BookPDF Available

Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change

May 2010

DOI:10.4324/9780203856598

ISBN: 9780203856598

Authors:

John Grin

University of Amsterdam

Jan Rotmans

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Johan Schot

Utrecht University

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern about the social and environmental risks which have come along with the progress achieved through a variety of mutually intertwined modernization processes. In recent years these concerns are transformed into a widely-shared sense of urgency, partly due to events such as the various pandemics threatening livestock, and increasing awareness of the risks and realities of climate change, and the energy and food crises. This sense of urgency includes an awareness that our entire social system is in need of fundamental transformation. But like the earlier transition between the 1750's and 1890's from a pre-modern to a modern industrial society, this second transition is also a contested one. Sustainable development is only one of many options. This book addresses the issue on how to understand the dynamics and governance of the second transition dynamics in order to ensure sustainable development. It will be necessary reading for students and scholars with an interest in sustainable development and long-term transformative change.

Knowledge capabilities and actor networks in sustainable innovation (adapted from Clayton et al., 1999).

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Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Research Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/respol

Review

Innovation studies and sustainability transitions: The allure of the multi-level

perspective and its challenges

Adrian Smitha,∗, Jan-Peter Voßb, John Grinc

aSPRU, University of Sussex, United Kingdom

bTechnische Universität Berlin, Germany

cUniversity of Amsterdam, Netherlands

article info

Article history:

Received 1 August 2008

Received in revised form 1 December 2009

Accepted 1 January 2010

Available online 23 February 2010

Keywords:

Socio-technical transitions

Sustainable innovation

Greening innovation systems

abstract

Sustainable development is prompting a re-assessment of innovation and technological change. This

review paper contributes three things towards this re-assessment activity. First, it considers how the

history of innovation studies for sustainable development can be explained as a process of linking

broader analytical frameworks to successively larger problem framings. Second it introduces an emerg-

ing framework whose allure rests in its ability to capture the bigger picture: the multi-level perspective

on socio-technical transitions (MLP). Whilst burgeoning researcher networks and literature suggests this

policy-relevant theory is attractive, it is not without its challenges. The third purpose of this paper is to

elaborate these challenges as areas for further research and development. We do this by drawing upon

contributions to this special section and the wider literature.

Contents

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 436

2. The logic of adopting a broader perspective in sustainable innovation............................................................................. 437

2.1. An initial broadening in problem framing: from clean technology to industrial ecology................................................... 437

2.2. Broadening the analytical perspective: from environmental economics to evolutionary perspectives on environmental innovation.... 437

2.3. A further broadening in analytical perspective: greener innovation systems .............................................................. 438

2.4. A further broadening in problem framing: system innovation for sustainability ........................................................... 439

2.5. Another broadening in analytical perspective: transitions in socio-technical regimes ..................................................... 439

3. The multi-level perspective for analysing sustainable transitions .................................................................................. 440

3.1. Socio-technical niches ........................................................................................................................ 440

3.2. Socio-technical regimes ...................................................................................................................... 441

3.3. Socio-technical landscapes ................................................................................................................... 441

3.4. The allure of the MLP ......................................................................................................................... 441

4. The papers contributing to this special section...................................................................................................... 442

5. Research challenges in this special section .......................................................................................................... 442

5.1. Relations between niche, regime and landscape levels...................................................................................... 443

5.2. Plural regimes and niches in interaction ..................................................................................................... 443

5.3. The geography of transitions ................................................................................................................. 443

5.4. Empirical operationalisation—a need for reﬂexivity......................................................................................... 444

5.5. Governing sustainability transitions ......................................................................................................... 444

6. Conclusions—towards a future research agenda .................................................................................................... 445

6.1. Niche dynamics............................................................................................................................... 445

6.2. Unlocking regimes............................................................................................................................ 445

∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1273 877065.

E-mail address: a.g.smith@sussex.ac.uk (A. Smith).

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2010.01.023

436 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

6.3. The spatial aspects of transitions............................................................................................................. 446

6.4. Methodology to map transitions ............................................................................................................. 446

6.5. The politics of transitions .................................................................................................................... 446

6.6. Opening the black-box of public policy ...................................................................................................... 446

6.7. An open agenda .............................................................................................................................. 446

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. 446

References ........................................................................................................................................... 446

1. Introduction

The promise of greener innovation has long featured in debates

about mitigating environmental degradation under industrial

development. Emphasis in innovative capabilities lay at the heart

of critical responses to the Malthusian Limits to Growth report by

the Club of Rome in the 1970s (Meadows, 1972). Critics argued that

the Club’s modelling underplayed the possibility for innovation to

stretch and redeﬁne ‘limits’, and thereby avoid environmental and

social collapse (Cole et al., 1973; Freeman, 1979). More recently,

ideas about ecological modernisation consider how innovation can

redirect production towards environmental goals, and decouple

economic growth from environmental degradation (Jänicke, 1985,

1988; Huber, 1982, 1993; Spaargaren and Mol, 1992; Vergragt and

Jansen, 1993; Hajer, 1995).

Innovation studies has much to offer those interested in

ensuring new products, processes and services improve human

wellbeing without detriment to environmental life support sys-

tems. Innovation studies can explain how and why such “greener”

production and consumption practices come about, or do not, and

suggest how these kinds of practice might be accelerated at the

expense of environmentally more harmful alternatives. We note

that concern for sustainable development tends to demand a broad-

ening of perspective in innovation studies. The ﬁrst purpose of this

paper is to explain the logic for this broadening of perspective. It

works on two dimensions.

The ﬁrst dimension is a broadening of the problem framing. This

comprises deﬁnition of the purpose and outcomes of innovative

activity and, linked to this, delineation of the focal object of inno-

vation studies, i.e. the “thing” that undergoes innovation. Thus we

explain a broadening from a focus on the promotion of cleaner

technologies in the 1980s and towards current interest in inno-

vating entire systems of production and consumption. The second

dimension is a broadening of the analytical framing: the set of consid-

erations used to explain the emergence and success of innovation.

This starts from a neo-classical environmental economics under-

standing of price signals inducing innovation and leads into a

variety of innovation systems perspectives.

We argue that developments in both dimensions, problem

framing and analytical approach, have done a lot to increase the

signiﬁcance of innovation studies for sustainable development.

Nevertheless, a further step is under way. A broad, multi-level

perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP) claims to be able

to analyse the broader problem framing of innovating entire sys-

tems of production and consumption. The introduction and critical

assessment of the MLP is the second purpose of this paper.

The MLP developed out of explanations for historic transitions

to new socio-technical systems for mobility, sanitation, entertain-

ment, food, lighting and so on. Successful systems are constituted

from networks of artefacts, actors, and institutions and gain sta-

bility and path-dependence as particular ‘socio-technical regimes’

(e.g. the regime of centralised power generation on the basis of fos-

sil and nuclear fuels). The conceptual understanding of transitions

to new regimes draws upon theories at the interface of innovation

studies and STS. They combine a view on the micro-level processes

of constructing new technologies, with a view on emerging macro-

and meso-level patterns of culture, organisation, markets, regula-

tion and infrastructures (Rip and Kemp, 1998; Schot, 1998; Geels,

2002).

The allure of the MLP for sustainability research rests in

this engagement with the dynamics of large-scale socio-technical

systems deemed to present persistent sustainability challenges

(Rotmans et al., 2001; Berkhout, 2000; Elzen et al., 2004). How-

ever, this attractive big picture is not without its challenges. A third

and ﬁnal purpose for our paper is to draw on contributions to this

special section in order to discuss some of the challenges1: concep-

tual challenges in terms of deﬁning the unit of analysis; analytical

challenges in addressing structural power, agency, and geography;

and practical challenges in appraising the governability of socio-

technical transitions. We conclude by suggesting what this means

for future research agendas in this area.

The contributions to this special section force reﬂection on nor-

mative orientations in innovation processes and the social and

political aspects of knowledge production and technology develop-

ment. This may inspire further development of innovation studies,

connecting innovation theory with science and technology stud-

ies (STS). As Frank Geels’ contribution points out, explicit concern

for normative directions can further open innovation studies to

theoretical and ontological traditions that have hitherto remained

marginal. A recent review of STI called for precisely that kind of

broader dialogue between approaches, as well as being more reﬂex-

ive in the analysis of innovation (Morlacchi and Martin, 2009). The

contributions in this special section are in that spirit, and suggest

the MLP provides a promising heuristic for organising such a dia-

logue. Our intent is not to present the MLP as a ﬁnished product, but

to introduce it in a critical and reﬂexive way that invites others in

innovation studies to contribute to its future development. Whilst

the future research agenda we identify includes issues pertinent

to the MLP as an analytical framework, we also ﬂag up issues that

relate to the practical challenge of governing sustainable transitions

in general.

In following the aims for this paper we cover considerable

ground. The next section explains the broadening of problem fram-

ings and analytical approaches. Section 3then introduces the MLP.

