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Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183–2463)
2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X
DOI: 10.17645/pag.v6i1.1210
Article
Self-Organisation and the Co-Production of Governance: The Challenge of
Local Responses to Climate Change
Rob Atkinson 1,*, Thomas Dörfler 2and Eberhard Rothfuß 3
1Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of the West of England, BS16 1QY, Bristol, UK;
E-Mail: rob.atkinson@uwe.ac.uk
2Institute for Geographical Sciences, Free University Berlin, 12249 Berlin, Germany; E-Mail: thomas.doerfler@fu-berlin.de
3Geographical Institute, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany; E-Mail: eberhard.rothfuss@uni-bayreuth.de
* Corresponding author
Submitted: 2 October 2017 | Accepted: 12 February 2018 | Published: in press
Abstract
The arena of locally embedded and engendered responses to climate change offers a particularly fruitful and challenging
space in which to scrutinise the encounters between established forms of governance and knowledge as they become
entwined with locally generated forms of self-organisation. The issue of climate change offers a particularly fertile case for
study because to date it has largely been dominated by state and market-based responses and associated forms of gov-
ernance selectively articulated with knowledge generated through scientific and expert modes of knowledge. The central
focus of the article is on identifying the variegated forms of understanding associated with the groups we researched and
how they drew upon/utilised knowledge (knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecological politics and environ-
mental governance. The article draws on case studies of self-organising locally based groups in Germany, the Netherlands
and the United Kingdom that are addressing climate change, in a broad sense, within their locality. These groups represent
a range of responses to the issue and associated modes of action, exhibit different levels and forms of ‘organisation’ and
may challenge more established forms of governance and knowledge in different ways.
Keywords
climate change; comparative; governance; Q-Sort method; self-organisation; urban; urban governance
Issue
This article is part of the issue “Co-Producing Urban Governance for Social Innovation”, edited by Liz Richardson (University
of Manchester, UK).
© 2018 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
In this article we address the issue of how forms of lo-
cally generated self-organisation interact with (or do
not) existing forms of state and market-based forms of
governance on ecological issues covering a variety of
‘green’ politics like energy supply, agriculture or sustain-
able communities and neighbourhoods. We deal with
the associated knowledge forms they incorporate and
establish to co-produce their own knowledge and forms
of governance. In particular we consider how locally
embedded and engendered self-organised responses
to climate change encounter and interact with, or re-
late to (perhaps negatively), established forms of gover-
nance and knowledge. Our central focus is on identifying
the variegated forms of knowledge associated with our
groups and how they draw upon/utilise that knowledge
(knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecolog-
ical politics and environmental governance.
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 1
The empirical context for this article draws on the
on-going research of the SELFCITY research project.1This
project explicitly set out to investigate how selected ur-
ban and regional place-based forms of self-organisation
(cf. Boonstra & Boelens, 2011) develop new forms of ‘col-
lective governance’ and action. We sought to understand
how they contribute to the enhancement of innovative
societal capacity and the potential for societal transition
in the face of climate change.
The article is structured as follows: we first briefly re-
view the literature on self-organisation, governance and
knowledge before then moving on to outline the meth-
ods used in our research, and finally to consider the im-
plications of our, still incomplete, research for the issues
raised above.
2. Self-Organisation, Governance and Knowledge
The literature on governance is massive and we can-
not review it here, but generally speaking the approach
aims to describe and comprehend changes in the pro-
cess and meaning of governing. The emphasis is on
network forms of governance in multi-actor arrange-
ments and processes of self-governing (see Kooiman,
2002, pp. 71–73). From this perspective governance is
a means of coordinating social action organised around
vertical, horizontal and cooperative mechanisms in con-
trast to traditional state intervention and control from
above. Thus governance signifies alterations in the in-
stitutional arrangements for the coordination of action
(Newman, 2001, p. 26) and the role of government in
this process becomes contingent (Pierre & Stoker, 2002,
p. 29). Governance represents a way of organising so-
cial action through vertical, horizontal and cooperative
mechanisms in contrast to more traditional hierarchical
forms such as bureaucracy (Börzel & Risse, 2010; Dardot
& Laval, 2013; Rothfuß & Korff, 2015; Shamir, 2008).2
However, it is important to bear in mind that the concept
is used somewhat differently according to national and
political contexts and we need to be cognisant of the ar-
gument developed by van Kersbergen and van Waarden
(2004) that governance offers a linguistic frame of refer-
ence in which to understand complex patterns of collec-
tive action and associated changing processes of govern-
ing that encompasses various forms and procedures for
coordinating action (e.g. hierarchical, horizontal).
By contrast focussing on self-organisation may be
seen as an approach which seeks to understand no-
tions of social norming, social learning and social change
within communities/groups and their forms of organis-
ing and acting in response to locally encountered and
constructed problems (Seyfang & Smith, 2007). It is a
way of institutionalising new social relationships deriving
from (or establishing) a variety of local networks (Atkin-
son, Dörfler, Hasanov, Rothfuß, & Smith, 2017), which
offers potential new pathways for the emergence of ‘al-
ternative forms of governance’. It is achieved through en-
counters, perhaps of a serendipitous nature, that lead to
the identification of mutual interests, positions and rela-
tions based on shared knowledge, values and norms (see
Mayntz, 2006; Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom, Burger, Field, Nor-
gaard, & Policansky, 1999); in our case about the nature
and future chances of tangible sustainable efforts. While
Ostrom et al. (1999, p. 278) show the concept itself is
not new, particularly when it comes to managing collec-
tive (or common-pool) resources, in contrast to their ap-
proach we would argue that self-organising is a key ele-
ment in an open and non-linear process based on and
mediated by a mutual intentionality through dynamic
micro-level interactions with structural forces that oper-
ate as a potential driver for sustainable transformation
of societies. Thus, we argue that the emphasis on govern-
ments or markets has not produced significant changes
in adaptation to a sustainable future in general and more
specifically to climate change and that the role(s) of local
forms of collective self-organisation have been neglected
(see Klein, 2014).
These interactions may generate trust derived from
newly established individual relationships which, over
time and through further interactions, become articu-
lated through collaboration that can create a form of ‘col-
lective intentionality’ (cf. Hasanov & Beaumont, 2016;
Searle, 2006). Here trust emerges from repeated recip-
rocal encounters between people within specific organi-
zational, social and spatial settings and, where this reci-
procity occurs, takes on a self-reinforcing character. Self-
organisation is therefore the process by which social rela-
tions, common in loose networks, are stabilized through
the collective definition of mutual interests, positions
and aims. This can become an alternative, ‘new’ way
of (local) governance based on collective practices ‘in
addition to’ or ‘beyond’ existing trajectories of political
and social engagements, typical of parties, associations,
(voluntary) welfare work, etc. It is based on ‘self-made’
bottom-up policies at a local level, offering the potential
to influence sub-national intermediates (i.e. those clos-
est to it) of the wider political system.
Self-organisation cantake on many different forms as
it develops within local contexts in response to locally ex-
perienced and defined ‘problems’. Given this, in terms of
an attempt to identify an ‘overarching definition’ of self-
organisation, we need to exercise caution. There are mul-
tiple ways of defining self-organisation that are not nec-
essarily mutually exclusive. Two examples will suffice to
illustrate this: Nederhand, Bekkers and Voorberg (2014,
p. 2) describe self-organisation as a ‘collective process
1SELFCITY (Collective governance, innovation and creativity in the face of climate change; see www.selfcity- project.com) is a three-yearresearch project
under the umbrella of JPI Climate with partners from Germany (University of Bayreuth), the Netherlands (University of Groningen) and the United King-
dom (University of the West of England, Bristol). The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the funding organisations or the
other members of the research team.
2However, we should point out that this does not rule out that the move to governance may lead to centralised, hierarchical exclusionary ways of
organising or that bureaucracies cannot evolve to become more flexible and open (cf. Atkinson & Klausen, 2011).
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 2
of communication, choice, and mutual adjustment of be-
havior resulting in the emergence of ordered structures’;
while for Boonstra and Boelens (2011) it is the absence
of government involvement and thus of external control
(see also Boonstra, 2015). As we focus on forms of self-
organising which, in some cases,3have consciously cho-
sen not to engage with established forms of governance,
we found that they did this to demonstrate that there
are alternative ways of organising society. Meerkerk,
van Boonstra and Edelenbos (2013) point out that self-
organised initiatives represent a challenge to existing
governance structures, yet evolve together within exist-
ing institutional settings. In our research we discovered
that some of the initiatives we researched and engaged
with explicitly wanted to achieve a certain level of auton-
omy and independence from—in their view sometimes
unsatisfying, instrumental and ineffective—modes of ex-
isting ‘green policy’, which is usually characterised by
state or market lead attempts, such as supporting ‘green’,
sustainable technology (solar panels, e-mobility, etc.).
In terms of our approach, while acknowledging the
value of the examples provided above and the need to
build upon them, the most fruitful way of doing this and
of understanding these motives and intentions for self-
organising is a twofold one. On the one hand our re-
search approach is praxeological and seeks to identify
the particular interests and aims people pursue, and un-
derstands these ‘performances’ as a certainform of prac-
tice, a way of leading a sustainable life at a concrete,
local and everyday level. We attempted to reconstruct
the mechanisms noted above that led to the emergence
of self-organisation along with the associated forms of
meaning and knowledge that were developed and de-
ployed to identify particular courses of action appropri-
ate for the local contexts they operated in.
Thus the process of self-organising is a dynamic one
that takes place (if it takes place) in response to the de-
velopment of shared local understandings of issues and
how to address them. Empirically it is important to fo-
cus on the way groups achieve this (the level of practice
and how to organise/assemble things) and how they de-
velop a certain form of local power, of competence and
influence (the level of micro-governance—how do they
attract people, achieve change in the local context). On
the other hand, we drew on a discursive method by us-
ing the Q-Sort method to identify groupings of ‘attitudes’
that represent particular ‘types of activism’ within each
of the groups and the associated discourse/narrative par-
ticipants deployed to explain their choices for their spe-
cific engagement (see the following section).
Put simply the implications of the above are that
self-organisation may pose a challenge to existing forms
of governance or an alternative to them; how then
does self-organisation relate to systems of governance?
Within the existing literature there has been a focus on
how state, market and civil society sectors are articulated
with a growing emphasis on networks which represent
a plurality of actors and the organisational forms this
takes (see Kooiman, 2002, pp. 71–73). By following Bur-
ris (2004, p. 336) who defines governance as ‘the man-
agement of the course of events in a social system’, it ‘in-
volves looking at context-specific, historically contingent
and fundamentally political processes of the establish-
ment, the operation, the negotiation and contestation of
social institutions and how these are constantly ‘brought
to life’ through social practices’ (Etzold, 2013, p. 38). The
concept of governance involves the purposive efforts by
both state and non-state actors to ‘steer’ society towards
the pursuit of particular goals and interests (see Kauff-
man, 2016; Kjaer, 2004).4
How then does self-organisation relate to these ide-
alised two poles of governance? As self-organisation is a
means of action ‘from below’, it emphasises interaction
and discussion between participants leading to the iden-
tification of relevant (local) issues. This usually leads to
the formation of an accompanying ‘discourse/narrative’
of problem definition (although this may be implicit
rather than explicit), because those engaged need to de-
velop a more or less common ground of conviction and
knowledge regarding how to do things differently. As this
may challenge and subvert existing governance forms it
provides alternative ways of doing things, it potentially
offers new ways of ‘governing from below’ that reflects
local contexts and understandings of problems. So the
initial mutual interest of some people to organise things
in a different way links common convictions with the
need to develop new forms of localised practice, which
may produce new forms of shared (local) knowledge, al-
beit not in the codified form typical of scientific or pro-
fessional type, but of a more tacit, incorporated and per-
sonal nature (Polanyi, 1958).
To be brief, for us knowledge is concerned with pro-
cesses of sense making, the development and enhance-
ment of capacities to act, and decision-making proce-
dures. This also involves comparisons and assessment of
the ‘costs’ (albeit not in terms of cost-benefit analysis) of
action (or inaction), but it also involves judgements and
values in relation to these assessments. In essence we
are advocating a pragmatist perspective in which knowl-
edge is always related to social processes of communica-
tive interpretation, and associated narratives, which has
as its objective the development of a shared understand-
ing of how to enhance our capacity to ‘do things’. In-
creasingly the literature has recognised a variety of forms
of knowledge (Andersen & Atkinson, 2013; Matthiesen,
2005, 2009; Matthiesen & Reisinger, 2011), ranging from
scientific, professional to everyday and local. Our con-
cern is with identifying the forms of everyday and local
3As will become clear later some of our groups do choose to engage with existing forms of governance.
4Moreover, in addition to political modes of governing societies are also governed by the ‘invisible hand’ of the market which also allocates (societal)
resources and structures the scope for what is deemed possible in terms of action. Although this will vary between societies depending upon the social
values and mores in which market systems are anchored.
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 3
knowledge developed and drawn upon by the groups we
engaged with.
3. Research Methods and Results
The SELFCITY project carried out research on three self-
organising groups in Germany, two in the Netherlands
and two in the United Kingdom. These groups were se-
lected on the basis that they were consistent with the
definition of self-organisation that we developed based
on the literature review carried out in the first phase of
the research. Based on this we sought to cover a range
of self-organising activities that reflected the wide vari-
ety of groups involved in addressing climate change in
its various manifestations at local level. Thus no claim
is made that these groups are necessarily ‘representa-
tive’ in terms of a traditional sampling frame; merely that
they characterize the variation of such self-organising
groups that include climate change within their activi-
ties, albeit combined with other activities related to sus-
tainability and social interaction.5The way we have ap-
proached this is to take the position that there is no one-
way to address climate change, that local context, and
the problems/issues and how they are problematised, af-
fecting each context, vary both nationally and locally. In
other words the groups do not exist in splendid isolation
from the wider national, regional and local situations in
which they exist and these shape/structure the context
in which they operate. We would argue that is consistent
with the variegated notion of self-organisation we have
adopted. Moreover, climate change can comfortably ex-
ist within a wider spectrum of issues about how to live in
a sustainable way.
Given the wide-ranging definition of self-organising
that we adopted the initiatives we included in the re-
search were diverse, including: a ‘transition town’, two
energy coops, a ‘transition house’, a free café, a climate
change group and an ecological garden. All did, how-
ever, meet our working definition of self-organisation
and were, albeit in different ways, concerned with ad-
dressing climate change, although in a number of cases
this was one among a number of aims.
The part of research we focus on here was concerned
to reconstruct the variety of motives inspiring people to
engage in the respective groups. This was based on the
use of Q-Sort methodology which involved a statistical
analysis of attitudes towards ecological issues, based on
quantitative Q-Sort methodology (see Barry & Proops,
1999; Jeffares & Skelcher, 2011; Watts & Stenner, 2005).
To the best of our knowledge no other research into
climate change has deployed this approach, although
Fischer, Holstead, Hendrickson, Virkkula and Prampolini
(2017) have carried out broadly similar research to distin-
guish individual attitudes in community groups address-
ing low carbon initiatives (we will return to their findings
in the Discussion and Conclusion section).
