131
This dynamic is garnered with attempts at legitimating the claims to rights
and authority. However, just as the institutions are never truly settled but
are, in fact, processes, the repertoires of legitimation are also contingent.
To understand these dynamics of institutional formation requires
grounded, empirical research allowing us to go beyond state theories
modelled after ahistorical ideal types.
Lund’s argument thus points to directions where fieldwork-based analyses of accountability can attend to indirect and under-attended aspects of
energy transitions.
Håvard Haarstad brings a human geography and urban planning lens
to bear on accountability along with a science and technology studies concern with metrics, revealing the relational modulation of energy transitions across multiple scales. His chapter deals with the question of whether
climate targets matter for actual policy implementation. He observes that
climate-related targets are all around—countries have them, regions have
them, cities have them. Does this have any effects on how practical politics
proceed, on what happens in practice? Much of the social sciences would
take a sceptical view. Swyngedouw’s (2010) popular rendering of the
‘post-political condition’, for example, describes climate targets as part of
a techno-managerial apparatus that shifts rhetoric towards climate change
but at the same time makes sure that nothing actually happens. While
recognising the merits of a sceptical view, Haarstad aims to look at the
other side of this coin. Is it possible that targets, even seemingly overly
ambitious ones, may have real and substantive effects contributing to a
sustainable transition?
He starts from the basic idea that there is power in numbers. As many
social scientists have pointed out, quantification makes nature knowable
and controllable (Miller 2005). This could mean that reducing a sustainable transition—a messy, complicated and multifaceted process—to a
quantifiable target can have powerful effects. In fact, While et al. (2010)
argue that, by lending itself to quantification, climate change becomes a
potentially powerful target of political action and regulation. Haarstad
points to one instance of how a quantified goal (zero) becomes enrolled
and legitimated in political practice and, arguably, effects substantive
change. Since 2006, the goal of having ‘zero growth’ in private car traffic
has worked its way into Norwegian policy-making across a range of areas,
particularly transport and urban development. It affects flows of funding
from the national government to the major cities. It has become a major
condition for urban policy-making.
10 CONCLUSION: LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN ENERGY…
This dynamic is garnered with attempts at legitimating the claims to rights
and authority. However, just as the institutions are never truly settled but
are, in fact, processes, the repertoires of legitimation are also contingent.
To understand these dynamics of institutional formation requires
grounded, empirical research allowing us to go beyond state theories
modelled after ahistorical ideal types.
Lund’s argument thus points to directions where fieldwork-based analyses of accountability can attend to indirect and under-attended aspects of
energy transitions.
Håvard Haarstad brings a human geography and urban planning lens
to bear on accountability along with a science and technology studies concern with metrics, revealing the relational modulation of energy transitions across multiple scales. His chapter deals with the question of whether
climate targets matter for actual policy implementation. He observes that
climate-related targets are all around—countries have them, regions have
them, cities have them. Does this have any effects on how practical politics
proceed, on what happens in practice? Much of the social sciences would
take a sceptical view. Swyngedouw’s (2010) popular rendering of the
‘post-political condition’, for example, describes climate targets as part of
a techno-managerial apparatus that shifts rhetoric towards climate change
but at the same time makes sure that nothing actually happens. While
recognising the merits of a sceptical view, Haarstad aims to look at the
other side of this coin. Is it possible that targets, even seemingly overly
ambitious ones, may have real and substantive effects contributing to a
sustainable transition?
He starts from the basic idea that there is power in numbers. As many
social scientists have pointed out, quantification makes nature knowable
and controllable (Miller 2005). This could mean that reducing a sustainable transition—a messy, complicated and multifaceted process—to a
quantifiable target can have powerful effects. In fact, While et al. (2010)
argue that, by lending itself to quantification, climate change becomes a
potentially powerful target of political action and regulation. Haarstad
points to one instance of how a quantified goal (zero) becomes enrolled
and legitimated in political practice and, arguably, effects substantive
change. Since 2006, the goal of having ‘zero growth’ in private car traffic
has worked its way into Norwegian policy-making across a range of areas,
particularly transport and urban development. It affects flows of funding
from the national government to the major cities. It has become a major
condition for urban policy-making.
10 CONCLUSION: LEGITIMATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN ENERGY…