Ce que révèle le discours des acteurs officiels sur un « au-delà du PIB »

The idea of going « beyond GDP » attracts more and more actors, whose status, objectives and visions are very different. The diversity of institutional scales, theoretical approaches, and normative positions regarding the opportunity and motives of going “beyond GDP” makes hard to clearly identify the stances of the actors and the power balances dominating the debates. We therefore ask: What do the current debates mean to their actors? Are they a new rhetoric liable to elude a confrontation with the structural problems resulting from the crisis? Are they an opportunity window for launching again societal debates that are hardly raised elsewhere? Or are they a real trigger toward a paradigmatic change, deeply questioning productivism? We try to answer that question by analysing the discourses of official actors (politics, administration, technicians) involved and not involved in “beyond-GDP” initiatives. We show that, at the official level, beyond GDP debates, while they raise new societal issues, do not contribute to erode the central role of economic growth. The debates are dominated by pragmatism, in that dominant interests are focused on short-term constraints and objectives, where GDP growth remains pivotal. The involvement of actors in beyond-GDP debates reveals more a need and/or the willingness to adapt public management and policies to new constraints rather than a critical reflexion on the productivist model on which our economies have been built for more than sixty years.L’objectif d’un « au-delà du PIB » mobilise de nombreux acteurs, aux statuts, objectifs et visions très différents. La diversité, souvent diffuse, d’échelles institutionnelles, d’approches théoriques et de positionnements normatifs vis-à-vis de l’opportunité et des motifs d’un « au-delà du PIB » rend les débats confus, les positionnements peu clairs, et les rapports de force difficilement identifiables. Mais de quoi les débats actuels sont-ils le signe ? Aller « au-delà du PIB » serait-il un objectif rhétorique par défaut, en l’absence de stratégie crédible de sortie de crise ? Constitue-t-il une fenêtre d’opportunité à la mise en débat de questions de société difficilement abordables par ailleurs, et non une fin en soi ? Ou au contraire cristallise-t-il un volontarisme militant, désireux d’amorcer un véritable changement paradigmatique ? Nous tentons de répondre à cette question par l’analyse de discours d’acteurs officiels (politiques, techniciens et administratifs) impliqués et non-impliqués dans la poursuite d’un « au-delà du PIB ». Il ressort qu’au niveau des sphères officielles, les débats sur « un-delà du PIB », s’ils font entrer en ligne de compte de nouveaux enjeux comme le bien-être ou la soutenabilité, ne participent pas à éroder la centralité de la « croissance du PIB». Les débats s’avèrent dominés par une certaine forme de pragmatisme, les intérêts dominants étant centrés sur des contraintes et objectifs de court-terme, dont la croissance économique semble toujours considérée comme un élément indispensable. L’intérêt des acteurs pour de nouveaux indicateurs relève donc plus d’une volonté et/ou d’une nécessité d’adapter les modalités de gestion publique et/ou les politiques publiques à de nouvelles contraintes que d’une remise en question plus fondamentale du modèle productiviste sur lequel les économies sont bâties depuis plus de soixante ans

Towards a governance of sustainability transitions: giving place to individuals

Policies for sustainability transitions necessarily have three main characteristics: they are prescriptive with regard to dynamic societal processes, linked to the normativity of sustainable development, and are able to interlink both the societal and the individual levels. Taking transition management as a starting point, the paper elaborates that it cannot well address the second and third characteristic. We therefore suggest complementing transition management approaches with the individualistic capability approach and the more structural practice theory. We suggest a heuristic combination that places individuals back into the study of sustainability transitions and show with three suggestions how this might change research on and for transitions. Firstly, we propose to assess sustainability on individual, niche, and regime level; Secondly, we show that the crucial learning processes occurring in the transition processes can be better understood when interrelating the three levels; Finally, we elaborate that the governance of sustainability transitions necessarily has – at the same time – to foster free spaces for experimentation and to select those niches that are conducive to more instead of less sustainability

Can indicators fill the gap between science and policy? An exploration of the (non) use and (non) influence of indicators in EU and UK policymaking

This article examines the various roles that indicators, as boundary objects, can play as a science-based evidence for policy processes. It presents two case studies from the EU-funded POINT project that examined the use and influence of two highly different types of indicators: composite indicators of sustainable development at the EU level and energy indicators in the UK. In both cases indicators failed as direct input to policy making, yet they generated various types of conceptual and political use and influence. The composite sustainable development indicators served as “framework indicators”, helping to advocate a specific vision of sustainable development, whereas the energy indicators produced various types of indirect influence, including through the process of indicator elaboration. Our case studies demonstrate the relatively limited importance of the characteristics and quality of indicators in determining the role of indicators, as compared with the crucial importance of “user factors” (characteristics of policy actors) and “policy factors” (policy context)

La Post-croissance en débat !

Même pour l’économiste hétérodoxe voyageur commun, cette première moitié de septembre 2018 était un défi : d’abord appelé à Malmö en Suède pour un rendez-vous international avec la communauté de la décroissance (https://malmo.degrowth.org/), puis à Mexico-City pour participer à la 1ière conférence Nord-Sud de la même communauté (https://degrowth.descrecimiento.org), il fallait enchaîner avec la conférence scientifique de l’association internationale d’économie écologique aussi au Mexique (htt..

