The transitions storyline in Dutch environmental policy

By Adrian Smith, F. Kern. 2009

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In 2001 the Dutch government adopted a new policy in its Fourth National Environmental Policy Plan. Its transitions approach seeks radically more sustainable socio-technical systems, and represents an attempt to reinvigorate ecological modernisation. To explain the rise of this distinct policy storyline, a coalition of researchers and policy-makers forming the transition storyline is analysed. The interpretative flexibility of the storyline in relation to prevailing institutional priorities explains its success but also builds in limits by making subsequent institutionalisation susceptible to capture by incumbent interests, as illustrated by implementation in the energy sector.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/48e27f2d97a03f01cc2c08d3480f49b702ff2960

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Citations in the corpus

A Comparison of Energy Transition Governance in Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom (2014, background): “Some integration between the ETP transition platforms has been achieved; however Kern and Smith [36] point out that the impact of the ETP on core Dutch energy policy issues, such as security of supply, liberalization, renewable energy, and nuclear power has been very limited.”
Discursive regime dynamics in the Dutch energy transition (2014, background): “With that, the Dutch energy system was one of the first where transition management – a new governance approach for sustainability (Loorbach, 2007; Rotmans et al., 2001) – was applied in an integral manner (Kemp, 2010; Kern and Smith, 2008; Loorbach et al., 2008; Smith and Kern, 2009).”
The (non-)politics of managing low carbon socio-technical transitions (2009, background): “This is recognised in TM as a necessary complement to stimulating niche technologies, yet in Dutch policy practice it is rather neglected (Smith and Kern 2009).”
The Politics of Reflexive Governance: Challenges for Designing Adaptive Management and Transition Management (2011, background): “Such a “depoliticized” view of governance may serve to attract policy makers as it suggests neutrality and carries a promise of problem-solving coalitions across established lines of political conflict (Smith and Kern 2009).”
Transitioning policy: co-production of a new strategic framework for energy innovation policy in the Netherlands (2009, background): “It contributes to the literature on science–policy interactions (Weiss 1980, 1991; Jasanoff 1990, 2004; Hoppe 1999, 2002, 2005; Pielke 2004; Eriksson and Sundelius 2005) and the literature on transition management (Rotmans et al. 2000, 2001; Kemp and Loorbach 2006; Kemp et al. 2007; Loorbach 2007; S”
Transition policy and innovation policy: Friends or foes? (2011, background): “In the Netherlands energy transition policy has been formally in place since 2001 and is presently well institutionalized in the national system of environmental governance [15,16,17].”
Harnessing theories of the policy process for analysing the politics of sustainability transitions: A critical survey (2017, background): “…so far made relatively limited use of these theories in studies of the politics of transitions (Grin et al., 2011; Meadowcroft, 2011; Scrase and Smith, 2009), even though it is a commonplace to point to the importance of supportive policy instruments (Jacobsson and Bergek, 2011; Wieczorek and…”
Implementing transition management as policy reforms: a case study of the Dutch energy sector (2009, methodology): “The emergence of the approach and its implementation in energy policy have been analyzed in more detail elsewhere (Kemp and Loorbach 2005; Loorbach and Kemp 2008; Smith and Kern 2009; Kern and Smith 2008).”