The state of the art for the MLP shows its breadth and work in

progress quality and gives a background to its use as a ﬂexi-

ble heuristic. This is reﬂected in the diversity of the contributing

papers. Section 4summarises main points from these contribu-

tions, before Section 5discusses the challenges they raise for the

MLP and sustainability transitions. Section 6concludes with sug-

gestions for a future research agenda.

1Each of the contributors to this special section participated in a workshop we

organised in Berlin in September 2007 on The Politics and Governance of Sustain-

able Transitions, and which was funded by the German Ministry for Research and

Education under its programme for Social-Ecological Research and the Dutch KSI

Programme. Participants were invited to engage with the MLP and to identify and

explore critical issues of particular relevance to their research. The papers in this

special section seem to us to present especially pertinent and challenging issues for

the MLP and policy-relevant theory for sustainability transitions generally.

A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448 437

2. The logic of adopting a broader perspective in

sustainable innovation

Sustainable development emphasises explicit interest in the nor-

mative direction of innovation. The challenge for innovation no

longer rests solely in economic potential, but also in the societal

changes induced by innovative activity and the consequences of

this for environmental and social sustainability. Along with this

broader problem framing, comes a need for broader analytical per-

spectives.

Innovation system analysis is an approach that has been help-

ful in explaining the level of innovative activity: the quantitative

output from economies, sectors or regions in terms of new patents,

products or technologies. Adapted to particular technologies it has

also helped to understand the success and failure of certain inno-

vations and related economic sectors in different economies. This

builds on an analytical framing which includes public policies,

institutional settings, inter-organisational networking, learning

processes and knowledge infrastructures, and entrepreneurial

capabilities. Innovation systems can help us understand how

the ﬂow of greener goods and services might be accelerated,

but appears not so clear in understanding how these rely upon

and induce broader structural changes for sustainable develop-

ment.

The challenge of sustainable development demands policies to

promote a change in what Hughes (1987, pp. 15–16) has called

the momentum of socio-technical systems. This comprises mass

(the objects, actors and infrastructures involved), speed (the pace

at which socio-technical developments and their alignment devel-

ops), and direction (the overall performance of the system changes

as a result of innovations). The direction of momentum is probaly

the most challenging one, helping innovative activity move onto

a path where desired outcomes can be expected, and deﬂecting it

from less desirable trajectories.2

Directionality is not only challenging for reasons of the uncertain

systemic effects of innovations. It is also challenged by ambivalence

over standard measures of ‘sustainability’. The precise mean-

ings and trade-offs for society between speciﬁc environmental,

social and economic features of innovative activities are open

to interpretation and negotiation. Sociological sensitivity towards

inter-subjective meanings of sustainable innovation, and the role

of political and economic power in privileging certain perspectives

over others, becomes important. Sustainable development may

thus be seen as broadening innovation studies to include reﬂexivity

issues more typical in STS, but turned towards innovation studies

concerns for the large-scale creation of novelty, industry structure

and evolutionary change over the longer-term.

2.1. An initial broadening in problem framing: from clean

technology to industrial ecology

A theme prevalent in research and policy in the literature in

the early 1990s was interest in promoting innovation for envi-

ronmentally friendly technology. A switch in focus from early

preoccupation with end-of-pipe pollution control technologies and

towards cleaner production processes and product innovation rep-

resented an initial broadening in problem framing. The new cleaner

technology paradigm was concerned with innovations integral to

2The innovations systems perspective did develop out of consideration for

how innovation explained the contrasting structures and dynamics of national

economies. This can involve normative interest in the different directions of eco-

nomic development and the distribution of standard measures of prosperity. Here

we mean directionality in a more multivalent and contested normative concern

for sustainable development. Sustainability is not unique in rendering more visible

normative contests over innovation directions.

processes and products, reducing contamination, waste and mate-

rial use at source. Some argued the associated material savings

translated into reduced costs, and hence greater business com-

petitiveness (Ashford et al., 1985; Porter and van der Linde, 1995;

Howes et al., 1997; Rennings, 2000). Other studies foresaw new

environmental industries and new markets and jobs as the econ-

omy undergoes an ecological modernisation (Jänicke, 1988). This

remains a topic of considerable debate (York and Rosa, 2003).

Nevertheless, a dynamic and innovation-oriented consideration of

potential beneﬁts for business provides a more positive outlook

and constructive ground for dialogue compared to static economy-

versus-environment debates.

Throughout the 1990s, some trade associations and ﬁrms

began innovating environmental management systems as a way of

demonstrating improving environmental performance to increas-

ingly attentive stakeholders (Welford, 1995).3The challenge was to

ensure that these environmental management approaches moved

from being a peripheral site-management exercise to become an

inﬂuence upon core business strategies and innovation agendas

across sectors (i.e. from concern for emissions from production pro-

cesses to concern for the life cycle environmental performance of

the goods and services produced). A literature in industrial ecol-

ogy broadened the problem framing further by considering how

either entire sectors or industrial parks might close loops and make

material ﬂows more sustainable (e.g. Ayres and Simmonis, 1994).

The environmental innovation problem framing was broadening,

in the sense that it included organisational innovations across sec-

tors and the development of greener goods and services across the

lifecycle, and not just cleaner technology at the ﬁrm level.

2.2. Broadening the analytical perspective: from environmental

economics to evolutionary perspectives on environmental

innovation

Innovation studies rooted in evolutionary economics provide

a helpful corrective to (neo-classical) environmental economics

perspectives. The latter see the challenge of environmental innova-

tion as resting predominantly in adjusting price signals for goods

and services. Environmental considerations are poorly served by

existing markets, so the environmental economists argue, because

costs and prices fail to internalise environmental externalities, and

consequently fail to generate effective demand for cleaner inno-

vations (Pearce et al., 1989). Market-based environmental policy

measures (e.g. eco-taxes and tradable quotas) can internalise the

social costs of environmental degradation (i.e. market external-

ities), and thereby provide a more balanced price incentive for

innovating goods and services.4

Reliance on this ‘demand-pull’ approach has its shortcomings.

It brackets out many of the reasons why responses to environmen-

tal price signals are sticky and inelastic. Taxes have to correct price

signals to a politically difﬁcult level for long periods before less

resource consuming innovations relieve the pressure. Case stud-

ies and survey research identiﬁed overlapping cognitive, social,

3Often regulatory push was found to induce greener innovation (Ashford et al.,

1985; Howes et al., 1997). Signiﬁcantly, it was the way these regulations were

implemented that mattered, and the extent to which regulators were able to act

as knowledge brokers between ﬁrms adapting innovative ideas, technologies and

practices (Smith, 1996; Gouldson and Murphy, 1998).

4Neo-classical environmental economists found a receptive policy audience

amongst the New Right for their market-based ideas. The environmental regulations

of the 1970s became ideologically tarred as too restrictive and burdensome on busi-

ness. Environmental taxes and tradable quotas were the preferred, market-friendly

approach (rhetorically at least) to inducing cleaner innovation in ﬁrms. In prac-

tice, regulations can be ﬂexible and retain advantages that ensure their continued

importance within environmental policy mixes (Smith and Sorrell, 2001).

438 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

Fig. 1. Knowledge capabilities and actor networks in sustainable innovation

(adapted from Clayton et al., 1999).

institutional and political barriers, in addition to narrow market

barriers, as critical for greener innovation (Fischer and Schot, 1993;

Howes et al., 1997; Kemp, 1994a,b). A wider analytical perspective

needed to include these non-market considerations in its analysis.

As an illustration, Clayton et al. (1999) considered the differ-

ent knowledge capabilities and extensiveness of actor networks

associated with a variety of cleaner innovation cases (Fig. 1). This

mapping can be extended to consider the distribution of other

resources required for each type of environmental improvement in

their scheme, such as equipment, skills, ﬁnance, supportive infras-

tructures, and institutional support.

As with an earlier generation of critical studies on the under-

standing of innovation dynamics in neo-classical economics (e.g.

Dosi, 1982; Nelson and Winter, 1982; Dosi, 1988), the cleaner inno-

vation literature found price signals to be necessary, yet insufﬁcient

to assure innovative responses on the supply-side of the market.

Evolutionary perspectives offered a more nuanced way of consid-

ering the greening of production processes by bringing the factors

into view that shape innovative activity on the supply-side (Green

et al., 1994). This analytical broadening did not simply consider R&D

subsidies as a complement to eco-taxes. Other institutional factors

were important for the innovation of cleaner production processes,

including search routines, knowledge capabilities, prevailing tech-

nology paradigms and regimes (Kemp, 1994a,b).

2.3. A further broadening in analytical perspective: greener

innovation systems

Firm-level studies of environmentally oriented innovation pro-

cesses continue to be an important activity, as well as supporting

a large consultancy sector. This is where much of the hard slog

towards a shift in industry structures needs to take place. It is

an area of policy and business activity, however, that can bene-

ﬁt considerably from the analysis of broader innovation systems

in which ﬁrm-level activities are embedded (Freeman, 1992). This

refers to institutional frameworks inﬂuenced by policy-makers and

broader governance processes, the system of innovation, as it were.

