Toward a polycentric low-carbon transition: the roles of community-based energy initiatives in enhancing the resilience of energy systems

An understanding of the resilience of energy systems is critical in order to tackle forthcoming challenges. This chapter proposes that the polycentric governance perspective, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, may be highly relevant in formulating policies to enhance the resilience of future energy systems. Polycentric governance systems involve the coexistence of many self-organized centers of decision making at multiple levels that are formally independent of each other, but operate under an overarching set of rules. Given this polycentric approach, this chapter studies the roles of community-based energy initiatives and, in particular, of renewable energy cooperatives, in enhancing the institutional resilience of energy systems. In this perspective, the chapter identifies three major socio-institutional obstacles, which undermine this resilience capacity: the collective action problem arising from the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies and practices, the lack of public trust in established energy actors and the existence of strong vested interests in favor of the status quo. Then, it shows why the development of community-based energy initiatives and renewable energy cooperatives may offer effective responses to these obstacles, relying on many empirical illustrations. More specifically, it is argued that community-based energy initiatives present institutional features encouraging the activation of social norms and a high trust capital, therefore enabling them to offer effective solutions to avoid free riding and enhance trust in energy institutions and organizations. The creation of federated polycentric structures may also offer a partial response to the existence of vested interests in favor of the status quo. Finally, some recommendations for policymakers are derived from this analysis

Australia’s Strategic Culture: Constraints and Opportunities in Security Policymaking

Special Issue: STRATEGIC CULTURES AND SECURITY POLICIES OF THE ASIA-PACIFI

A ‘natural experiment’ in Australian cultural policy: Australian Government funding cuts disproportionately affect companies that produce more new work and have larger audiences

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. In Australia, cultural policy settings differentiate between purported ‘small-to-medium’ and ‘major’ performing arts organisations, primarily in relation to their revenue size and institutional stability. This article publishes a quantitative analysis of the relative creative outputs of these Australian performing arts organisations, focusing primarily on the production of so-called ‘new works’: original cultural texts, created and performed recently. Using survey data from 21 Australian performing arts organisations, as well as aggregated government data regarding 173 performing arts organisations, and repertoire data for 8 symphony orchestras, across 7 years, we set out to determine the relationship (if any) of organisational scale and artform to the amount of new work in the Australian publicly subsidised performing arts sector. We find that the majority of the new work is produced by the small-to-medium sector. Smaller organisations are more likely to produce new work than larger ones, and large organisations produce relatively little new work. The small-to-medium sector has, in aggregate, larger audiences than the major companies. These findings have specific implications for Australia’s lively cultural policy debate

George Romney Paintings in public collections

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:q97/14270 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo