but actually possible. Through strategic niche management the state could therefore
create more spaces in which social and technological experiments are protected
from immediate market exposure. Meanwhile, the niche players can also increasingly press for policy changes in the regulatory regime so that their solutions are
able to expand instead of being held back by the current path dependencies on the
regime level, like vested interests and structures of production and consumption.
Following citizen pressure, supportive regime-level changes are also proposed.
Institutionalized foresight and long-term orientation expresses the spirit of the
contract because it counters the dominance of short-term orientations in democracies with frequent voting cycles: the immediate costs to one’s core voters are very
unpopular, even if they help prevent much higher costs in the future. In addition,
improved democratic participation in the formulation of policy changes is supposed
to up their acceptance and legitimacy. Some possible accountability mechanisms to
these ends include a future chamber of parliament that frequently reports on the
long-term effects of policies and programs, and also ombudspersons whom citizens
can address in cases of perceived maladministration or with whom civil society
organizations can work before bringing cases of environmental damage to the
courts.
Thus, transformation occurs when regime structures are changed to a meaningful
degree, accelerating the spread of existing pioneer solutions and incentivizing even
more radical ones. Taken together, the “requisite transformation encompasses
profound changes to infrastructures, production processes, regulation systems and
lifestyles, and extends to a new kind of interaction between politics, society, science
and the economy” (WBGU 2011c: 1).
In summary, the emergence of the Great Transition is described as a rather
evolutionary learning process, in which more knowledge and sustainability values
will make things better and bring down powerful vested interests. Key interlinked
processes mentioned here can be summarized as:
• Learning about technical performance, market demand, infrastructure requirements, policy instruments and symbolic meaning.
• The articulation and adjustment of expectations or visions that guide innovation
activities and help attract attention and funding from additional actors.
• The building of social networks that expand resources and capabilities (WBGU
2011c: 1).
In this way the authors of the 2011 WBGU report put strong emphasis on the
overarching role of joint ideas and visions in encompassing change processes, and
add these sociocultural aspects to the STRN perspective. They also discuss at length
what the role of science itself should be in these processes. As the WBGU is firmly
in the SES camp, this includes understanding the carrying capacities of our
ecosystems. The WBGU also draws attention, however, to the role that transformative science plays in this context, and promotes a notion that science should
become part of bringing sustainability solutions to life. The theory of change is
summarized as follows:
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research
31
create more spaces in which social and technological experiments are protected
from immediate market exposure. Meanwhile, the niche players can also increasingly press for policy changes in the regulatory regime so that their solutions are
able to expand instead of being held back by the current path dependencies on the
regime level, like vested interests and structures of production and consumption.
Following citizen pressure, supportive regime-level changes are also proposed.
Institutionalized foresight and long-term orientation expresses the spirit of the
contract because it counters the dominance of short-term orientations in democracies with frequent voting cycles: the immediate costs to one’s core voters are very
unpopular, even if they help prevent much higher costs in the future. In addition,
improved democratic participation in the formulation of policy changes is supposed
to up their acceptance and legitimacy. Some possible accountability mechanisms to
these ends include a future chamber of parliament that frequently reports on the
long-term effects of policies and programs, and also ombudspersons whom citizens
can address in cases of perceived maladministration or with whom civil society
organizations can work before bringing cases of environmental damage to the
courts.
Thus, transformation occurs when regime structures are changed to a meaningful
degree, accelerating the spread of existing pioneer solutions and incentivizing even
more radical ones. Taken together, the “requisite transformation encompasses
profound changes to infrastructures, production processes, regulation systems and
lifestyles, and extends to a new kind of interaction between politics, society, science
and the economy” (WBGU 2011c: 1).
In summary, the emergence of the Great Transition is described as a rather
evolutionary learning process, in which more knowledge and sustainability values
will make things better and bring down powerful vested interests. Key interlinked
processes mentioned here can be summarized as:
• Learning about technical performance, market demand, infrastructure requirements, policy instruments and symbolic meaning.
• The articulation and adjustment of expectations or visions that guide innovation
activities and help attract attention and funding from additional actors.
• The building of social networks that expand resources and capabilities (WBGU
2011c: 1).
In this way the authors of the 2011 WBGU report put strong emphasis on the
overarching role of joint ideas and visions in encompassing change processes, and
add these sociocultural aspects to the STRN perspective. They also discuss at length
what the role of science itself should be in these processes. As the WBGU is firmly
in the SES camp, this includes understanding the carrying capacities of our
ecosystems. The WBGU also draws attention, however, to the role that transformative science plays in this context, and promotes a notion that science should
become part of bringing sustainability solutions to life. The theory of change is
summarized as follows:
2.1 Digging into Societal Transformation and System Innovation Research
31