The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions

By Adrian Smith, Andrew Stirling, Frans Berkhout. 2005

2,180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A quasi-evolutionary model of socio-technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously. Differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures. The articulation of pressures, and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime, define the transition context. Four alternative contexts are described: endogenous renewal; re-orientation of trajectories; emergent transformation and purposive transitions. Agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed. Power to affect change depends on regime membership, the distribution of resources for change and expectations.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20484b0507f1389356e578fc08225574c4405bc0

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In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

The structuration of socio-technical regimes—Conceptual foundations from institutional theory (2014, background): “At the same time, various criticisms have been voiced by scholars, leading to a constructive discourse about merits and weaknesses of the model.3 Scholars have particularly criticized the rather unsystematic operationalization and delineation of the ‘levels’ in most MLP studies as well as the concep”
Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition (2017, background): “Along those lines, agency in transition can be understood as motivations, beliefs and values of individual agents steering or influencing the transition pathways [66], and its conceptualization in transition theory has not been properly addressed, being a recurrent subject of critique by authors tha”
Summary for Policymakers (2022, neutral): “Also, in the literature on sustainable innovation, incremental innovation is typically seen as incapable of achieving the radical transformation needed to achieve a sustainable society (Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2005; Weber 2003).”
Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action (2022, background): “…are not always predictable no matter how “ controlled ” the socio-technical transitions are through, for example, regulation and policy mandates (Smith et al., 2005), and (ii) interventions themselves are a form of “ technology ” that are subject to independent and autonomous forces that are “…”
‘Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Lower Your Carbon Footprint!’ — Urban Laboratories and the Governance of Low-Carbon Futures (2014, background): “…which large-scale shifts in technology occur, sees experimentation as occurring in specific niches or protected environments that are sheltered from wider political and economic pressures (Kemp et al., 2001; Geels, 2002; Hoogma, 2002; Geels, 2004; 2005; Smith et al., 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007).”
Regime Resistance against Low-Carbon Transitions: Introducing Politics and Power into the Multi-Level Perspective (2014, background): “A popular framework to understand the dynamics of such sociotechnical transitions is the multi-level perspective (Geels, 2002, 2012; Smith et al., 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007), which understands transitions as arising from the interplay between multi-dimensional developments at three analytical…”
Keeping sustainable innovation on a leash? Exploring incumbents’ institutional strategies (2015, background): “To date, the existence of power in transitions has been acknowledged (Avelino and Rotmans, 2009; Voß et al., 2009; Smith and Stirling, 2010; Walker and Shove, 2007; Meadowcroft, 2009; Smith et al., 2005; Pinkse and Kolk, 2010).”
Environmental Innovations, Local Networks and Internationalization (2012, background): “All in all, network economies are important if we consider EIs as representing a transition towards a new sustainable, socio-technical regime, in which the economic actors do not have sufficient resources to influence unilaterally (Smith et al., 2005).”
To tax, or not to tax: preferences for climate policy attributes (2012, background): “See Smith et al. (2005) and Stirling (2008) for inherent norms and the technological transitions of society.”
Bridging analytical approaches for low-carbon transitions (2016, positive): “Socio-technical transition theory is useful because it offers a contextual analysis of innovations and actors in specific sectors and systems 65,66 .”