The primary reason for using this approach
was that based on the project’s research questions
Q-methodology would allow us to explore the position
that self-organisation occupied in the broader societal
response to climate change; distinct from state and mar-
ket led responses (including state led responses that
foreground traditional ideas of participation). We then
hypothesised that ‘self-organised’ groups will interpret
the challenge of climate change in a particular manner
and will have a certain degree of agency in responding to
this challenge. We used the method to explore these in-
terpretations along with (normative and empirical) ideas
of agency and response. Thus allowing us to investigate
questions such as: How do self-organised groups think
about their role in the response to climate change—is
this complementary to ‘mainstream’ state and market
efforts, or does self-organisation respond to needs and
aspirations that would otherwise be marginalised or ex-
cluded? Does it provide alternative ways of organising
that challenge existing forms of governance?
It is important to note that Q-Sort is a mixed method-
ology. It is based on ‘qualitative decisions’ made by re-
searchers in terms of reviewing the relevant literature
and on this basis defining the ‘problem/issue’ and deriv-
ing the statements to be used in the investigation of the
attitudes of participants. It then uses factor analysis to
analyse the range of statements and organise them into
‘sorts’ or ‘types’.
Q-Methodology seeks to identify personal attitudes
towards certain topics (such as sustainability or climate
change), which is related to and are derived from the
‘concourse’;6this emerges from the way respondents se-
lect and group typical answers and attitudes. These an-
swers and attitudes are derived from selected literature
in the field which we put on 47 cards that the intervie-
wees were asked to consider and then arrange across
a scale to reflect their personal relevance. They were
also asked to explain their choices. The whole method
as a research cycle is grounded in a process of five ba-
sic steps: (1) representing the concourse (scope of de-
bate) as a series of statements, (2) sampling the state-
ments, (3) constructing a sample of respondents, (4) con-
ducting the Q-Sort interviews and (5) factor analysis
with interpretation.
5Additional work based on the European Social Survey (http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data) also highlighted the fact that there were different
rates of and attitudes towards volunteering between the three countries. Volunteering was used as a proxy of the propensity of individuals to come
together and to participate in activities to address issues such as climate change. Thus the use of Q-Sort was intended to further, and more specifically,
investigate attitudes towards climate change (and sustainability) in our groups and any cross- national differences between them (although we do
consider the latter in this article).
6The concourse refers to the range of debates/issues around a particular topic, in our case climate change. This was done through an exhaustive review
of the academic and policy literature. On this basis a series of ‘short statements’ were constructed that reflected the range of debates/issues in the
literature. The concourse is of course the key sample and we are investigating the attitudes of individuals within our groups towards the concourse.
Both core and peripheral members of the groups were invited to participate in order to capture the full range of those involved from our groups and
to see if there were variations between them.
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 4
Jeffares & Skelcher (2011, p. 6) describe Q-Sort in the
following terms:
Q methodology involves each participant in the sam-
ple (the P sample) sorting a series of statements (a Q
sample) representative of the breadth of debate on
an issue (the concourse) into a distribution of prefer-
ence (a Q-Sort) from which statistically significant fac-
tors are derived.
We carried out a pilot study of the statements to en-
sure they were relevant and comprehendible statements,
made amendments on the basis of the study and these
were then selected to be used with our participants. In
the Dutch case the English version of the statements
were used while in the German case these were trans-
lated by members of the German research team. Overall,
the three research teams were able to collect 89 Q-Sort-
interviews, ranging from 10–20 cases per initiative. Par-
ticipants were asked about why they selected particular
statements and placed them in positions on a scale and
these discussions were recorded.
By using Q-Sort we sought to identify groupings of
‘attitudes’ that represented particular ‘types of partici-
pants’ within each of the groups and the associated dis-
course/narrative participants deployed to explain their
choices. In addition the results from all three countries
were brought together and additional statistical analysis
carried out to identify commonalities and differences in
response between countries, but also to attempt to iden-
tify ‘common cross-national types’. Thus the Q-Sort pro-
cess produced two kinds of data: a pyramid of response
preferences (i.e., respondents order 47 statements into a
pyramid of preferences) and interview recordings (notes
and recorded interview) where respondents explain why
they selected statements that were most/least impor-
tant to them. This explanation then provided insights
into their wider understanding of the issue(s) and the ex-
tent to which it was ‘consistent’ or made up of poten-
tially ‘contradictory’ attitudes. Figure 1 shows the steps
in our analysis.
Given that we have sought to link particular dis-
courses to the Q-Sort analysis we need to briefly state
how we define ‘discourse’. Firstly, we need to recognise
that the term ‘discourse’ does not refer to a unified body
of work, there are a wide variety of theories of discourse
(see Atkinson, Held, & Jeffares, 2011, for an overview).
Furthermore, following Jameson (1989), we see narra-
tive as a key epistemological category through which we
gain knowledge of the world in the form of stories. Narra-
tives are a way of presentingand re-presenting the world,
or particular aspects of it, in a textual form that under-
stands the world in a particular way. However, we should
not take these ‘stories’ at face value, we need to consider
how such individual narratives are related to wider social
and power structures in society.