Much depends on e.g. provision of workers with the requisite

skills, the integration of cleaner technologies in network infrastruc-

tures, safety standards, planning procedures and other market rules

which have an effect for facilitating or hampering environmental

innovations. The innovation studies literature suggests environ-

mentally oriented innovation policy must take a broader systems

perspective, recognising institutions operating beyond the ﬁrm

and networks of different organisations such as ﬁrms, universities,

ﬁnancial service providers.

Recognising that the capabilities of individual organisations

to innovate, as well as their broader selection environments, are

constituted by more complex processes opens analysis to related

practitioner routines, skills and training, governing institutions,

facilitating infrastructures, and effective and prospective market

demand. This is an insight which is at the root of the systems

perspective in innovation studies and various strands of research

focusing on the structure and performance of national, sectoral,

regional or technological innovation systems (Lundvall, 1992;

Breschi and Malerba, 1997; Truffer, 2008). Central to this innova-

tion systems perspective is how this work is distributed across the

research, government and business sectors.

The greener innovation systems perspective adapts innovation

system analysis by adding an interest in how the functioning of the

innovation system becomes subordinate to the sustainability quali-

ties of its outputs (Green et al., 1994). Recent work on technological

innovation systems (TIS), for instance, developed with a concern

for the success of innovations that are expected to be particularly

favourable from an environmental point of view (e.g. renewable

energy technologies). Extensive literature review provided a frame-

work for explaining the success of innovative technologies which

can also be used to strategically guide the development of desired

technological innovation systems (Jacobsson and Bergek, 2004). A

functions approach is deployed to identify those properties of a

technology innovation system that are needed in order to intro-

duce cleaner technologies successfully. These functions include:

experimentation by entrepreneurs; knowledge development and

diffusion; providing orientation to search processes; creating mar-

kets; mobilising resources; and securing policy legitimacy (Hekkert

et al., 2007).

As with earlier innovation system formulations, interest in

wider institutional, historical, material, cultural and geographical

contexts takes the form of a set of (exogenous) structural param-

eters that contribute to explanations of innovative success (or

failure) of a core innovation system (Bell, 2007). The core system

is comprised of networks of ﬁrm capabilities, knowledge infras-

tructures and proximate policy and market institutions. Innovation

systems analysis covers this core well (Edquist, 2005). As the TIS lit-

erature points out, some of the difﬁculties in establishing greener

innovation systems can be explained by the absence of certain core

functions or because the system is unable to align functions. How-

ever, it remains unclear where these absent functional capabilities

come from, or how they develop. We do not learn much in the TIS

literature about difﬁcult governance questions such as how to iden-

tify ‘sustainable’ technologies and how to prioritise them. Much of

that explanation rests in the broader societal contexts in which

speciﬁc innovation systems operate, and which tend not to be con-

sidered in dynamic interaction with the core (Markard and Truffer,

2008; Bell, 2007).

So whilst innovation systems analysis can help explain the rel-

ative success of speciﬁc cleaner technologies, analysis is often in

a situation of needing to explain the difﬁculties of making such

“green” innovation systems come about. Analysis needs to focus

on the way broader contexts put pressure on innovation systems

to become greener and inform their reconﬁguration.

The preceding remarks have a crucial implication. Reconﬁgured

and reprioritised innovation systems may contribute to sustain-

able development through provision of greener goods and services.

But the possibility to do this reconﬁguring will be structured (in

both enabling and constraining ways) by wider contexts that frame,

motivate and interpret innovation system activities, and which may

actually attenuate the beneﬁts of individual cleaner innovations.

This broader analytical perspective is recognised in the innovation

systems literature, as is a concern to explain the directionality of

the technological trajectories that ensue (Bell, 2007; Nelson, 2008;

Von Tunzelmann et al., 2008).

A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448 439

2.4. A further broadening in problem framing: system innovation

for sustainability

It is the broadening of problem framing to a perspective on

‘systems innovation’ that poses an additional challenge to the ana-

lytical framing of innovation systems. Systems innovation refers

to the renewal of a whole set of networked supply chains, pat-

terns of use and consumption, infrastructures, regulations, etc.,

that constitute the socio-technical systems which provide basic

services such as energy, food, mobility or housing. This broaden-

ing of problem framing goes beyond isolated products, processes

or technologies. It acknowledges difﬁculty in evaluating the sus-

tainability of isolated technologies, if not analysed as embedded

in a system context.5And it acknowledges strong interdependen-

cies between various elements of socio-technical systems which

impede radically new ways of organising socio-technical provi-

sion (e.g. renewable energy, organic agriculture, public transport

or ecological building).

Until recently the focus of environmentally oriented innova-

tion studies has remained largely upon innovations to individual

goods and services. A greener innovation system may produce more

eco-efﬁcient products or services, or even enable industry clusters

to develop more closed-loop processes. But the relative improve-

ments they deliver can be undermined by absolute increases in

consumption. A need for step-jumps in absolute performance, such

as 80% reductions in carbon emissions over the next generation, or

factor ten improvements in resource efﬁciency, implies changes

at the level of entire socio-technical systems. These system inno-

vations, such as transformative innovations that overhaul food

systems or waste systems, involve purposeful changes in prevail-

ing techno-economic paradigms and system architectures (to use

the Freeman-Perez typology of innovation). As such, systems inno-

vation takes an even broader view than earlier perspectives on

innovation and sustainable development; making it far more ambi-

tious and posing even greater analytical and governance challenges.

As Weber and Hemmelskamp (2005, p. 1) put it, sustainable

systems innovation implies:

major changes are required along the entire production-

consumption chain, its ﬂows, its multi-level architecture, its

institutions and structures, and – not least – the behaviour of

the actors involved in it, from resource extraction to the ﬁnal

consumption of goods and services.

The challenge of sustainable development is increasingly under-

stood in terms of ‘transitions’ to more sustainable socio-technical

systems. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in

Johannesburg initiated cross-cutting programmes for transforming

sustainable production and consumption systems (the UN Mar-

rakech process). The UK government announced a Low Carbon

Transition Plan for its economy in 2009, joining the Netherlands,

Austria, Belgium and Finland with ‘transition’ ambitions (Geels et

al., 2008). Governments, businesses and civil society groups are

considering what reformed innovation policy looks like through

this sustainable socio-technical transitions framing.

Hoogma et al. (2002, p. 5) argue:

‘Ecological restructuring of production and consumption pat-

terns will require not so much a substitution of old technologies

by new ones, but radical shifts in technological systems or tech-

5Special section contributions illustrate an important aspect to transitions, which

is the way the ‘societal function’ is itself altered through transitions between

regimes. Expectations about mobility have, for instance, altered with developments

in the socio-technical systems that move us around (see Shove and Walker, and

Cohen, both in this issue); as have adequate levels of energy service with the devel-

opment of energy systems (see Spaeth and Rohracher in this issue).

nological regimes including a change in consumption patterns,

user preferences, regulations, and artefacts’

This poses a challenging advance on research rooted in more

speciﬁc environmental innovation studies of the types mentioned

above (Tukker et al., 2008). Relative to innovations in Fig. 1, ‘systems

innovation’ sits well beyond the top right of that scheme.

Studying food systems, for instance, means technical

elements—physical inputs, plant-breeding techniques, pesti-

cides, harvesting technologies, transport and logistics, food

processing, cooking technology, and so on—are studied in tight

relation to the social elements giving these artifacts meaning and

purpose—such as prevailing attitudes towards farming, ideas about

soil health and nutritional food, ofﬁcial agricultural policy and

price-support mechanisms, organised interests, the structure of

food retailing, shifting trends in food consumption, and other social

considerations, including concern about long-term environmental

sustainability (Smith, 2006). It is the co-evolution of these social

and technical elements that determines the way the food system

is structured and how it performs (Russell and Williams, 2002).

The analytical challenge is to understand these socio-technical

interdependencies as a dynamic system, and then identify how

systems innovation can induce a transition to other, potentially

more sustainable, systems.

So, the key difference between the greener innovation systems

literature and systems innovation (socio-technical transition) lit-

erature is the starting points and focal objectives of each. The

innovation systems problem framing is (predominantly) concerned

with the promotion and introduction of greener goods and services

into markets. The systems innovation literature frames its prob-

lem as concern for the realisation of ‘societal functions’ through

the conﬁguration and alignment of heterogeneous socio-technical

elements and processes, and how these restructure over long peri-

ods of time. Markets are an important part of this broader picture,

but so too are other institutions.

2.5. Another broadening in analytical perspective: transitions in

socio-technical regimes

The challenge then, is to ﬁnd an analytical perspective on inno-

vation that is commensurate with the extended problem framing

of system innovations for sustainability: how can we understand

innovation processes leading to transformations in socio-technical

systems that help realise broad social functions more sustain-

ably? Two related strands of research help, which are: historically

informed theory for wide-scale changes to technology-in-society;

and, problem-oriented thinking for sustainable transitions.

