119
significance of the five cases for future environmental governance scholarship on accountability in energy transitions.
10.1 AccountAbility, RegisteRs, cRoss-cutting
Dimensions AnD PRActices of legitimAtion
Analyses focused on accountability relations can demonstrably construe a
wide variety of cases in energy transition terms and pinpoint a range of
accountability crises. Such reframing can help articulate how specific
accountability crises are being maintained or challenged through practices
of legitimation along registers of discourse, bureaucracy, technocracy and
finance. This book has presented and consolidated a variety of case treatments—historical, conflict-centred, comparative, multi-scalar and crosssectoral. This foray has surfaced a number of cross-cutting dimensions.
Sareen (2019a) argues in Chap. 9 that our case studies span and equip us
to discern seven indicative dimensions that can serve to structure our
insights and guide future application. Within each such dimension, it is
possible to identify practices of legitimation that are at work to contest,
uphold or produce new specific outcomes in relation to accountable
energy transitions.
Table 10.1 plots the registers along which the practices of legitimation
play out against each of the cross-cutting dimensions that come up due to
case selection and approach, which are choices guided by analysts’ contextual knowledge. This makes the practices of legitimation pliable and oriented at situated analyses of accountability. They can inform interdisciplinary
analysis and identify interventions that can enable sustainable outcomes
Table 10.1 Practices of legitimation with indicative dimensions for five wideranging cases
Registers/Dimensions Discursive
Bureaucratic Technocratic Financial
Spatiality
Berlin’s historical energy transitions, Nordic electric mobility
transitions
Temporality
Berlin’s historical energy transitions, Indonesian land conflict
Opportunism
Indonesian land conflict, Norwegian zero growth target-setting
Prefiguration
Norwegian zero growth target-setting, Colorado habitat exchange
Performativity
Norwegian zero growth target-setting, Colorado habitat exchange
Power-play
Nordic electric mobility transitions, Indonesian land conflict
Routinisation
Colorado habitat exchange, Nordic electric mobility transitions
10 CONCLUSION: LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN ENERGY…
significance of the five cases for future environmental governance scholarship on accountability in energy transitions.
10.1 AccountAbility, RegisteRs, cRoss-cutting
Dimensions AnD PRActices of legitimAtion
Analyses focused on accountability relations can demonstrably construe a
wide variety of cases in energy transition terms and pinpoint a range of
accountability crises. Such reframing can help articulate how specific
accountability crises are being maintained or challenged through practices
of legitimation along registers of discourse, bureaucracy, technocracy and
finance. This book has presented and consolidated a variety of case treatments—historical, conflict-centred, comparative, multi-scalar and crosssectoral. This foray has surfaced a number of cross-cutting dimensions.
Sareen (2019a) argues in Chap. 9 that our case studies span and equip us
to discern seven indicative dimensions that can serve to structure our
insights and guide future application. Within each such dimension, it is
possible to identify practices of legitimation that are at work to contest,
uphold or produce new specific outcomes in relation to accountable
energy transitions.
Table 10.1 plots the registers along which the practices of legitimation
play out against each of the cross-cutting dimensions that come up due to
case selection and approach, which are choices guided by analysts’ contextual knowledge. This makes the practices of legitimation pliable and oriented at situated analyses of accountability. They can inform interdisciplinary
analysis and identify interventions that can enable sustainable outcomes
Table 10.1 Practices of legitimation with indicative dimensions for five wideranging cases
Registers/Dimensions Discursive
Bureaucratic Technocratic Financial
Spatiality
Berlin’s historical energy transitions, Nordic electric mobility
transitions
Temporality
Berlin’s historical energy transitions, Indonesian land conflict
Opportunism
Indonesian land conflict, Norwegian zero growth target-setting
Prefiguration
Norwegian zero growth target-setting, Colorado habitat exchange
Performativity
Norwegian zero growth target-setting, Colorado habitat exchange
Power-play
Nordic electric mobility transitions, Indonesian land conflict
Routinisation
Colorado habitat exchange, Nordic electric mobility transitions
10 CONCLUSION: LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN ENERGY…