Based on the statistical factor analysis of the re-
sponses from the groups in our three countries and
the qualitative reconstruction of meaning structures ob-
tained through the accompanying discussions about why
respondents decided to place particular statements in
their position on the scale, four ‘distinct types’ of self-
organising emerged:
•Radical Green. This group displayed attitudes that
were radical and ‘anti-systemic’ (i.e., they blamed
capitalism and ‘global elites’ for the current ecolog-
ical crisis), embodying a critique of neo-liberalism
and a challenge to the authority of the state. There
was an explicit rejection of the state and a de-
sire to develop alternative governing structures
from below. They also viewed the environment
as a ‘public good’, not to be exploited for profit.
In addition they questioned the forms of knowl-
edge deployed by governing elites to justify their
actions. Furthermore, they considered that deci-
sions were too often made about a local commu-
nity by elites far away and with no commitment
to or even knowledge of the places they affected.
Thus they placed considerable emphasis on alter-
native knowledge forms and ‘local knowledge’—
i.e., which were produced locally through people’s
Reduce dimensions (to factors)—correlaon and regression
Pick ‘sorts’ that score parcularly on one factor
Re-calculate expected factor scores based only on
disncve sorts (for that factor)
Look at what makes the total discourse (pyramid) of
exemplar sorts disncve
Figure 1. Steps in Q-sort analysis.
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 5
everyday experiences and understanding of how
climate change impacts locally. It is not too great
a stretch to suggest that they saw the prevail-
ing dominant knowledge as selective products de-
signed to support the existing (capitalist) system.
There is an underlying assumption that the current
capitalism system of production and consumption
is the cause of the current ecological crisis and that
it will inevitably collapse. Thus developing alterna-
tive ways of producing and consuming was seen
as a way to protect local communities against this
and lay the basis for an alternative society devel-
oped from below.
•Consensus Builders: Their focus was on working
with/engaging with the existing system of gover-
nance to bring about change through consensus
building. There was no desire to create a new sys-
tem rather the aim was to ensure that ecological
issues were at the heart of the policy agenda and
the ‘collective intentionality’ of all those engaged
in action to address ecological issues whether from
the public, private or civil society sectors. Nor was
there a rejection of the market, again the empha-
sis was on ensuring that ecological issues were ad-
dressed by market forces in the sense that they
be central to the decision-making structures of in-
vestors, firms and consumers (i.e., at the heart of
both production and consumption). This embod-
ied an Ecological Modernist approach (see Mol &
Spaargaren, 2000), a belief that technological de-
velopments could address issues such as climate
change within a market framework and a desire
to mainstream these changes in production tech-
nologies (i.e., create a ‘green economy’). Nor did
this entail a belief that living standards, in West-
ern societies, needed to be limited or actually re-
duced. There was very much a focus on the devel-
opment of ‘win-win’ scenarios whereby all sectors
of society could benefit from the development and
use of green technologies. Whilst not rejecting ex-
isting forms of knowledge there was an argument
that these forms of knowledge need to be supple-
mented by new ‘green’ forms of knowledge aris-
ing from new technological niches and that they
needed to be institutionalised in the thinking and
action of both the state and market sectors. Simi-
larly, whilst there was no outright reject of prevail-
ing governance forms there was a recognition that
more flexible governance forms needed to be de-
veloped that both supported the development of
‘green technological niches’ and facilitated the dis-
semination of these technologies and their embed-
ding in the actions of states and markets.
•Eco-egalitarian: This approach was based on the
notion of ‘Green Limits to Growth’ allied with an
emphasis on social justice. Thus there was a recog-
nition that the current system of production and
consumption was unsustainable and needed to be
changed (some respondents argued it need to be
changed radically). Implicitly this entailed an argu-
ment that new knowledge forms associated with
the above needed to be mainstreamed, in some
cases this was thought to require the displacement
of existing dominant notions of profitability and
consumption and ideas of ever increasing levels
of consumption as being a ‘good thing’ because
it was a driver of, unsustainable and inequitable,
economic growth. Moreover, it requires a wide-
ranging rethink of features central to current pro-
duction systems such as ‘built in redundancy’ of
products and continuous minor upgrading of con-
sumer products (e.g., smart phones) to encourage
consumers to dispose of ‘old’ products and replace
them with new ones. In terms of engaging with
prevailing systems of governance a variety of atti-
tudes were present: ranging from what might be
described as ‘reforming’ to ‘rejection’. At least im-
plicitly this entailed a reduction in Western living
standards in order to distribute growth more eq-
uitably globally. It also required the development
of new production technologies that were ecolog-
ically friendly and that those living in the Global
South should benefit from any such developments.
This ‘type’ shared some similarities with both Rad-
ical Greens and Consensus Builders, but their plac-
ing of the statements and explanations were suffi-
ciently different and coherent to justify their clas-
sification as a distinct ‘type’.
