CAUTION! Transitions ahead:
politics, practice and sustainable transition management
Elizabeth Shove* and Gordon Walker**
Department of Sociology* and Department of Geography**, Lancaster
University, Lancaster, LA1 4YD
E.Shove@lancaster.ac.uk
“The critique of the inanities and injustices of present society, however
obvious they may be, is disqualified by a simple reminder that remaking
society by design may only make it worse than it was. Alternative ends are
invalidated on the strength of the proved ineffectuality of means” (Bauman
1991; 269)
Green (2006) is not alone in contending that “environmental ‘crises’ require
fundamental changes in the socio-technological structure of the way we live
and work”. For those concerned with sustainability, the idea of transition – of
substantial change and movement from one state to another - has powerful
normative attractions. If ‘we’ can steer change, shape future development and
manage movement in desired directions, perhaps ‘we’ can make the
environment a better and more sustainable place in which to live. But how so
to do? In a manifestly complex world dominated by hegemonic ideologies of
neoliberal capitalism, global finance and commodity flows is it really possible
to intervene and deliberately shift technologies, practices and social
arrangements – not to mention their systemic interaction and
interdependencies - on to an altogether different, altogether more sustainable
track?
Across the board there is growing recognition of the holistic, unavoidably
interrelated nature of contemporary environmental problems and of the need
for fresh approaches and forms of governance capable of engaging with
complex challenges of this kind. Theories and models of sustainable transition
management (STM), derived from a blend of academic traditions in
innovation, history and technology, appear to fit this bill and it is no wonder
that they are now catching on across a number of policy domains.
In the Netherlands, government sponsored programmes have explicitly
adopted methods of ‘transition management’ (Kemp and Loorbach 2006) and
in the UK, the policy relevance of similar theories and methods is being
explored and actively promoted through projects and events like those
supported by the ESRC’s Sustainable Technologies Programme.
Academically, and in just a few years, there has been rapid growth in the
‘transition management’ literature and in the appeal of approaches
characterised by an alluring combination of agency, complexity, uncertainty
and optimism.
We do not intend to provide a thorough review or critique of what is in any
case a burgeoning and quickly evolving literature, but at a time when the
notion of transition management is capturing so much attention it is as well to
reflect on the distinctive features of this particular policy innovation. With this
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limited aim in mind, we offer some cautionary comments and identify a
handful of questions that deserve more explicit attention.
The notion of transition is firmly rooted in traditions of system thinking which
highlight the co-evolution of the social and the technical and which seek to
understand and analyse the emergence, transformation and decay of socio-
technical systems. Much of the ‘systems in transition’ literature makes use of
Rip and Kemp’s (1998) ‘multi-level’ model of innovation which distinguishes
between the macro level of the sociotechnical landscape, the meso level
regime and the micro level niche. The key idea is that change takes place
through processes of co-evolution and mutual adaptation within and between
these layers. The multi-level model can therefore be used to describe how
new technologies emerge within more or less protected niches, and how they
become ‘working’ configurations that shape and re-shape the regimes and
landscapes they sustain and that are in turn sustained by them. In terms of
transition, the core task is to figure out how currently dominant sociotechnical
regimes might be dislodged and replaced and how new configurations might
become mainstream.
Following this line of enquiry, the systems in transition literature has sought to
conceptualise system dynamics, often through retrospective analyses of the
rise and fall of selected sociotechnical systems and regimes (e.g. from sail to
steam ships, from horse to car, or from coal to gas (Geels 2002; Correlje and
Verbong 2004). In literature of this kind, there is no assumption that better
understanding will necessarily enhance the capacity to manage. This is to be
expected in that the challenge is to understand the co-evolution of complex
systems in which the role of self-styled systems builders is necessarily
constrained and in which the outcome of deliberate intervention is inherently
unpredictable. One consequence is that studies of systems in transition are
typically distanced, even voyeuristic, making few claims about how individuals
and organisations can, might or should act to affect the processes in question
or to steer trajectories towards pre-defined, normative goals.