Paradoxes of Transformative Social Innovation: From Critical Awareness towards Strategies of Inquiry

Society is transforming through a whirlpool of innovations. This includes technological as well as social innovations, i.e. changes in social relations involving new ways of doing, organizing, framing and knowing. Especially the potentials for transformative social innovation (TSI) are gaining the interest of progressive political actors and critical scholars. Occurring in the form of new modes of governance and alternative ways of working and living together, TSI involves the challenging, altering or replacing of dominant institutions. As documented in various strands of critical social inquiry and innovation research, TSI praxis is pervaded with contradictions, anomalies and paradoxes. This methodological contribution addresses the challenge that tends to remain: How to elaborate this general critical awareness into more operational ‘strategies of inquiry’? The paper discusses paradoxes of a) system reproduction, b) temporality, and c) reality construction. Identifying distinct kinds of contradictions and distinct empirical phenomena, this differentiation also calls attention to the associated differences between realist, processual and constructivist research philosophies. Gathering the empirical analyses, theoretical interpretations and methodological advances that have been made on these paradoxes, this contribution opens up the scope for critical and practically relevant innovation research: It is important to bridge the divide between rigorous but sterile methodological know-how, and critical-reflexive theorizing that lacks operational insights.Society is transforming through a whirlpool of innovations. This includes technological as well as social innovations, i.e. changes in social relations involving new ways of doing, organizing, framing and knowing. Especially the potentials for transformative social innovation (TSI) are gaining the interest of progressive political actors and critical scholars. Occurring in the form of new modes of governance and alternative ways of working and living together, TSI involves the challenging, altering or replacing of dominant institutions. As documented in various strands of critical social inquiry and innovation research, TSI praxis is pervaded with contradictions, anomalies and paradoxes. This methodological contribution addresses the challenge that tends to remain: How to elaborate this general critical awareness into more operational ‘strategies of inquiry’? The paper discusses paradoxes of a) system reproduction, b) temporality, and c) reality construction. Identifying distinct kinds of contradictions and distinct empirical phenomena, this differentiation also calls attention to the associated differences between realist, processual and constructivist research philosophies. Gathering the empirical analyses, theoretical interpretations and methodological advances that have been made on these paradoxes, this contribution opens up the scope for critical and practically relevant innovation research: It is important to bridge the divide between rigorous but sterile methodological know-how, and critical-reflexive theorizing that lacks operational insights

Editorial Synthesis: Methodological Challenges in Social Innovation Research

In recent years, there have been substantial efforts towards theory-building and conceptual clarification in social innovation (SI) research further contributing to its consolidation as a research field. Taking a different angle, this special issue aims to contribute to such consolidation by introducing greater reflexivity about the underlying methodologies and logics of inquiry. It features eight contributions from the main methodological orientations in SI research, namely systematic knowledge development and action-oriented research that discuss particular methodological challenges and advances. This editorial synthesis serves to take stock and elicit their broader significance for SI research along the normative, temporal and comparative dimensions of methodology choices. Dimensions, which are salient to SI research without being tied to any specific methodological tradition. As such, they reflect our aim to transcend the methodological fragmentation of the SI research field and open up a methodological discussion through a methodologically pluralist stance

Vers une complémentarité des alternatives alimentaires : relocalisation des activités et écologisation des pratiques au sein de trois alternatives de distribution à Bruxelles

À partir de l’analyse des pratiques de territorialisation et d’écologisation de trois systèmes alimentaires alternatifs bruxellois, l’article illustre que ces pratiques peuvent être très diverses, en prenant des formes et des intensités variables. Grâce à une comparaison, l’article présente différentes combinaisons entre territorialisation et écologisation au sein de ces trois systèmes alternatifs de distribution, qui sont pourtant activées dans le cadre d’une vision commune de la durabilité. Il montre que les modèles et les projets influencent les choix, qu’aucune combinaison ne fait une différence réelle au niveau des effets produits sur les parties prenantes de chacun de ces systèmes. En conclusion, la contribution, plutôt que d’orienter normativement vers l’une ou l’autre stratégie combinatoire qui serait plus durable, plaide pour considérer la complémentarité entre les différentes pratiques.Analyzing practices that re-localize food and make food chains more sustainable in the context of three alternative food networks (AFN) in Brussels, this paper shows that these practices can be of huge diversity, in terms of models as well as in terms of intensity. Through comparative analysis of the three cases, it shows that the questions of re-localize and make food systems more sustainable can lead to different strategies while the general objective of sustainability is formally shared and collectively constructed. It illustrates that AFNs projects’ are leading the main choices but that no strategy makes the difference regarding the effects on direct stakeholders in each AFN. As conclusion, the paper, argues to consider complementarity between AFNs practices more than choosing which one is the best/more sustainable

Transformative social innovation and (dis)empowerment

This article responds to increasing public and academic discourses on social innovation, which often rest on the assumption that social innovation can drive societal change and empower actors to deal with societal challenges and a retreating welfare state. In order to scrutinise this assumption, this article proposes a set of concepts to study the dynamics of transformative social innovation and underlying processes of multi-actor (dis)empowerment. First, the concept of transformative social innovation is unpacked by proposing four foundational concepts to help distinguish between different pertinent ‘shades’ of change and innovation: 1) social innovation, (2) system innovation, (3) game-changers, and (4) narratives of change. These concepts, invoking insights from transitions studies and social innovations literature, are used to construct a conceptual account of how transformative social innovation emerges as a co-evolutionary interaction between diverse shades of change and innovation. Second, the paper critically discusses the dialectic nature of multi-actor (dis)empowerment that underlies such processes of change and innovation. The paper then demonstrates how the conceptualisations are applied to three empirical case-studies of transformative social innovation: Impact Hub, Time Banks and Credit Unions. In the conclusion we synthesise how the concepts and the empirical examples help to understand contemporary shifts in societal power relations and the changing role of the welfare state