•Community Builders: This group did exhibit a num-
ber of Radical Green ideals (such as a view that
the existing system of production and consump-
tion was part of the problem), but emerged as dis-
tinctive through their conviction that local collec-
tive action is primarily concerned with construct-
ing a sense of ‘togetherness’ which is a ‘good thing’
in its own right and that creating a ‘sense of place’
is a central part of local collective action. Here the
main focus was on local action and the construc-
tion of communities of place and interest. There
was an overwhelming focus on bringing about
change at the local level as a way of demonstrating
the possibility of alternative ‘ways of doing things’
and living. The forms of thinking and practice
they identified ranged from an emphasis on locally
grown food, to local food and resource sourcing by
businesses (e.g., shops/businesses should display
the provenance of the goods they sold/supplied)
to the development of locally based distribution
systems and the development of new forms of
ecologically friendly (local) systems of production.
Here local knowledge forms generated by every-
day experiences and ‘learning by doing’ were given
a privileged status and dominant knowledge forms
were viewed with suspicion. What was lacking
was a thorough going critique of these forms and
the provision of a formalised body of alternative
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 6
knowledge. At least implicitly there was a strong
suspicion of existing forms of governance and in
some cases an explicit desire not to engage with
them, in some cases there was an outright rejec-
tion because prevailing governance forms were
seen to be ‘part of the problem’.
While three of the groups do share certain ‘radical’ atti-
tudes towards climate change significant differences re-
main between them in terms of how they understand cli-
mate change and the way(s) it can be addressed. More-
over, these four groupings do begin to allow us to identify
distinct discourses and accompanying narratives which
offer different ways of addressing climate change and
relating to the prevailing modes of governance in their
situations. What most groups do share is the view, that
current climate change policies are regarded as too ab-
stract, or too ‘far away’ from their practical everyday ex-
periences to be of use to them; therefore ‘doing sustain-
ability’ is seen as more important for their practices—by
this we mean that they are primarily oriented towards
doing things rather than seeking to theorise about it,
although the Radical Greens,Eco-egalitarians and Con-
sensus Builders did, at least implicitly draw on a more
‘theoretical’ body of knowledge to justify their positions.
While Community-Builders placed a much greater em-
phasis on local knowledge generated by everyday expe-
riences, and ‘learning by doing’; for them these forms
were considered more appropriate and relevant to the
issues of (local) climate change and sustainable lifestyles
than other forms of knowledge.
However, it should not be assumed that all the in-
dividual members of the four groupings shared a com-
mon action frame of reference and that they acted ac-
cording to a ‘strict logic’ consistent with the overarching
group description we have given. In some cases groups
were more homogeneous, with their membership falling
overwhelmingly into one of the four groupings. Other
groups included a mix of individuals expressing these atti-
tudes and in these cases groups specifically avoided dis-
cussing wider issues choosing to focus on the ‘immedi-
ate task at hand’ (i.e., the main objective they had been
founded to achieve—an example is the German energy
coop) to side-step debates that might undermine the
group’s coherence.
The ‘types’ identified also demonstrated their dis-
tinctive traits vis-à-vis action. For instance, the Consen-
sus Builders are willing to engage with existing forms of
governance with the intention of bringing about change
through processes of ‘ecological modernisation’, per-
haps based on niches developing new technologies and
forms of action that demonstrate they can be profitable
and therefore to show how things can be done ‘better’
by utilising green technologies. By doing this it is possi-
ble to build a consensus around them that will lead to
the mainstreaming of green technologies and associated
‘ways of doing things’. This also has implications for forms
of engagement with other stakeholders, in particular the
market sector, which needs to be convinced to use such
technologies. But it also requires support from govern-
ment in terms of regulation and the use/allocation of re-
sources to support these developments.
In contrast, the Radical Greens seem to be intrin-
sically driven by ethical norms and ‘sustainable prac-
tices’ in a broad sense (inclusion, consensual decision-
making, money-free space, vegetarian/vegan nutrition,
etc.). Some members describe their initiatives as ‘labo-
ratories for utopias’. They claim not to be ‘eco-political’
in a classic sense, but see themselves as implicitly po-
litical by practicing an ecological, non-capitalist way of
life in their own created ‘interstitial’ spaces for freedom
through collaboration and by practicing a non-esoteric
‘being-together’. The form of governance here was col-
laborative, deliberative and experimental; it aimed to
demonstrate alternative ways of organising.
Somewhat differently Eco-egalitarians are engaged
in practices which secure or enable autonomy. For in-
stance members of a solidarian agriculture sub-group
sought to develop a collective ‘feeling’ that they were
able to exist ‘independently from the system’; they were
searching for a form of ‘authenticity’ by acting and
communicating with one another. It was not enough
for group members to have the ‘right’ moral convic-
tions, they wished to see them practically at work when
they collaborated with one another. For them this rep-
resented ‘evidence’ that a more just, environmentally-
friendly way of living is possible by relying on the ‘prac-
ticing body’ (gardening, cultivating). The range of leader-
ship here varied between ‘non-hierarchical’ to respectful-
charismatic. The ‘art of collaboration’ is central to their
collective intentionality and how they understand ‘eco-
logical governance’ in terms of developing new pathways
to address what they see as fundamental human needs
(nutrition, housing, psychological well-being, etc.).