The ﬁrst strand provides a ‘quasi-evolutionary’ conceptuali-

sation of historic transitions in societal functions. It combines

sociological appreciation of processes of technology shaping, as in

SCOT, with more structural notions of ‘technological regimes’ and

‘paradigms’ prevalent in evolutionary economics (Rip, 1995, see

Geels’ paper in this special section). Research emphasises the ways

selection environments are anticipated, reinterpreted and (par-

tially) transformed by (networked) innovators (Rip, 1992; van den

Belt and Rip, 1987; Disco and van der Meulen, 1998). Relevant stud-

ies are those interested in how new technologies become involved

in wide-ranging processes of social change (e.g. the move from gas

light to electric light (Schot, 1998), from sail to steam ships (Geels,

2002), the rise of the turbo-jet in aviation (Geels, 2006), improve-

ments in public sanitation (Geels, 2006b). This strand of research is

not interested in normative goals like sustainability.

This historic work extends technological paradigm and regime

concepts, and re-conceives how they shape trajectories of devel-

opment. Earlier work was more interested in the way regimes

operated (Dosi et al., 1988; Nelson and Winter, 1982), and less

440 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

focused in how they related to social institutions beyond markets

and science (e.g. Dosi, 1982; see also Nelson, 2008). As an other-

wise positive review of that literature concluded, ‘how to catch

[paradigms] as they form, and manage the formation and estab-

lishment of new ones, remain very poorly understood and under

researched’ (Von Tunzelmann et al., 2008, p. 482). As we shall see

in the next Section, transitions between regimes are central to the

MLP.

A socio-technical perspective reconceptualises regimes beyond

the core cognitive structures emphasised by Dosi and others (Geels,

2004).6A sociological sensibility extends the regime notion to

embrace institutions (such as regulations and markets), heteroge-

neous networks (including devices and people), user relations, and

social expectations. Mutual reinforcement across these plural pro-

cesses creates the structural patterns that shape innovation and

creates trajectories of social development. The regime of automo-

bility, for example, includes not only paradigmatic technological

designs for cars, but also the specialised road planning authori-

ties, the institutions of the ‘driving licence’ and ‘motor insurance’,

the lobbying capacities of car manufacturers and oil companies,

and the cultural signiﬁcance of automobility. In combination, these

elements form a socio-technical regime that stabilises the way soci-

etal functions are realised, and gives shape to particular patterns of

producing and consuming mobility.

Transitions in regime structures are consequently seen to

arise through an accumulation of a broader variety of interact-

ing processes than the knowledge base and markets alone. ‘How

technology is shaped by social, economic and political forces alike,

and how, in the same process, technologies and technology sys-

tems shape human relations and societies’ (Rip and Kemp, 1998,

p. 328). So, for example, the transition from a ‘society with candle

and gaslight’ to a ‘society with electrical light’, emphasises some

of the social, political and economic factors facilitating this transi-

tion, as well as the developmental possibilities opened up by the

emergence of new regimes, and the meanings associated with those

developments (Schot, 1998). Transition scholars are interested in

the broader societal transformations arising from the establish-

ment of novel technological regimes, but also how broader societal

developments are effectively selecting between possible would-be

regimes and exerting pressure on them to adapt or causing them

to wither.

Such interests resonate with the concerns of sustainability

researchers, where interest centres upon challenges like transiting

away from fossil-fuelled energy systems and towards low carbon

alternatives (Kemp, 1994a,b; Rip and Kemp, 1998; Smith et al.,

2005). Thus the second strand of research, involving researchers

working in the historical strand, but also in the Constructive Tech-

nology Assessment tradition, is explicitly concerned with broader,

regime approaches to sustainable innovation (Rip and Kemp, 1998;

cf. Kemp, 1994a,b; Rip et al., 1995). Scholars in this second strand

discuss the prospective conditions under which sustainable tran-

sitions in transport, energy, housing and so on might develop (e.g.

Elzen et al., 2004).

Thinking prospectively, many sustainability goals imply tran-

sitions over much tighter time-frames than the historic examples

that inspire systems innovation analysis (e.g. Rotmans et al., 2001;

Loorbach, 2007; see the special issue on transition management in

issue 4, volume 42 of Policy Sciences in December 2009). These goals

include ambitions to reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions by

80% or more within 40 years, or the 2015 target date for Millennium

6Dosi adapted his technology paradigm concept from Kuhn’s ideas about sci-

entiﬁc paradigms. Perhaps this explains why Dosi’s deﬁnition of technology

emphasises the knowledge embodied in technological practice cf. the materiality

of technology devices?

Development Goals that include reducing by half the proportion of

people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic

sanitation. Some transitions, like the move from coal heating to gas

heating in parts of north-western Europe, have proceeded rapidly

(Correljé and Verbong, 2004). Many others arose over ﬁve or more

decades. The prospect for sustainability need not be as bleak as the

historic timescales suggest. Arguably, there has been a slow build

up of ideas, experience and green niches over the last 40 years,

going back to the alternative technology movement and public

research programmes of the 1970s (Smith, 2005, 2007). Neverthe-

less, public sustainability aspirations imply a rapid acceleration in

these activities and any systems innovations they may induce.

Sustainability transitions research is engaged in aiding politi-

cal deliberations and governance activities that can accelerate the

take off of some of these green niches, and bring about restruc-

tured production and consumption systems. Researchers in the

Netherlands especially have helped reshape environmental policy

along transitions lines (Kemp et al., 2007; Smith and Kern, 2009).

Researchers in other countries have also been commissioned by

think tanks and policy departments to explore the potential of sys-

tems innovation approaches (Steward, 2008; Scrase et al., 2009).

The multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP)

provides them with an alluring framework, both in terms of organ-

ising analysis and ordering policy interventions. It is this framework

this special section considers, and which we introduce in the next

section.

3. The multi-level perspective for analysing sustainable

transitions

The multi-level perspective organises analysis into a socio-

technical system that consists of niches, regimes and landscapes.

This is a nested hierarchy of structuring processes (Geels and

Schot, 2007), analogous to Giddens’ (1984) concepts of reﬂex-

ive agency and structure. Socio-technical regimes constitute the

mainstream, and highly institutionalised, way of currently realising

societal functions. Change within the regime tends to be incre-

mental and path dependent. Regimes also exert a structuring force

upon novel alternatives, which arise in niche spaces. In a Kuh-

nian vein, regimes tend to produce ‘normal’ innovation patterns,

whilst ‘revolutionary’ change originates in ‘niches’. The implica-

tion is that the quality of incremental innovations subsequently

generated within a new regime will be radically different to those

under the preceding regime. Finally, both niches and regimes are

situated within a broader landscape of social and physical factors

that provides a macro-level structuring context. Over time, the rise

of some regimes can prove quite inﬂuential upon broader land-

scape developments. An example is the catalytic effect aeromobility

and communications regimes have upon socio-economic globali-

sation (and which reinforces the continued development of these

regimes) (see Cohen, this issue).

3.1. Socio-technical niches

In the MLP, transitions are crucially dependent upon activities

within niches, where selection pressures prevailing in regimes are

less evident. Niches provide ‘protective spaces’ for path-breaking,

radical alternatives whose performance may not be competitive

against the selection environment prevailing in the regime (Rip,

1992,p.91;Kemp et al., 1998). Niche protection can be afforded

through lead markets, subsidised projects for research demonstra-

tion and learning, or speciﬁc cultural milieu of early adoption and

experimentation. Niches that provided seeds for transitions his-

torically had to overcome the constraining inﬂuence of regimes,

branch out, link up with wider change processes, and drive trans-

A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448 441

formations in those same regime structures over the longer-term.

Many niches are not successful in expanding, or even surviving for

a long time.

Sustainable niches comprise networks of real world exper-

iments with socially and ecologically benign socio-technical

practices The actors (producers and users) undertaking these

experiments are relatively more supportive of the social and envi-

ronmental qualities of the niche socio-technical practice, and more

forgiving of teething troubles, owing to their different expectations

of future performance compared to regime members. The norms in

the niche are different compared to the rules in the regime but

tend also to be less established and relatively instable. Whilst ‘out-

siders’ can be important instigators of niche developments, such as

environmental activists in the early development of modern wind

energy, actors established within the regime must become involved

in those activities for wide-scale inﬂuence, such as large energy util-

ities in wind. Niche success ultimately rests upon broader circles

of more powerful actors becoming involved in ways that mobilise

widespread social legitimacy (Schot, 1998; Späth and Rohracher,

this issue).

Niche development is predicated upon valuable lessons being

generated, supportive institutional requirements becoming better

articulated, and enrolling commitments from a growing network

of actors (including potential investors and users from more main-

stream settings) (Raven, 2006). Niche actors need to perform

considerable cognitive, institutional, economic and political work:

they have to be persuasive to a variety of constituencies on dif-

ferent terms (Smith, 2007; Hendriks and Grin, 2007). In these ways

niches compete with the incumbent regimes, outperform them and

take over. The expectations motivating the niche pioneers have

to align with expectations prevalent in the regime (Schot, 1998;

Smith, 2007). As such, niches are a source for transformative ideas

and capabilities, but not blueprints. Their potential is constrained,

enabled and interpreted through the more powerful structures of

the regime (Roep et al., 2003; Grin et al., 2004; Bos and Grin, 2008).

