Civil  society  actors

a first step as progress towards a transnational green state depends on a “broad cultural shift”

(Eckersley, 2004: 245). This requires the interplay of various actors resulting in a vivid public sphere arguing for environmentally friendly behaviour.

McCarthy (2007: 184) concludes that the approach is “powerful, and an important counter-point to many current political projects that seem prepared to give up on the modern state”.

Nevertheless, he points out a relevant weakness: Eckersley (2004) assumes that democratic polities want to build a green state. This must not be the case as they can knowingly decide that they want to ignore climate change. This gives rise to the argument that a strong steering organisation in form of the state that bases its decision on scientific knowledge and is legitimised to act must govern the sustainable transition. When existing structures have failed to tackle environmental problems in the past it was the civil society that drew attention to excessive pollution and environmental degradation.

Governing the Transition to a Green Economy 63 Bäckstrand et al. (2010: 3) call the inclusion of the civil society in environmental governance

“the deliberative turn” which puts more emphasis on “procedural qualities such as participation, dialogue, transparency and accountability”. The aim is to increase the legitimacy of decision-making. However, including the civil society in a governance regime that remains effective while giving all societal actors access to decision-making procedures is a challenging task. Deliberation is not a cure-all solution. Bäckstrand et al. (2010) identify three lines of critique: First, empirical evidence that higher legitimacy because of public deliberation increases environmental policy output is scarce; second, market forces undermine public deliberation processes; third, it can cause conflicts and resource inequality resulting in interest group politics meaning a scattered landscape of civil society voices with some articulating themselves more effectively than others.

2.3.2.1. ‘Democratic  pragmatism’  

Dryzek (2005) has labelled the problem-solving discourse concentrating on the civil society

‘democratic pragmatism’. It does not argue for anarchistic self-governing of citizens but aims to include them in the decision-making procedures. It promises to add “legitimacy for decisions by involving a larger public” (Dryzek, 2005: 101) which in turn should increase the effectiveness of decisions. In a later publication Dryzek (2009: 1382) establishes the concept of a deliberative capacity “defined as the extent to which a political system possesses structures to host deliberation that is authentic, inclusive, and consequential“. Polities showing “a high degree of authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation” (Dryzek, 2009: 1382) have the most elaborated deliberation system. While no blueprint exists, key components of such a system are: a public space enabling free deliberation, an empowered space that is capable of making decisions, as well as transmission reams that hold the empowered space accountable to the public space and translate the results of the deliberative process into action. While this underlines the importance of the institutional design of a polity, it gives only a vague description how to improve the deliberative capacity.

A variety of policy instruments are available to engage the civil society and contextual variables determine which are best suited. Direct public consultations and legally-binding referendums are the most direct (Meadowcroft, 2004). Other tools at hand are the right to start public consultations and inquiries, require government to ask stakeholders for input to conduct relevant environmental impact assessments and implementing legislation that allows citizens more and easier access to public documents (Dryzek, 2005). While they all mark an important step forward, government remains in firm control of the process. In theory,

deliberative decision-making is based on political equality since by means of “open and reasoned argument, free from manipulation and the exercise of power, better and more legitimate decisions will arise” (Bäckstrand et al., 2010: 5). The proposed policy instruments would not achieve this ideal type, as potential venues of interaction remain limited and state-controlled. This demonstrates the challenge for civil society actors to create new modes of interactions by themselves. Government officials remain the most powerful force because they control the framework.

Civil society groups cover a broad spectrum of topics and advocate contradictory positions.

This means that they challenge each other in their quest for influence. For example, while environmental groups call for a green economy, representatives of the fossil fuel era want to sustain the status quo. The latter are particularly important players because they have experience, know how to spin issues in their favour and have ample financial resources. The most influential business companies have emerged during the fossil fuel era and want to avoid major changes that could undermine their strong position. Consequentially, the fossil fuel industry is the driving force of climate change denial (McCright and Dunlap, 2011a). Since governments in capitalistic societies need to “maintain business confidence” (Dryzek, 2005:

118) officials are more likely to listen to representatives of the existing regime as they rely on their cooperation to generate employment possibilities and economic wealth than to proponents of radical change. This underlines that strong influence of current benefiters can stall any progress when they turn into veto players (Christoff and Eckersley, 2011). Hence, civil society actors representing the interest of the fossil fuel era have a stronger negotiating position with government than advocates for radical change. This shows the differing starting points for the various civil society groups in the public deliberation. Adopting the ecological function in their core would strengthen green transition supporters in public deliberations.

However, this requires states to change themselves without significant external pressure, which is unlikely given the historical development.

The political culture of some states offers better opportunities for civil society actors than others. Dryzek et al. (2003) determine the scope for societal actors by analysing two dimension of the state structure.

• States are either “inclusive or exclusive in their structure when it comes to interest representation” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 6) of civil society actors. In exclusive states, the number of public actors representing state interests is very small leaving little space for civil society actors to interact with them. Inclusive states offer social movements

Governing the Transition to a Green Economy 65 many points for interaction or even directly integrate them into the decision-making

procedures.

• States are “either passive or active in the kinds of interest representation they allow or seek” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 6) from the civil society. Passive states do not openly approach civil society actors whereas active states engage with the civil society and aim to incorporate its positions.