The Community Builders focussed on place and how
to develop new ways of governing local communities
through a ‘deliberative’ trial and error process, but essen-
tially a form of governance that was non-hierarchical and
inclusive. However, the overall focus was inward look-
ing. Unlike the evidence reported in some other studies
(e.g. Hadden, 2015; Kauffmann, 2016) they had little or
no desire to engage with existing forms of governance or
to transform it. On the other hand, as noted by Hadden
(2015) and Kauffmann (2016) in their work, they chal-
lenged/questioned existing dominant knowledge forms
and definitions of the problem being much more con-
cerned with locally generated knowledge based in every-
day life, ‘learning by doing’ and local production and con-
sumption. Despite this questioning they did not seek to
transform the wider knowledge landscape or problem
definition believing that the existing system had ‘failed’
and their objective was to provide a practical demonstra-
tion that it was possible to develop alternative ‘ways of
living’ and organising.
In terms of their degree of organisation and profes-
sionalisation our groups once again displayed consider-
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 7
able variation ranging from ‘highly organised and profes-
sionalised’ (most notably the Consensus Builders) to much
more ‘loosely structured’ and ‘amateur’. The more organ-
ised and professionalised groups tended to have a clearer,
arguably more hierarchical, organisational structure and
a focus on achieving particular tasks. For instance, three
of these groups were registered charities with a board of
trustees and received financial support from a variety of
sources including local government. Some sought to influ-
ence local policy debates on climate change through the
provision of locally tailored scientific knowledge and ways
of measuring the impacts of climate change on the local-
ity and action programmes to address it.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
While, as far as we have been able to ascertain, no other
study focusing on self-organised local responses to cli-
mate change has used the Q-Sort methodology to iden-
tify individuals attitudes and then on the basis of factor
analysis attempted to identify particular groupings with
an associated discourse/narrative or to consider the at-
titudes of groups vis-à-vis existing forms of governance,
there have been other studies of sustainability that in
a broader sense have sought to identify different indi-
vidual attitudes within local groups. The most pertinent
of these was carried out by Fischer et al. (2017); their
focus was on what they described as the diverse views
held by individuals in community groups addressing low
carbon initiatives, the ‘everyday politics’ of the groups
and how this related to ‘processes of societal transition’
which is close to what we were concerned with in the
SELFCITY project. A key focus of their research was: ‘the
question of how such shared and coherent expectations
develop and are negotiated in practice is hardly ever ad-
dressed in the recent literature on social aspects of sus-
tainability innovations’ (Fischer et al., 2017, p. 3) which
broadly compliments our concern with self-organisation.
Basically they identified what can be termed a range of,
potentially dissonant, ‘world views’ (these might reason-
ably be described as discourses) held by members of the
groups they studied. For instance some members of the
groups wished to adopt a more ‘confrontational’ (i.e.,
overtly political) attitude whilst others wished to be apo-
litical and avoid confrontation when it came to arguing
for change. This was likely to influence how they viewed
engagement with existing forms of governance. Similarly
the issue of organisational structure and ways of working
differed considerably within and between groups. Some
members clearly wished to work with other groups and
networks whilst others wished to retain the groups’ in-
dependence. This in turn influenced how they viewed
working/engaging with existing forms of governance (in-
cluding local authorities). As in our groups the differ-
ent initiatives studied by Fischer et al. (2017) adopted
a range of different ways of negotiating these dissonant
‘world views’ ranging from open discussion to tacit agree-
ment not to confront them. This in turn produced vari-
ous, sometimes unresolved, tensions within the groups,
in some cases leading members to leave groups. How
these tensions were resolved (or not) is also likely to have
influenced how the groups engaged (or did not) with gov-
ernance systems (although this was not an explicit focus
of their paper).
What might be stated at this stage of our research
and for all our initiatives was a commonly shared (though
not always made explicit), and of varying intensity, con-
viction or world-view that they had lost trust in the way(s)
in which existing institutionalised politics addressed cli-
mate change, although the Consensus Builders clearly did
not believe the ‘system was broken’. A fundamental rea-
son for these individuals to come together and ‘get in-
volved’ therefore seems to be varying degrees of distrust
of existing market or state led ‘solutions’, which they re-
garded as ineffective and/or ‘abstract’, being too far away
from the local level and their everyday lives and thus
unable to bring about any substantial changes that they
could recognise as relevant to them. Therefore, at least in
three of the ‘types’, they have sought to follow a differ-
ent, less hierarchically ordered, course of action based
on ‘deliberative politics’ (Macedo, 1999) and practices
to reach their goal or at least set up pathways to do so.
This approach compliments and supports new findings
in critical studies on climate change that argues there
is a widespread discontent with leading actors and ini-
tiatives seeking to tackle global warming (Stevenson &
Dryzek, 2014).