In contrast, proponents of transition management (Rotmans et. al. 2001;
Smith et. al. 2005; Kemp and Loorbach 2006), subscribe to models of agency
and intervention not always shared by the commentators and systems
literature on which they draw. There are relevant differences of opinion, for
instance, about whether transition management is a matter of picking one
trajectory or another – Kemp, for example, refers to routes that diverge in the
forest
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– of agents shaping or making niches and paths (Berkhout et. al. 2004:
50), or of managing critical processes of selection and variation within a
broader dynamic of sociotechnical evolution. Whatever the conclusion on this
point, most recommend the deployment of multiple methods and tools for
intervention, also arguing for processes of governance (rather than
government), for the involvement of diverse actors and knowledges, and for
explicit recognition of the uncertainties and limitations of science-based
expertise. These strategies allow that managing systems involves ‘extremely
complex processes’ (Elsen and Wieczorek 2005: 655) that are multi-actor,
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http://kemp.unu-merit.nl/docs/Transition%20management%20for%20SD3.doc (29.9.06)
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multi-factor and multi-level. However novel and complex the challenge might
be, the main point is that very idea of transition management supposes that
deliberate intervention in pursuit of specific goals, like those of sustainability,
is possible and potentially effective.
Differences between analyses of systems in transition and models of
transition management are not only about representations of power or
interpretations of just how many ‘invisible’ hands are involved (Rip and Groen
2001), they also have to do with the role and status of critical junctures, and
the possibility of anticipating turning points and moments when strategic
nudging has the potential to change the trajectory of even complex and
embedded systems. It is around these themes that our cautionary comments
revolve.
Caution 1. Transition politics
Let us imagine, at least for the next few pages, that transitions can be
managed and that this is something that transition managers do. Who are
these critical actors and, just as important, on what authority and on whose
behalf do they act?
The very idea of deliberate transition management supposes some kind of
orienting vision. In the field of environmental policy there is a tendency to
assume that such an image exists and that it is defined and shared by a
constituency of institutional actors who are, by implication and example,
located within national or regional organisations. There is increasing interest
in how societal aspirations and shared problem definitions are articulated
(Kemp and Loorbach, 2006: 112) and in how transition managers might create
and maintain public support over the long term (Kemp and Rotmans 2004:
151) yet the general view is that goals like those of sustainability provide a
suitable target or provisionally desired destination. The practical task is then
one of steering and levering events in that direction.
What are the everyday politics of such an enterprise? When and how are the
goals of transition management subject to critical scrutiny, and by whom?
Equally important, who wins and who loses out as transitions are guided in
one direction but not another? We suggest that the normally obscure politics
of transition management deserve more explicit attention on at least three
counts.
First, we argue there is a politics to the very processes of abstraction involved
in defining something to manage (the ‘it’, or system) and to the implication that
there are managers of the ‘it’ who sit outside ‘its’ boundaries and who can
apply management tools including levers, niche-building machinery, and
engineering devices from a privileged, knowledgeable and above all, external
position. The process of abstracting the ‘it’ in question - the policy, the goal,
the system - from its historical and contemporary environment is not just a
technical matter of analysis but a political, constructed and potentially
contested exercise in problem formulation. By way of illustration, Geels
suggests that the transition from cesspools to sewer systems depended upon
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a process of agenda setting in which specific concepts of hygiene and
epidemiology acquired political power (Geels 2006).
Furthermore any truly systemic analysis cannot exclude actors who are cast
as managers from the systems in which they seek to intervene and of which
they are a part. Again this is not simply a matter of positioning: being part of a
system necessarily limits actors’ capacities to conceive and understand the
dynamics of the whole. As Rip (2006) argues ‘steering from within’ is
unavoidably myopic. Apparent successes are therefore as likely to reflect the
local repair work required to keep things going as the quality of anticipatory
knowledge deployed by individuals and organisations that harbour illusions of
their own management agency.