Combining these two dimensions yields a two by two matrix with four ideal types. Active inclusive states, for example Norway, leave little space for civil society actors because government absorbs their demands in its actions. Under these circumstances few people actively pursue their interest because they are already represented. Hence, an inclusive state can dampen democratic practices if inclusion is too far-reaching. Passive inclusive states like the pluralist United States are different in this regard. Such a state “accepts and accommodates whatever constellation of interests, groups, and movements that social forces generate” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 7). Environmental groups are fighting with other civil society actors over influence on decision-makers. The strongest social groups can likely convince policymakers to take their preferences into account. This gives environmental groups an opportunity to make their case and should foster their growth. However, they often times lose out to stronger lobby groups, in particular business representatives who have more (financial) resources at hand and focus on the impact of certain policies on growth and employment opportunities. Despite these challenges, a passive inclusive state is preferable from an environmental point of view to active exclusive states like the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Thatcher and other countries “under the sway of market liberal ideology” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 9). These states openly fight against societal actors that promote issues contrary to the government doctrine. This undermines organised environmental movements that radicalise. Authorities suppress and marginalise them with all means necessary turning it into the worst setting for social movements. Passive exclusive states on the contrary are most comforting to environmental activists. One example is the legal corporatism of Germany that largely ignores social movements which “can be surprisingly, if unintentionally, beneficial for the democratic vitality of society” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 104). This ignorance “provided the space and impetus for the development of a green public sphere” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 190) resulting in an environmentally conscious bureaucracy.

Table 4: Impact of state structure on social movements

Structure for civil society representation

Active Passive

Inclusive Integrative Norway Pluralist United States Allowed civil

society

representation Exclusive Market liberal United

Kingdom under Thatcher Legal corporatism of Germany

Source: Author’s compilation based on Dryzek et al. (2003).

In any setting, social movements should aim to develop a “‘dual strategy’ involving action in the state along with continued confrontation from the public sphere” (Dryzek et al., 2003:

193). This ensures that environmental issues remain key priorities under changing political circumstances. Social movements stand a better chance to achieve their goals when environmental protection is at the core of the state since “truly effective inclusion in the state is possible only when the environmental movement (or sections of it) can align its interest with one or more of the imperatives that define the core of the state” (Dryzek et al., 2003: 78).

Otherwise, they can only achieve progress in the periphery and have no influence in core topics like security, economy and welfare despite the resources (time and money) they put into their effort.

2.3.2.2. Citizens  as  ‘change  agents’  

Leggewie and Welzer (2009) warn that a transition that focuses primarily on output faces an implementation challenge because it ignores civil society, which needs to support the transition as it otherwise will become a crucial veto player. They argue to pay closer attention to behavioural change rather than focussing on innovation that is steered by a “green enlightened monarchy” (Leggewie and Welzer, 2009: 135). Their argument is that a green transition can only succeed if citizens adopt it as their personal project and become “change agents” (Leggewie, 2010: 42). It is primarily the citizens who need to adjust their lifestyle according to new principles. Without behavioural change new low-carbon technologies will not be taken up. The people have the power through their day-to-day behaviour to override profound changes that governments implement top-down. For this reason, the proponents of the low-carbon transition need to develop smart incentives to stimulate less polluting

Governing the Transition to a Green Economy 67 lifestyles. In addition, (potential) losers of the transition, for example poor households

suffering from higher energy prices or people employed in the fossil fuel industry, require a special focus and should be compensated. Otherwise the societal losers will do everything in their power to cling to the status quo and obstruct the transition. It is crucial to convince that part of the civil society that is not closely related to the existing framework of the necessity to initiate a profound change process.

2.3.2.3. ‘Transition  management’  

The Dutch authors who have developed the MLP have presented ‘transition management’, a concept that describes the transition governance. It can be characterised as “a form of participatory policymaking based on complex systems thinking” (Foxon, 2011: 2259). It aims to foster radical system innovations on the production and consumption side in order to solve environmental problems by transforming the socio-political regime. Transition management envisions to do so by convening everyone interested in so-called ‘transition arenas’ with the aim of creating radical niche innovations. The arenas should “operate separate from regular policy arenas but the activities of the arenas should influence regular policy” (Nill and Kemp, 2009: 675). The questions arise how this can take place in a real-life context and whether the actors coming together in “any given niche do indeed reflect a new constituency of social interests and opinion” (Berkhout et al., 2004). While Rotmans et al. (2001) argue that government remains a key player encouraging others to participate, independent landscape developments and exogenous shocks limit government capabilities. Hence, transition management “is a new steering concept that relies on ‘darwinistic’ processes of variation and selection rather than the ‘intelligence’ of planning” (Nill and Kemp, 2009: 672).

In response to transition management, several critical arguments have been raised. First, transition management puts strong emphasis on the bottom-up dimension which is troublesome because the interaction between the three layers of the MLP is little elaborated (Markard and Truffer, 2008). Hence, it does not recognize innovations ignited at the landscape or regime level as a source of positive change. While this focus on bottom-up niche innovations results in a very optimistic outlook (Meadowcroft, 2005a), it is more likely that a low-carbon future requires a combination of bottom-up and top-down actions (Jänicke, 2008).

Second, transition management assumes that niche innovations are in line with the goals of a green economy. However, this does not have to be the case, in particular given the lack of a normative dimension of the MLP. Furthermore, given the innovations decarbonise the economy, transition management assumes that the niche actors develop the adequate

instruments to overcome veto points in the socio-technical regime and landscape. This neglects the political dimension that is necessarily involved in setting societal preferences (Meadowcroft, 2009b) and points again to the lack of normative guidance of the MLP and transition management. Third, since the innovation niches are populated by very few people, democratic concerns arise as it is taken for granted that “the visions and policies emerging from transition arenas will be accepted and deemed legitimate by the broader public”

(Hendriks, 2009: 343). Hence, transition management is an approach that introduces management into the MLP but shows the same weaknesses that have been discussed above.