A second aspect, which arguably constitutes com-
mon ground for all our self-organising groups, and per-
haps more generally, is the level of social integration they
offer (or aspire to). Each of the groups assembled a range
of people from different backgrounds who, while sharing
broadly similar ideas about climate change, might not be
found together under other circumstances, i.e., they cut
across traditional social divisions/boundaries. Thus we
would contend that our results indicate the existence of
a ‘cross-milieu’, integrative and egalitarian effect of en-
gaging in such groups, which may display promising new
ways to channel aspirations, however vaguely defined,
for fundamental societal change and for a sustainably
shaped direct (co-existent) and proximate (social and bi-
ological) environment.
In terms of the implications for their own self-
governance forms the above suggests a desire to develop
more deliberative and non-hierarchical forms of organ-
ising and taking decisions. Indeed we observed this in
several of our groups, although the more ‘profession-
alised’ the group there was a tendency to utilise more
traditional forms of organising particularly where they
engaged with external organisations from whom they re-
ceived funding (the Consensus-Builders, who favoured an
eco-modernisation approach, tended to fall into this way
of organizing). The very act of such engagement required
them to develop relevant accounting practices that con-
formed to the regulations governing the relevant funds
along with the language and problem conceptualization
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 8
of those with whom they engaged (see Atkinson, 1999,
on urban regeneration). This in turn required ‘respon-
sible’ individuals to be identifiable and decisions to be
taken accordingly.
In terms of knowledge our research revealed a gen-
eral suspicion, if not outright rejection, of dominant
knowledge forms among three of the groups the Q-Sort
analysis identified. While Consensus Builders were con-
cerned to utilise new ecological forms of scientific and
technological knowledge to develop new niche tech-
nologies, again consistent with their adoption of an
eco-modernisation approach. What remains unclear is
how the forms of knowledge generate by self-organising
groups can be incorporated into wider governance and
decision-making structures, i.e., to transcend their par-
ticular context. Among our groups only the Consensus-
Builders displayed the willingness or the capacity to en-
gage found in the groups studied by Hadden (2015) or
Kauffman (2016). The other groups lacked the network
ties identified by Hadden (2015) as being so important
to influencing wider (global) policy on climate change.
Although as Hadden (2015) notes, ironically, the very
act of participating in these wider networks, along with
the gaining of additional expertise and knowledge, had
a negative impact on their ability to actually influence
these debates and policy. Perhaps this reflects a wider
dilemma for such groups; the more they become in-
volved in these wider networks the more their auton-
omy is decreased. Thus they face the conundrum of how
can their ways of organising engage with prevailing forms
of governance to bring about change without their self-
organising forms being regularised and incorporated in
the process. It is perhaps ‘easiest’ for the Consensus
Builders to do this because they do not wish to chal-
lenge the existing system, merely to modify it. The other
groups, to varying extents, identified fundamental flaws
in the prevailing system that are difficult to accommo-
date within their operating ethos and thus chose to work
‘at a distance’.
Finally in general terms it is clear that apart from the
Consensus-Builders there was little appetite among the
groups we studied to directly confront and change ex-
isting forms of governance and knowledge in the rele-
vant arenas. They seem to have decided, deliberately or
otherwise, to maintain their ‘autonomy’ by working in
their own way(s) at local level and not to overtly confront
the dilemma of how to transcend their local context—
i.e., become networked. The ‘model’ of action appears to
be ‘demonstrative’ and experimental—seeking out new,
practical everyday solutions to localized manifestations
of climate change.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the other members of
the SELFCITY team (in particular Stephen Hall and Ian
Smith who carried out the Q-Sort analysis) carrying out
the research this article is based on. The contents of
the article do not necessarily reflect their views. This
research was supported by JPI Climate and the individ-
ual research teams were financed by research grants
provided by the Economic and Social Research Council
(United Kingdom), Federal Ministry of Education and Re-
search (Germany), and Netherlands Organisation for Sci-
entific Research (Netherlands). The views expressed in
this article do not necessarily reflect the views of any of
these organisations.
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interests.
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About the Authors
Rob Atkinson is Professor of Urban Policy at the University of the West of England. His current research
focuses on European territorial and spatial development with particular reference to urban areas and
their relationship with the wider territory. A key aspect has been a concern with sustainability and
sustainable urban development. In parallel, and closely linked, he has also become increasingly in-
terested in the role of knowledge and how forms of knowledge are combined in urban and spatial
policies/projects.
Thomas Dörfler is currently senior lecturer at the Free University Berlin. He was research coordina-
tor in the project SELFCITY: collective governance, innovation, and creativity in the face of climate
change (JPI Climate funded http://www.jpi-climate.eu/projects) at the University of Bayreuth, Ger-
many (2016–2017). He is working on his habilitation about the phenomenology of space and place
based on a relational perspective on subjectivity and identity.
Eberhard Rothfuß is Professor of Social and Population Geography at the University of Bayreuth and
currently coordinating the JPI-Project SELFCITY. He received his doctorate 2003 at the University of
Würzburg and qualified as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Passau until 2010. 2011–2013 he
represented the chair of Social Geography and Geographical Development Research at the University
of Bonn. His main areas of research focus on urban governance, socio-spatial exclusion in the Global
South, critical theory and qualitative methodologies.
Politics and Governance, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages X–X 11