3.2. Socio-technical regimes

Socio-technical conﬁgurations in regimes are established as

the stable and dominant way of realising a particular societal

function. Socio-technical regimes are structures constituted from

a co-evolutionary accumulation and alignment of knowledge,

investments, objects, infrastructures, values and norms that span

the production-consumption divide.7These heterogeneous con-

ﬁgurations are the prevailing means for realising key societal

functions. Institutional and material interdependencies constitut-

ing the regime mean realignments tend to be path dependent and

incremental. It is this dynamic structure which sustainable niches

must overcome if they are to unsettle the regime and seed a tran-

sition.

7There are ambiguities in the deﬁnition of regime in the literature. Geels (2002),

whilst not yet shifting terminology from ‘technological regimes’ (as in evolutionary

economic theories) to ‘socio-technical regimes’, nevertheless takes a broader analyt-

ical view: guiding principles, technologies and infrastructures, industrial structure,

user relations and markets, policy and regulations, the knowledge base of the

regime, and culture (the symbolic meanings underpinning the material practices

in the regime). Later, Geels (2004) considers regimes on more institutional terms,

as the ‘rule set’ that guides the development of material socio-technical systems—a

depiction that is actually closer to (evolutionary economic) innovation theory. In a

thoughtful review, Markard and Truffer (2008) note this tension between institu-

tional understandings of the regime, and more material understandings that include

the actors and artefacts whose practices develop the rule set (e.g. Verbong and Geels,

2007). It is difﬁcult to conceive a pattern of socio-technical practices reproducing

without the presence of institutions, just as it is difﬁcult to see how institutions can

persist without their re-enactment through networks of actors engaged in material

practices (Smith et al., 2005).

Dynamics within the regime derive from partially autonomous

developments within regime components, such as ﬁrm R&D,

or government regulations, which generate misalignments and

realignments and incremental responses. Dynamism may also

occur in response to landscape developments (see below), or

through interaction with associated regimes (Raven and Verbong,

2007; Konrad et al., 2008). These sources of dynamism, and the

tensions they create, open windows of opportunity for niche alter-

natives to compete for attention and inﬂuence.

3.3. Socio-technical landscapes

The macro-level socio-technical landscape provides a highly

structural context for both the regime and niches. The MLP land-

scape includes processes that span societal functions and unfold

autonomously of particular socio-technical regimes. Landscape

processes include environmental and demographic change, new

social movements, shifts in general political ideology, broad eco-

nomic restructuring, emerging scientiﬁc paradigms, and cultural

developments. Landscapes provide an inﬂuential backdrop with

ramiﬁcations across a variety of regimes and niches: providing

gradients and affordances for how to go about establishing socio-

technical conﬁgurations that serve societal needs (Geels and Schot,

2007).

Landscape changes are a source of pressures for change on the

regime level; they prompt responses from within the regime; and

they generate opportunities for niches. At times, landscapes can

work to reinforce regime trajectories. At other times, landscape

developments place some regimes under considerable stress in

ways that undermines satisfaction with their performance, and

prompts consideration of niche alternatives.

Regimes are increasingly confronted with new sustainability

criteria which were never considered during their installation.

Growing environmental awareness is a socio-cultural development

that can be considered a landscape process, and which is ques-

tioning the performance of multiple regimes, whilst generating

opportunities for niches. These are the kinds of multi-level pro-

cesses that sustainability analysts seek to map and understand, and

which policy-oriented advocates try to instigate and govern.

3.4. The allure of the MLP

As our concern for sustainable development has broadened,

so the demands on innovation have become more profound and

pervasive. Whatever the speciﬁc feature of sustainable develop-

ment under consideration (e.g. deep cuts in greenhouse gases, step

change improvements in resource efﬁciency, delivering the Mil-

lennium Development Goals)—the need to escape lock-in, deﬂect

path dependencies and transform socio-technical regimes becomes

paramount. The history of innovation studies for sustainable devel-

opment can be explained as a process of linking broader analytical

frameworks to successively larger problem framings.

The MLP satisﬁes this logic. It argues ‘normal’ innovation pat-

terns reproduce broad socio-technical regimes. Regime shifts occur

through inter-linkages and interactions between multiple devel-

opments on three levels. These involve the rise of both strong

socio-technical alternatives in niches and favourable openings

in regime selection environments. The latter is associated with

the unsettling of regimes arising from landscape developments.

Throughout, it is crucial to recognise these transition processes

involving purposeful actors in normative questions operating

through structured relations (Rip and Kemp, 1998; Smith et al.,

2005; Geels and Schot, 2007).

The allure of the MLP is that it provides a relatively straight-

forward way of ordering and simplifying the analysis of complex,

large-scale structural transformations in production and consump-

442 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

tion demanded by the normative goal of sustainable development.

Its conceptual repertoire links speciﬁc innovation activities con-

ﬁgured in niches with structural transformations in regimes. Its

terminology of niche, regime and landscape provides a language for

organising a diverse array of considerations into narrative accounts

of transitions. However, such abstract parsimony carries poten-

tial pitfalls which have to be approached with care. There is a

tension between appreciating the bigger picture whilst maintain-

ing a tractable parsimony in analysis. The MLP may help people

simplify and intervene reﬂexively, but must not become counter-

productively simplistic in its abstraction (Sayer, 1992).

The existing literature contains some cautionary criticisms and

some responses. Key contributions have appeared in Research Pol-

icy. These are picked up in Section 5, so only some brief remarks

are made here. Hommels et al. (2007) question the importance and

desirability of niche protective space compared to the signiﬁcance

of immediate exposure of novelties to the selection environments

prevailing in regimes. Smith et al. (2005) caution against too much

emphasis in niche-derived agency in transitions, arguing that incre-

mental reforms in regimes can lead to radical transformations over

the long periods under consideration. They suggest a typology of

transition pathways (also, Geels and Schot, 2007), and suggest ways

that power and agency could be incorporated more centrally into

MLP analysis. Shove and Walker (2007) question whether sustain-

able transitions are really as tractable to policy-makers as implied in

some interpretations of the MLP (Rotmans et al., 2001). Like Smith

and Stirling (2007), Shove and Walker call for a more reﬂexive

and politically informed appreciation of the way these systems are

socially constructed. Markard and Truffer (2008) consider how the

MLP can be positioned much more explicitly and fruitfully in rela-

tion to technological innovation systems, which reﬂects the ﬂexible

possibilities for the MLP. Genus and Coles (2008) are critical of this

ﬂexibility, arguing that there has been a lack of (methodological)

coherence in empirical studies using the MLP. The contributions to

this special section pick up on many of these issues, and identify

others too (such as the geography of transitions).

4. The papers contributing to this special section

The workshop from which contributing papers were drawn was

prompted by the debates above, and attracting a growing network

of researchers. In Section 5, we discuss challenges presented by the

contributing papers and the wider literature. Before doing so, we

introduce each paper here.

Philipp Späth and Harald Rohracher use the MLP in prospec-

tive mode to consider efforts for sustainable energy autonomy in

Austrian regions. They are interested in the coalitions of stake-

holders formulating visions for sustainable energy niches in their

region. They consider how these visions are formed in the context

of increasingly less favourable attitudes towards existing energy

regimes. The institutionalisation of regional visions is found to exert

an inﬂuence over the promotion of alternative niches and other

transition processes. As such, their analysis emphasises the roles of

discursive and institutional processes in the constitution of regime

transformation.

In contrast, Maurie Cohen’spaper considers a niche develop-

ing in the opposite direction to sustainable energy ambitions.

He uses the MLP to explain a personalised aeromobility niche

in the US. It is a sobering reminder that not everyone shares

even a very general vision for sustainable transitions. Problems

within the current mass aeromobility regime relating to passen-

ger convenience and comfort, coupled with organisational and

technological innovation, are providing opportunities for person-

alised aeromobility: precisely at a time when aviation emissions

are amongst the fastest growing contributions to climate change.

In contrast to recommendations for nurturing sustainable niches,

Cohen’s analysis poses the challenge of discouraging unsustain-

able niches in the making, and whose relative relationship to

the regime advantages them compared to the greener alterna-

tives.

Mobility is one of the case studies in the paper by Elizabeth Shove

and Gordon Walker; this time looking at the congestion charging

experience in London. They adopt practice theory as an alterna-

tive to MLP thinking about transitions. Practice theory emphasises

the constant interplay of technologies, meanings and people in

everyday practices. They argue it is the aggregation of these thou-

sands of practices in response to (or despite) the congestion charge

that effectively constructs the new mobility regime in London. A

second case study analysis into transitions in cleanliness, specif-

ically showering, emphasises that transitions perspectives, have

to attend to the destabilisation of entrenched consumption much

more assiduously.

