The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions

Abstract

A quasi-evolutionary model of socio-technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously. Differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures. The articulation of pressures, and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime, define the transition context. Four alternative contexts are described: endogenous renewal; re-orientation of trajectories; emergent transformation and purposive transitions. Agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed. Power to affect change depends on regime membership, the distribution of resources for change and expectations.

Introduction

In recent years, the analytical lens in innovation and environment studies has tended to pull back from firm-level processes of cleaner technology innovation. Studies have refocused on wider, linked processes that green the systems of social and technological practice by which we satisfy our needs for housing, mobility, food, communications, leisure and so forth. These ‘socio-technical regimes’ have become the focal unit of analysis. The policy challenge is to transform them into more sustainable configurations (Berkhout, 2002).

This new focus on regimes recognises that firms and technologies are embedded within wider social and economic systems (Rip and Kemp, 1998). Some of the reasons cleaner technology is not diffusing rapidly through firms, for example, relate to overarching structures of markets, patterns of final consumer demand, institutional and regulatory systems and inadequate infrastructures for change. Firms have limited room for unilateral manoeuvre in relation to these factors. The focus on regimes recognises this holding that radical changes at the regime level are needed to deliver sustainable development (Rotmans and Kemp, 2001). The analytical challenge is now to understand and guide ‘systems innovation’ so as to facilitate not only greener firms, but also more sustainable practices from all members of regimes.

In transforming the industrial sustainability agenda in this way, the governance challenge becomes more ambitious and more demanding. We have argued elsewhere that approaches to sustainable systems innovation have hitherto been overly functionalist (Berkhout et al., 2004). Despite the breadth of the regime concept, there is a tendency to treat regime transformation as a monolithic process dominated by rational action and neglecting important differences in context (Berkhout et al., 2004). We also argue that existing approaches tend to be too descriptive and structural, leaving room for greater analysis of agency as a means to more informed, deliberate and effective processes of regime transformation. In short, if we are to engage both analytically and normatively with the complexities of governing sustainable systems innovation, there is a need for more explicit and detailed conceptual tools. In this paper, we propose as a heuristic a systematic framework for understanding different transition contexts and associated governance implications. Our specific objectives are three-fold:

• To distinguish more clearly between different elements in the context for regime transition: the articulation of selection pressures and the adaptive capacity available to facilitate regime transformation.

• Recognition of these different contextual elements is likely to affect both descriptive understandings and normative recommendations. We aim to explore some of the resulting practical implications for the governance of sustainable technology strategies.

• To encourage greater attention to agency in our understandings of transitions in socio-technical regimes.

With this interest in governance, we address the question of agency by introducing the notions of regime membership, resource interdependencies and actor expectations. System-level change is, by definition, enacted through the coordination and steering of many actors and resources, whether these are intended or emergent features of transformation processes. Technological regimes are not unitary entities, but involve the active coordination of lower order agency on the part of institutions, networks and actors as regime ‘members’ in their own right (see also Jacobsson and Johnson, 2000).

Given this, our model of regime transformation is a function of three factors. First, the degree to which the selection pressures bearing upon a regime is articulated towards a particular problem or direction of transformation on the part of regime members. We argue that without this articulation of selection pressures the conditions for systems innovation do not exist. Second, the degree to which the resources required for effective regime transformation (factor endowments, capabilities and knowledge) is available either within or beyond the members of the incumbent regime. Third, the extent to which responses to these pressures is coordinated in a coherent fashion across regime members. It is these latter two elements (the availability of resources and the ability to coordinate responses) that we identify as the adaptive capacity available for regime transition (Berkhout et al., 2004). In the long-run, the particular form and direction of regime transformation, and the associated modes of governance, will depend on the transition context: a function of the availability of resources and how they are coordinated.

The paper is organised as follows. The next section (Section 2) discusses the sources of change in socio-technical regimes. We suggest that transformation processes can be organised according to whether they contribute to the articulation of selection pressures (exerting pressure for change), or whether they contribute to the adaptive capacity (resourcing and coordinating a response to this pressure). Governance of regime transitions can address the balance of selection pressures, or condition the adaptive capacities of incumbent or competing regimes. We then introduce (Section 3) a heuristic typology for mapping such transition contexts, which can be used to guide the analysis of governance for regime transition. Informed by these understandings we then discuss, in Section 4, some resulting general problems of power and agency in regime configuration and reproduction. We argue that the power to affect regime change depends on regime membership, the matching and linking of their resources for change and the interplay of expectations about change.