Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2024.100230
Korhonen-Kurki K., D'Amato D., Belinskij A., Lazarevic D., Leskinen P., Nylén E.-J., Pappila M., Penttilä O., Pitzén S., Pykäläinen N., Turunen T., Vikström S.
Transformative change is becoming a key concept in the scientific conceptualization of sustainability. We assess five environmental governance approaches: adaptive, earth system, evolutionary, transformative and transition governance. We ask 1) What characterizes the different governance approaches, and how do they understand the dynamics of change? 2) How is the role of law conceptualized in the context of these governance approaches? The five studied approaches present different and complementary ways of describing change and how it unfolds or can be steered. According to our literature review, collaboration, leadership, learning, plurality, empowering, innovation and vision are seen as key mechanisms for change, while law is often oversimplified in these governance approaches, either as an enabler of or as a barrier to change towards sustainability. Future avenues of research could include how disruptive elements could be introduced as a way of catalyzing change and how to strengthen legal analysis to transformative change.
{"title":"Transformative governance: Exploring theory of change and the role of the law","authors":"Korhonen-Kurki K., D'Amato D., Belinskij A., Lazarevic D., Leskinen P., Nylén E.-J., Pappila M., Penttilä O., Pitzén S., Pykäläinen N., Turunen T., Vikström S.","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2024.100230","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2024.100230","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Transformative change is becoming a key concept in the scientific conceptualization of sustainability. We assess five environmental governance approaches: adaptive, earth system, evolutionary, transformative and transition governance. We ask 1) What characterizes the different governance approaches, and how do they understand the dynamics of change? 2) How is the role of law conceptualized in the context of these governance approaches? The five studied approaches present different and complementary ways of describing change and how it unfolds or can be steered. According to our literature review, collaboration, leadership, learning, plurality, empowering, innovation and vision are seen as key mechanisms for change, while law is often oversimplified in these governance approaches, either as an enabler of or as a barrier to change towards sustainability. Future avenues of research could include how disruptive elements could be introduced as a way of catalyzing change and how to strengthen legal analysis to transformative change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"23 ","pages":"Article 100230"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143149409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-01DOI: 10.1016/j.esg.2025.100237
Franziska Ehnert
In a context of complex and unprecedented challenges, innovations in governance are called for to embrace uncertainty and contingency. As a novel form of governance urban experimentation is intended to foster innovation and promote societal change. Building on the concepts of reconfiguration and multiplicity, scholars direct attention towards the multidimensional, hybrid and recursive nature of transformative change. The article provides an empirical exploration of local experimentation and contextual reconfiguration, illustrating how experimentation is mediated by and transforms local governance settings. It builds on “Dresden – City of the Future: Empowering Citizens, Transforming Cities!“, a transdisciplinary research project that aims to facilitate the co-creation of knowledge by researchers and practitioners, and advance the governance of local sustainability transitions. The exploratory study sheds light on processes of re-alignment between old and new forms of governance, illustrating the shift from hierarchy to co-creation, and from planning and accountability to experimentation and exploration.
{"title":"Sustainability transitions as contextual reconfiguration: Governance innovation through local experimentation","authors":"Franziska Ehnert","doi":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100237","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.esg.2025.100237","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In a context of complex and unprecedented challenges, innovations in governance are called for to embrace uncertainty and contingency. As a novel form of governance urban experimentation is intended to foster innovation and promote societal change. Building on the concepts of reconfiguration and multiplicity, scholars direct attention towards the multidimensional, hybrid and recursive nature of transformative change. The article provides an empirical exploration of local experimentation and contextual reconfiguration, illustrating how experimentation is mediated by and transforms local governance settings. It builds on “Dresden – City of the Future: Empowering Citizens, Transforming Cities!“, a transdisciplinary research project that aims to facilitate the co-creation of knowledge by researchers and practitioners, and advance the governance of local sustainability transitions. The exploratory study sheds light on processes of re-alignment between old and new forms of governance, illustrating the shift from hierarchy to co-creation, and from planning and accountability to experimentation and exploration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33685,"journal":{"name":"Earth System Governance","volume":"23 ","pages":"Article 100237"},"PeriodicalIF":4.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143149410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}