London pioneered the large-scale implementation of a conges-

tion charge. Many other local authorities and stakeholders in cities

around the world also seek innovative, sustainable infrastructures

and services. Hodson and Marvin consider the ways the MLP can

help analysts make sense of city-based activities. They discuss the

position and role of cities as niche pioneers and as bearers of socio-

technical regimes. Analysis considers the extent to which cities

can shape socio-technical transitions and effectively carve out their

own sustainable destinies. There are parallels here with Späth and

Rohracher’s paper. Place-based considerations of agency in sus-

tainability transitions emphasise questions of geography and scale,

and how processes reproducing niches, regimes and landscapes are

spatially (and temporally) distributed across policy jurisdictions at

different scales.

The penultimate paper to this special section considers pro-

ducer responsibility initiatives by the European Union that attempt

to induce radical changes in the production and consumption of

electronic products. The manufacture, use and disposal of elec-

tronics are highly dispersed (often beyond the jurisdiction of the

EU). Hagaleskjær Lauridsen and Jørgensen use the MLP to delineate

and explain changes in electronics goods regimes, and that helps

explain why this single measure actually led to innovation in the

more tractable waste regime, rather than eco-designed electron-

ics.

Effectively, each contribution to this special section is zooming

into speciﬁc aspects of the MLP. Whether formulating sustainable

visions and niches (Späth and Rohracher), studying unsustain-

able niche-regime developments (Cohen), emphasising everyday

practices in regime reproduction (Shove and Walker), the role of

cities in transitions (Hodson and Marvin), or the insights the MLP

provides for speciﬁc policy measures (Hagaleskjær Lauridsen and

Jørgensen). In the ﬁnal contribution, Frank Geels, a pioneer in MLP

thinking, considers how other social theories can be brought in

to enrich these speciﬁc aspects. He relates the ontologies of dif-

ferent social theories to sustainable transitions. He uses this to

reﬂect on the development of the MLP thus far, and the poten-

tial for cross-overs with compatible theories. Frank concludes

that the MLP provides a device for organising the complemen-

tary analysis of speciﬁc transition processes using different social

theories.

5. Research challenges in this special section

A number of research challenges associated with the MLP or sus-

tainability transitions arise from these contributions. The purpose

in this section is to elaborate upon some of these research chal-

lenges, and contextualise them within the literature to date. These

research challenges are

A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448 443

•relations between the conceptual levels of niche, regime and

landscape;

•plural regimes and niches in interaction;

•the geography of transitions;

•empirical operationalisation of concepts; and

•governing regime transitions.

The ﬁrst four of these challenges relate speciﬁcally to the MLP,

whilst the last relates to sustainability transitions more generally,

whether one uses the MLP or not.

5.1. Relations between niche, regime and landscape levels

The MLP posits that the way niches, regimes and landscapes

interact determines the characteristics of a transition. Cohen shows

in detail how a variety of landscape tendencies entrench growth

in aeromobility. Simultaneously, aeromobility regime dynamics

exhibit features that make mass aeromobility less attractive to par-

ticular users. As a result, a variety of entrepreneurs have launched

novel modes of personal aeromobility. Cohen argues that a cru-

cial factor in the inﬂuence of the personal aeromobility niche

is the fact that it provides a new hybrid for the aeromobility

regime, rather than challenging that regime. Cohen’s focus is sim-

ilar to a scheme proposed by Raven (2006), who explains niche

inﬂuence by considering the stability of the regime relative to

the stability of the niche practice. However, this need not mean

the aeromobility regime is equally susceptible to all robust niche

alternatives (like high-speed rail). Cohen’s niche case exploits

regime openings successfully because the resulting hybrid rein-

forces regime actor interests rather than empowering radical

transitions.

The speciﬁc mechanisms underpinning these interactions prove

to be far more complex than early versions of the MLP implied.

Successful niches exert inﬂuence not solely by growth and dis-

placement of the regime, but more often we see a variety of forms of

synthesis and reaction between niche elements and regime compo-

nents (Geels and Schot, 2007). Elements of a radical niche practice

can be co-opted by a regime without unduly unsettling and trans-

forming it (Smith, 2007). Distinctive boundaries between niche and

regime become less clear empirically as the MLP implies.

Typologies of multi-level interaction and transition pathway

have been developed (Smith et al., 2005; Geels and Schot, 2007).

Whatever the merits and drawbacks of these typologies, they

remind us that each transformation is historically contingent. It

is reasonable to anticipate environmentally sustainable transitions

following diverse pathways. Frank Geels’ article argues these niche-

regime relations can be better analysed by considering how other

social theories deepen the focus on speciﬁc causal mechanisms.

A structuralist ontology could, for instance, shed light on why

organic food has been co-opted by the food regime rather than

transformed it; though reactions to capture have spawned localised

organic conﬁgurations that continue to challenge regime practices

(cf. Smith, 2005). The MLP serves to keep these deeper investiga-

tions and theorisations in context and helps relate them to one

another.

5.2. Plural regimes and niches in interaction

The contribution by Erik Hagelskær Lauridsen and Ulrik Jör-

gensen underscores the need to consider interacting regimes

in transitions analysis (see also Raven and Verbong, 2007). The

response of consumer electronics businesses to EU producer

responsibility policy has been to work with waste ﬁrms to innovate

materials handling procedures (i.e. alter the waste regime), rather

than redesign socio-technical conﬁgurations in consumer electron-

ics. Whilst probably better than earlier disposal practices (though

Hagelskær Lauridsen and Jörgensen have their doubts), the waste

management innovations prompted by the WEEE Directive are not

contributing to electronics eco-designs. The difﬁculty was not that

policy mobilised both regimes, but that it did so in a way that ren-

dered sustainability logics in the electronics regime subordinate to

the business logic of the waste regime. The Directive did not address

eco-design activities directly, providing little protective space for

niche developments in that direction.

Complex reality confronts the MLP picture of a homogenous

incumbent regime challenged by a self-evidently sustainable niche.

In practice, more or less (un)sustainable niches contend to inﬂu-

ence regimes in interaction. Cohen’s article suggests analysis of

green niche dynamics consider them not just in the context of

the current regime, but also in competition with unsustainable

practices in niches more closely aligned with the interests of the

regime (see also Geels and Schot, 2007). Others have also argued

that sustainability analysis must include the counter-veiling effects

of unsustainable transitions in the making (Shove and Walker,

this issue). There is a contest between various niches, each posi-

tioned differently in relation to regimes (Scoones et al., 2007). The

challenge is whether the overall performance of different niches

in interaction with regimes can be recognised sufﬁciently early

to pre-empt lock-in to unsustainable developments. Uncertain-

ties inherent in the co-evolution of niche novelties and regime

elements suggest an added dimension to Collingridge’s dilemma

(Collingridge, 1980).

Considering niches and regimes under conditions of plural com-

petition re-introduces some complexity back into the MLP. Shove

and Walker go even further, and argue that even a plural framework

fails to capture the sheer complexity and contingency of sustain-

able and unsustainable developments. Their practice-oriented view

perceives countless everyday activities continually reconstituting

and reproducing ﬂuid socio-technical conﬁgurations. Partitioning

these practices into different niches and regimes misses the point

that systems (of practice) are always in transition.

Nevertheless, Shove and Walker do recognise patterns and sta-

bilities in daily life. The question is whether patterns of practice can

be usefully associated with niche and regime concepts. Some peo-

ples’ practices involve greener forms of socio-technical conﬁguring

than forms common to the majority of practitioners. Can we aggre-

gate greener socio-technical practices into different niches; and are

some practices so routine, stable and pervasive that they constitute

a regime? Moreover, practitioners are limited in their capacity to

conﬁgure by the institutions and infrastructures in which they are

situated (Hand et al., 2005). So whilst practice theory forces a more

careful analysis of the constitution of niches and regimes, we feel

one must not disregard the regimes that make available the mate-

rial elements of a practice, and their institutions that structure the

repertoire of possible practices.

5.3. The geography of transitions

The MLP is interested in the socio-technical transformation of

‘societal functions’. The role of places and spatial scales in these

transition processes has not been an explicit issue of concern. The

tendency has been to presume regimes operating at a national

scale, perhaps for reasons to do with nation-state policy audiences.

Yet in practice, we see many places, such as villages, cities and

regions, wondering how they can transform their mobility, energy,

waste, housing and other systems into more sustainable forms.

They confront processes that operate beyond their jurisdiction, e.g.

the ownership of local infrastructures by multi-national utilities,

investments from globally mobile capital, niche alternatives pro-

moted by global civil society, a neo-liberal ideological landscape,

or the standards for connecting regime components set by interna-

tional committees. Clearly, this geography matters for sustainable

444 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

innovation, but research is only beginning to explore how this geog-

raphy inﬂuences transitions.

