The environmental state and the glass ceiling of transformation

What are the capacities of the state to facilitate a comprehensive sustainability transition? It is argued that structural barriers akin to an invisible "glass ceiling" are inhibiting any such transformation. First, the structure of state imperatives does not allow for the addition of an independent sustainability imperative without major contradictions. Second, the imperative of legitimation is identified as a crucial component of the glass ceiling. A distinction is introduced between "lifeworld" and "system" sustainability, showing that the environmental state has created an environmentally sustainable lifeworld, which continues to be predicated on a fundamentally unsustainable reproductive system. While this "decoupling" of lifeworld from system sustainability has alleviated legitimation pressure from the state, a transition to systemic sustainability will require deep changes in the lifeworld. This constitutes a renewed challenge for state legitimation. Some speculations regarding possible futures of the environmental state conclude the article

The Politics of Selection: Towards a Transformative Model of Environmental Innovation

As a purposive sustainability transition requires environmental innovation and innovation policy, we discuss potentials and limitations of three dominant strands of literature in this field, namely the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP), the innovation systems approach (IS), and the long-wave theory of techno-economic paradigm shifts (LWT). All three are epistemologically rooted in an evolutionary understanding of socio-technical change. While these approaches are appropriate to understand market-driven processes of change, they may be deficient as analytical tools for exploring and designing processes of purposive societal transformation. In particular, we argue that the evolutionary mechanism of selection is the key to introducing the strong directionality required for purposive transformative change. In all three innovation theories, we find that the prime selection environment is constituted by the market and, thus, normative societal goals like sustainability are sidelined. Consequently, selection is depoliticised and neither strong directionality nor incumbent regime destabilisation are societally steered. Finally, we offer an analytical framework that builds upon a more political conception of selection and retention and calls for new political institutions to make normatively guided selections. Institutions for transformative innovation need to improve the capacities of complex societies to make binding decisions in politically contested fields

A Transition to Which Bioeconomy? An Exploration of Diverging Techno-Political Choices

To date the concept of the bioeconomy - an economy based primarily on biogenic instead of fossil resources - has largely been associated with visions of "green growth" and the advancement of biotechnology and has been framed from within an industrial perspective. However, there is no consensus as to what a bioeconomy should effectively look like, and what type of society it would sustain. In this paper, we identify different types of narratives constructed around this concept and carve out the techno-political implications they convey. We map these narratives on a two-dimensional option space, which allows for a rough classification of narratives and their related imaginaries into four paradigmatic quadrants. We draw the narratives from three different sources: (i) policy documents of national and supra-national authorities; (ii) stakeholder interviews; and (iii) scenarios built in a biophysical modelling exercise. Our analysis shows that there is a considerable gap between official policy papers and visions supported by stakeholders. At least in the case of Austria there is also a gap between the official strategies and the option space identified through biophysical modelling. These gaps testify to the highly political nature of the concept of the bioeconomy and the diverging visions of society arising from it

Investigating patterns of local climate governance: How low-carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene in social practices

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as a privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. However, the success of local climate governance in industrialized countries has been limited. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology-oriented ecological modernization and individual behavior change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex socioeconomic patterns. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of "low-carbon municipalities" (top-down initiatives) and those of "intentional communities" (bottom-up initiatives). We were interested to determine to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Using an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low-carbon municipalities face difficulties in transforming carbon-intensive social practices. While offering some additional low-carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon-intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organizational options to intervene in the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low-carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridization for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models

Facilitating low-carbon living? A comparison of intervention measures in different community-based initiatives

The challenge of facilitating a shift towards sustainable housing, food and mobility has been taken up by diverse community-based initiatives ranging from ‘top-down’ approaches in low-carbon municipalities to ‘bottom-up’ approaches in intentional communities. This paper compares intervention measures of these two types, focusing on their potential of re-configuring daily housing, food and mobility practices. Taking up critics on dominant intervention framings of diffusing low-carbon technical innovations and changing individual behaviour, we draw on social practice theory for the empirical analysis of four case studies. Framing interventions in relation to re-configuring daily practices, the paper reveals differences and weaknesses of current low-carbon measures of community-based initiatives in Germany and Austria. Low-carbon municipalities mainly focus on introducing technologies and offering additional infrastructure and information to promote low-carbon practices. They avoid interfering into residents’ daily lives and do not restrict carbon-intensive practices. In contrast, intentional communities base their interventions on the collective creation of shared visions, decisions and rules and thus provide social and material structures, which foster everyday low-carbon practices and discourage carbon-intensive ones. The paper discusses the relevance of organisational and governance structures for implementing different types of low-carbon measures and points to opportunities for broadening current policy strategies

Investigating patterns of local climate governance: how low-carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene into social practices

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. Yet, the success of local climate governance in industrialised countries has been limited so far. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology-oriented ecological modernisation (EM) and individual behaviour change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex patterns of practices. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of ‘low-carbon municipalities’ (top-down initiatives) and those of ‘intentional communities’ (bottom-up initiatives). We are interested to find out to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Employing an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low-carbon municipalities face tenacious difficulties in transforming carbon-intensive social practices. While offering some additional low-carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon-intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organisational options to intervene into the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low-carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridisation for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models

The limits to change : liberal democracy and the problem of political agency

This thesis explores the limits to purposive change in liberal democracies. Its aim is to provide new analytical tools and concepts to understand better the basis of liberal democracy’s legitimacy, the mechanisms and limitations of political agency at work in it, and the ways in which societal change is delimited and channelled in what is today the most dominant form of political order. The thesis contains three conceptual innovations. The first concerns the nature of liberal democracy, which is shown to involve an ‘epistemic’ dimension of legitimacy on which the system’s stability relies. This explanatory account of legitimacy argues that in a modern democracy the paradoxical relation of the people to itself as both ruler and ruled can only be stabilised when both sides of the equation refer to the same ‘independent’ reality – a reality that has to be generated outside their precarious relationship and hence (for example) in the capitalist market economy. The second innovation regards an analytical distinction between three fundamental ‘modes’ of political agency – decision, choice and solution – whose deployment is strictly controlled by the systemic requirements of ‘epistemic legitimacy’. The result is shown to be an ‘agentic deadlock’ in liberal democracy, which inhibits purposive societal change. The third innovation concerns the very idea of ‘change’ itself. Based on Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar a concept of transformation is developed, which allows us to account for the subtle and long-term changes in the discursive structure of liberal-democratic societies. After comparing these conceptual innovations with the dominant aggregative, deliberative and radical approaches to democratic theory, the thesis concludes with a suggestion for an institutional innovation that might help break the agentic deadlock in liberal democracy.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo