sustainability transitions. Drawing on a case study of the city of Brighton and Hove (UK), the paper finds that despite favourable local political conditions, there is a lack of evidence of acceleration apart from in individual domains such as food or mobility. Progress is found to depend on the agency of initiatives to both scale up sustainable practices and embed these practices into local governance arrangements.