Two contributions to this special section anchor their analy-

sis of transitions in places. Neither the study of Austrian energy

regions by Späth and Rohracher, nor the analysis of world cities by

Hodson and Marvin, presumes a complete analysis of the geogra-

phy of transitions. But each does urge the MLP to appreciate the

multi-scalar characteristics of its conceptual levels, and to consider

the consequences for analysis. Their articles suggest that paying

more attention to the places were (distributed) regime changes

encounter a variety of niche experiments will yield additional

insight into the relations between niche dynamics and unsettling

regimes.

Hodson and Marvin consider the multi-scalar challenges

confronting world cities seeking to sustainably develop the socio-

technical regimes upon which they depend. The MLP provides a

useful framework for understanding the success of city strategies

towards either autonomy from or integration with other places.

These strategies, if successful, require transformations to multiple

regimes. Crucially, they are predicated upon a re-scaling of regimes

in ways that make them more amenable to the collective will and

innovative activities of city-scale actors.

The importance of speciﬁc sustainability visions for mobilisa-

tion and coordination is important here. The production of these

visions needs to engage, mobilise and coordinate actors across

scales, and must help (re-)deﬁne and align territorial and regime

interests. Hodson and Marvin point to the role of mobile inter-

mediary organisations operating between cities and the spatially

distributed regimes upon which city strategies depend. Showcase

projects that demonstrate and develop niche socio-technical con-

ﬁgurations are also identiﬁed as important. These showcases satisfy

the local need, whilst promising exportable lessons, products and

services.

Vision and coalition building processes are at the heart of the

analysis of Austrian energy regions by Späth and Rohracher. They

emphasise two advantages for places in the negotiation of shared

visions. First, places bring meaningful historical and social narra-

tives into the realisation of abstract goals. They generate regionally

relevant visions whose symbolism and speciﬁcity carry greater

moral authority as a result (e.g. ‘energy security’ cf. ‘protecting

Murau by building a local bio-energy economy’). Second, regions

provide a ‘warmer and more ﬂuid ground’ for political delibera-

tion (Healey et al., 2003, p. 86), where place-identity (reﬂected

in ‘public sentiments’), local knowledge and relational resources

may be mobilised for innovative practices (Healey et al., 2003,p.

86; cf. Schön and Rein, 1994, pp. 176–178). However, this is an

empirical question. There will be places so riddled with problematic

power relations and factions that warm and inspiring sustainability

visions do not hold.

Aspiring cities are joining together to lobby for support at the

international level (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2008), and these networks

can nurture the development and diffusion of niche alternatives

by connecting sustainability projects together. Nevertheless, it is

asking a lot of city or regional scale visions to mobilise coalitions

capable of unilaterally transforming regimes, especially in cases

where inﬂuential regime reproduction operates beyond the city

or regional scale. The WEEE Directive illustrates some of these

scalar difﬁculties. Innovations in the gathering and processing of

wastes close to points of disposal seems easier compared to coor-

dinated ecological redesigns across spatially distributed production

and consumption chains. In a sense, the response to the producer

responsibility policy has been to develop an end-of-pipe regime,

rather than fundamentally clean up the electronics regime. This is

not solely down to geography, but part of the explanation lies in the

spatial distribution of the regimes and their (lack of) congruency

with the political jurisdictions trying to induce a transition.

5.4. Empirical operationalisation—a need for reﬂexivity

Making the core concepts of niche, regime and landscape opera-

tional for empirical research is a question of bounding, partitioning

and ordering the system under study. Any attempt at bounding

and analysing complex, emergent socio-technical systems will nec-

essarily be partial, situated and temporary (Scoones et al., 2007).

Whether drawing upon qualitative evidence or quantitative mea-

sures based on indicators, there is considerable work to do in

formalising the MLP into more detailed methods (Haxeltine et al.,

2008). There are few widely shared analytical rules for cutting into

the complex conﬁgurations under study and abstracting an objec-

tive socio-technical system (Genus and Coles, 2008). As Geels points

out (this issue), formal quantitative approaches may be limited to

relatively stable socio-technical situations where parameters and

characteristics are well known. However, the majority of transi-

tion studies, like those in this special section, address emergent

and reﬂexive phenomena and ﬁnd qualitative narrative accounts

helpful.

Of course, transition research is not unique in its sensitivity to

analytical framings. The instrumental purpose for sustainability

transitions research accentuates the implications, since the ways

in which these concepts are used has repercussions for transitions

as a governance activity. Shove and Walker (this issue) emphasise

how socio-technical ‘systems’ are constructed by subjects engaged

in conﬁguring, including researchers (see also Smith and Stirling,

2007). Philip Späth and Harald Rohracher convey this quite vividly

for the case of Austrian energy regions. Differently situated par-

ticipants in the region brought their different understandings and

interests in energy provision to the negotiations. A shared framing

of the current energy regime and sustainability issues was negoti-

ated. Participants envisaged alternative niche conﬁgurations, and

sought a degree of congruency between the interests involved.

Common framings of the ‘system’ are reached through negotia-

tion, informed by diverse knowledge and experience of the way the

‘system’ satisﬁes particular human needs (which are themselves

understood in different ways).

The contributions suggest it is not precise deﬁnition of niche,

regime and landscape that is paramount, so much as what each

conceptualisation does. As with other critical social science activ-

ity (Sayer, 1992), the point of sustainable transitions research is

to engage subjects in processes of reﬂection in ways that feed

back into their practices, contributing to a re-orientation towards

sustainable development (Loorbach, 2007). Thus the operationali-

sation of the MLP empirically requires reﬂexivity on the part of the

analyst and sensitivity towards the task in hand.

5.5. Governing sustainability transitions

Regimes are a de facto form of governance in the sense that they

structure and order the interaction of material artifacts and social

processes (Rip, 2006). In contrast, here we consider purposeful gov-

ernance for sustainable development, and analysis for deliberate

policy aiming to transform regimes. Geels and Schot (2007) sug-

gest that socio-technical rule sets are constantly maintained and

re-made through the interactions of actors in regimes and niches.

Rules do not solely constrain but also enable actors to participate

in socio-technical system development. In their view, social agency

for sustainable development derives from an ability to modify and

replace rule sets.

The contributions in this special section suggest rule-based pro-

cesses need not be so clear cut. Socio-technical regimes can prove

resistant to governance intentions (e.g. the congestion charge and

producer responsibility). Any policy measure, no matter how well

it is understood, creates diverse responses that are difﬁcult to know

precisely beforehand. Indeed, part of the explanation for the shape

A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448 445

of the policy measure rests upon earlier processes and problems

emanating from the socio-technical regime. There is a need to

explain how and why individual agents are able to reform the rules

in desirable directions, in the context of regimes and niches, thus

dealing with the politics essential to transitions.

The London congestion charge discussed by Shove and Walker

is a policy whose ultimate effect is not solely determined by polit-

ical authority, but also by adaptations to the mobility practices

of Londoners and visitors. This is obvious. Yet for policies to gain

support, they need to underplay this problem of anticipation and

pretend they are capable of assuring desired re-conﬁgurations (e.g.

Lindblom, 1965, 1990; Majone and Wildavsky, 1978; Elmore, 1979).

Shove and Walker’s study emphasises an additional tendency in

transition policies, which is to make an a priori us-them distinc-

tion between governors and governed. This neglects the role of

both sides in explaining changes in socio-technical transitions. The

analysis of regime responses to the WEEE Directive by Hagelskær

Lauridsen and Jörgensen reinforces this point. Rules, incentives

and norms can be altered by those governing (us), but it is the

responses of many others (them) involved in socio-technical (re-

)conﬁguration that result in, say, the growth of a niche, or the

unsettling of a regime. The success or otherwise of a policy measure

rests in the way governors conceive the operation of the socio-

technical regime in the ﬁrst place (Smith and Stirling, 2007).

One can go too far in this kind of analysis. Only a handful of

people in London were in professional and institutional positions

to instigate the congestion charging policy (e.g. the Mayor and his

advisors). Certain institutionally privileged actors are able to make

more forceful changes to multi-level dynamics compared to many

others that play a (less strategic) role in reproducing those dynam-

ics (Smith et al., 2005). The structural power of the former derives

from this contribution to maintaining the rules, infrastructures and

values underpinning socio-technical practices.

But this position is not assured. The resources needed to induce

signiﬁcant socio-technical change are widely distributed. This dis-

tribution obviously includes the regime membership; but it can

involve resources in actor networks beyond the regime (e.g. knowl-

edge about alternatives amongst niche participants; legitimacy

issues deriving from social movements). Contextual developments

in the landscape can shift interdependencies between actors. Power

relations alter. New discourses generate new expectations about

the adequacy of regime performance, such as its sustainability, and

contribute to a re-ordering of priorities. The status of resources and

positions of different actors are cast in a new light, as the Austrian

case indicates.