Second, new kinds of research and analysis are required to articulate the
complex, multiple and always contested commitments that go into making
future visions toward which transitions are directed. Social scientists are now
used to critiquing science-based assessments of environmental impact, but
what more is involved in evaluating the cultural and political assumptions and
institutional side effects of transition management? This is a distinctly
challenging task and one that should, at a minimum, involve careful scrutiny of
the historical evolution of guiding images and ideals, of their circulation across
different social and spatial scales, and of resistances to them. Transition
managers’ efforts to develop and work towards shared societal or
environmental goals are all very well but techniques like those of multi-
stakeholder involvement in foresight exercises, or methods of public
participation and deliberation are never ‘neutral’ and never evacuated of
power and strategic behaviour (Bickerstaff and Walker 2006). Initiatives of this
kind can be experienced as processes of co-option, the effect of which is to
neuter rather than embrace dissent. In addition, and in any event, it is
important to remember that stakeholders’ visions of the future are always and
inevitably shaped by the systems and social environments they inhabit today.
Third, despite extensive debate and rhetoric about the construction and
democratic choice of visions and images of the future, the depth of the politics
involved is frequently underplayed. Certain socio-technical systems may be
viewed as unproblematically desirable elements in an equally consensual,
equally unproblematic interpretation of sustainability, but others – such as the
‘sustainable’ nuclear based energy infrastructure currently advocated in the
UK – are clearly not. Advocates of sustainable transition management do not
always appreciate the deep ambivalence of sustainability as a category and
its power as legitimising discourse. For example, Kemp and Loorbach (2006:
15), argue for strategies designed to promote ‘transitions towards more
environmentally and socially benign societal systems’. It is perhaps possible
to imagine some shared, technically determined specification of
environmentally ‘benign’, but by what means might a more socially benign
societal system be identified? For whom is the system more benign, by whose
measure and across what space and scale? Even the most primitive attempt
to establish starting assumptions (for example, does benign mean being more
equal?) would immediately reveal divisions and fractures between opposing
interests and ideologies. Fundamental conflicts of this kind rarely figure in the
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rather ordered and consensual world presented by much of the transition
management literature, this being a world in which ‘interactive strategy
development’ appears both possible and plausible.
In sum, it is necessary to recognise that provisional templates for transition
are political statements that can only be partially inclusive (when there are
ever more actors on the social stage), contingent (when conditions are
dynamic) and potentially unstable as material forms and practices evolve over
time. In other words, there is a politics to transition management, a playing
out of power of when and how to decide and when and how to intervene,
which cannot be hidden beneath the temporary illusion of ‘post-political’
common interest claims of sustainability (Swyngedouw 2006).
Still assuming the possibility of transition management, these comments beg
further questions about the work involved in re-defining and revising the goals
of sustainable transition management as ‘the system’ evolves.
Caution 2. Managing transition management
Compared with ‘normal’ modernist policy makers, transition managers are
explicitly aware of the fact that they are handling complex problems and
uncertain processes involving multiple, multi-level stakeholders. They are
also aware that they are caught up in a cycle of problem-definition,
intervention and response. Such complexities are to some degree
accommodated in the framework of ‘reflexive governance’, this being a
discourse and an approach that acknowledges and responds to the processes
of globalisation and that recognises the increasing extent and range of actors
involved in the organisation of daily life. A system orientation, when combined
with ideas of reflexive governance, implies not one moment of intervention,
following which managers stand back and await the desired result, but a
constant, continual dynamic in which further adjustments are required as
environmental conditions change, these changes being, in part, the outcome
of previous interventions. Feedback, monitoring and circuits of action and
reaction are integral to this overall scheme.
As Smith et. al. suggest, this calls for a new breed of managers schooled in
the arts of transition. In their words, ‘The art of governing transitions becomes
one of recognising which context for transformation prevails, and which
drivers offer the best leverage for guiding change in a desirable direction’
(Smith et. al. 2005: 1498).
But what of the details? What are the new institutions of reflexively governed
transition management, and what are the mechanisms through which goals
are to be reinvented and revised in the light of events? More pragmatically,
what is to be monitored (and thus form the basis for reflection and review),
how frequently should this monitoring go on, and on what scale? How are
transition managers to identify the early signs of trajectories that take decades
to unfold (Geels and Kemp 2006), and how should they respond when
relevant dynamic processes speed up or slow down?
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