It might be difﬁcult to know the precise consequences of a pol-

icy measure perfectly in advance, but the centrality of certain actors

in the reproduction of regime and niche socio-technical conﬁgura-

tions, and their likely responses to governance interventions, does

suggest we can develop informed expectations about the contri-

bution of various policies to sustainability transitions. Governance

schemes that take socio-technical complexities into account, and

yet retain a sense of which niche-regime-landscape reproduction

processes are signiﬁcant for transitions, and that target their policy

attention on the key players accordingly, are more likely to gener-

ate effective transition policy. The MLP argues portfolios of policy

measures need to work across: the destabilisation of incumbent

regimes (so that opportunities for structural change increase); the

promotion of radical green niches (so that the portfolio of promis-

ing solutions broadens); and processes for translating ideas and

practices from niches into mainstream settings.

6. Conclusions—towards a future research agenda

The evolution of the MLP in the context of innovation studies

and sustainable development raises some challenging analytical

and practical issues. Many of these remain open and point towards a

vibrant, stimulating and challenging research agenda for the future.

In the discussion here, we have argued that innovation studies have

contributed considerable conceptual insight. This contribution will

continue, but, as the challenges in Section 5illustrate, this will most

likely be made in dialogue with other disciplines, such as political

science and geography. In our view, a number of future research

themes become prominent. These are niche dynamics, unlocking

regimes, spatial aspects of transitions, methods to map transitions,

politics of transitions, and interlinkage with dynamics of gover-

nance.

6.1. Niche dynamics

Future research should continue to improve our understanding

of niches, in terms of their development and their wider inﬂu-

ence. A ﬁrst issue is to elaborate the conceptualisation of niches

as ‘protective spaces’ in which novel socio-technical conﬁgura-

tions take a hold and start to develop. What exactly makes a niche

protective? In which ways are niches different from broader selec-

tion environments? Over what kinds of space does the protective

effect extend (a geographical region, a local jurisdiction, a cul-

tural milieu)? How can evolutionary theories help substantiate the

ecosystem metaphor that informs the niche concept?

A second issue regards the process by which niche innovations

move beyond the initial protective space. How are learning-by-

doing experiences transferred beyond the niche context? How do

practices (embedded conﬁgurations) replicate, scale-up or trans-

late into other contexts of application?

A third issue is to move analysis beyond instrumental learning

and expectations about the niche socio-technical conﬁguration. An

important dimension of niche dynamics is the development of a

social constituency for alternative projections of socio-technical

development. Successful niche experiments feed actor networks

with shared expectations, inform the identities of the supportive

coalition, and help orientate interests and social norms. How do

such processes of constituency building take place? Under which

conditions do niche actors come to reﬂect a common agenda and

mobilise? How do they seek to stretch and shape the space in which

they can prosper (by engaging with agendas of public policy, regu-

latory frameworks, technical standards and ﬁnance)? That is, how

does the niche perform as a political actor?

A ﬁnal niche issue for future research is their interaction with

other niches, and the consequences of plural niches in the context of

a shared regime ‘other’. Competing or complementary niche devel-

opments occur in parallel. How are any interdependencies reﬂected

in the strategies of niche actors? How do dynamics of contestation

across niches play out in a context where sustainable development

is an inherently ambiguous and contested societal concept?

6.2. Unlocking regimes

Our second suggestion for future research is at the regime level.

In contrast to the large body of research on path-dependency and

lock-in in socio-technical dynamics, relatively little is known about

processes and mechanisms for accelerating the unlocking of socio-

technical regimes. How do regimes open up, erode or decline?

A related issue here is with the roles and strategies of particu-

lar actors in these processes. Taking public policy, we observe a

reluctance to seriously consider how to unsettle and unlock estab-

lished regimes. Perhaps links to the decline of politically salient

industries makes it too great a risk. But what are the conditions in

political economy that allow an accelerated dismantling of unsus-

tainable socio-technical structures, at the same time as creating

space for sustainable alternatives to develop? Public policies tend

to positively engage with promising opportunities (niche building)

446 A. Smith et al. / Research Policy 39 (2010) 435–448

in isolation. Understandably, the politically contentious, coercive

dark side of sustainability transitions, principally putting pressure

on regimes, is done with much greater timidity. How do entrenched

regimes, upon which many of us are dependent, lose their eco-

nomic and social legitimacy? How do shifting alliances of actors

alter power balances in favour or against a certain socio-technical

regime? What is the role of landscape processes such as shift-

ing political ideologies, waves of investor speculation, institution

building and ecological change?

6.3. The spatial aspects of transitions

The MLP provides a useful heuristic for considering the tempo-

ral aspects of transitions. It does this by considering multi-level

processes of socio-technical structuration constituting speciﬁc

functional spaces (e.g. mobility, energy, housing). Our third sug-

gested area for future research is how the functional socio-technical

spaces of niche, regime and landscape relate to other dimensions

of space, such as territorial, administrative and communicative

spaces (and their particular topologies). The boundaries of a socio-

technical regime are not necessarily identical with those of a

geographical landscape, a nation state or a social community. How

do socio-technical spaces relate to and cut across these different

spaces? How do emerging communicative spaces such as global

publics or transnational networks of entrepreneurs and profession-

als connect to niches and regimes and establish linkages between

them? Some important insights might be expected for sustainabil-

ity transitions by focusing on both the situated and the distributed

qualities of key, multi-level processes.

6.4. Methodology to map transitions

As with any framework, methodologies for rendering MLP con-

cepts empirically operational are critical to its future success. Some

in the ﬁeld are looking for standardised indicators, measures and

matrices in order to objectify research on niches, regimes, land-

scapes and their dynamics of change. Principles for bounding and

measuring niches, regimes and landscapes need ﬂeshing out into

rigorous criteria. Comparability and systematic accumulation of

cases will then build theory. Others wish to keep open the ﬂexible

application of the MLP appropriate to speciﬁc contexts. The reason

given here is that the nature of the problem studied – structural

and functional transformation – undergoes change whilst being

studied. Methods need to capture the dynamic effects that are pro-

duced? Debate about the methods for mapping transitions needs

to continue through future research.

6.5. The politics of transitions

Sustainability transition studies are trying to combine evolu-

tionary theories of socio-technical change with theories of agency

and strategic decision-making. Future research needs to develop

the MLP’s “quasi-evolutionary” approach further, and provide

deeper conceptual guidance on how to combine (co-) evolution and

agency. How does agency play out in variation and selection pro-

cesses? To what extent do variations and selections arise from the

decisions of particular (networks of) actors? How do decisions and

action strategies reﬂect and anticipate selection environments and

evolutionary dynamics? It is important to look beyond the “usual

suspects” here (R&D labs, industry, science, and public policy), but

bring in the role of other agents too, such as lifestyle milieus or

social movements who may have an important role for shaping the

selection environment beyond the market.

A broader analytical view on agency makes salient politi-

cal questions about the interests and sources of power shaping

selection environments and generating variations. Studies are

beginning to consider coalition formation around different niches,

and the lobbies for different kinds of socio-technical transitions

(domestically and internationally). Social movements are impor-

tant expressions of and catalysts for changing values and identities,

but how do they engage with socio-technical systems and seek to

transform them?

6.6. Opening the black-box of public policy

Our last suggestion for future research is to incorporate the

analysis of policy processes as part of the study of innovation in

socio-technical systems. The literature, including this special sec-

tion, refers frequently to policies that engage with socio-technical

change, be it through market interventions, R&D funding, provision

of platforms for strategic niche management, or regulations unset-

tling regimes. However, so long as policy remains an external force

or factor of inﬂuence, then the conditions for those policies to be put

in place continues to be obscure (Voß et al., 2009). Just how inde-

pendent are policies from what is going on in the socio-technical

realm? Papers in this special section point to multiple inter-

linkages between actors and institutions of markets, technology

and societal demand with those of market regulation, innovation

policy, and environmental governance—be it through education,

professional ties, personal overlap, cultural paradigms, joint ven-

tures, cooperative agreements, cross-ﬁnancing, lobbying, revolving

doors, or common political agendas. There are long-standing lit-

eratures on regulatory capture, government-industry relations,

clientilism, iron triangles, policy networks, and discourse coali-

tions that can help us ensure analysis of socio-technical regimes

and public policies are more deeply intertwined.

6.7. An open agenda

Our list of future research for the MLP is neither exhaustive nor

exclusive. The MLP is bringing together a growing network of inter-

national researchers with a variety of agendas (now formalising in

an international Sustainability Transitions Research Network). If

a sustainability transitions perspective provides a problem focus,

then the MLP provides a helpful framework for organising the broad

interdisciplinary analysis that is needed. It is clear that this is work

in progress. There is considerable scope for innovation studies to

contribute further; just as it did in the genesis of the MLP frame-

work. Ultimately, the future depends on whether and how research

can satisfy growing demand by policy and society to better under-

stand broad directions of socio-technical change, and how dialogue

can be reﬂexively guided towards particular sustainability quali-

ties.

Acknowledgements

We thank the contributors to this special section and partici-

pants in the original workshop for their views and comments. We

are grateful to Rob Raven and Frank Geels for comments on an ear-

lier version of this article. We also appreciated the support of the

German Social-ecological Research Programme and the Dutch KSI

Programme, who ﬁnanced the workshop.

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Technology Analysis

Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change

Abstract and Figures