The discursive politics around the development and adoption of

‘transition management’ into national policy

A routine policy strategy development process opened up a possibility to consolidate the

‘transitions’ storyline and influence policy making. Dissatisfaction with the success of previous National Environmental Policy Plans led civil servants to look outwards for new ideas. The internal thinking within the Environment Ministry about a new policy approach for the further development of environmental policy started as soon as NEPP 3 was published (Keijzers 2000). In the run-up to NEPP 4, several civil servants from the strategy departments of VROM and EZ were working closely together in an interdepartmental working group to prepare the document. This group amongst other things discussed the relationship between innovation and the environment. It became clear that regulation or subsidies would not be sufficient and “people from within the government were looking to the outside for new concepts” (interview 7). In this context the discourse coalition of researchers, consultants and civil servants strategically made use of this window of opportunity and promoted the ‘transitions’ storyline to provide a new direction for this policy plan. In the context of the discussions about the future of environmental policy two reports were commissioned which were important in developing ideas about how to manage transitions.

While preparing NEPP 4, VROM commissioned a report to the consultancy Twynstra Gudde Management in 1998. The report entitled Transitions: can three people change the world?¹³ came out in February 2000. The question posed to the group was: ‘what influence can governments have in promoting jumpwise change in the field of production, consumption, behavioural patterns, and societal structures’ and the report was supposed to identify first insights into drivers and bottlenecks of transitions (interview 23). VROM acknowledged that “technological options are part of this, but also structural changes and cultural changes. They [VROM] were looking for levers for policy making for change processes in a sustainable direction” (interview 23). In their assignment VROM already used the term ‘sustainable transitions’. VROM was looking for an ‘overarching concept’

for NEPP 4 (interview 17). According to Kemp and Loorbach, the report

“defined the transition concept and argued that societal change in principle could be steered, and that one should look for levers, to be identified through causality analysis looking at causality loops. The report was based on a flux model. It did not openly say that three persons can bring about a transition but indeed offered a suggestion to that effect” (Kemp and Loorbach 2005: 127).

The result was not so much a scientific report as an attempt “to get a first flavour of transitions” (interview 17). VROM started negotiating with EZ about the ideas of this report but EZ wanted ‘a more scientific report’ and also found a fault in the fact that the report was written by VROM consultants and not economists (interview 23). EZ was thus not yet convinced by the ‘transitions’ discourse and did not believe in the expertise of the consultants – a common struggle in discursive politics is over the contestations of knowledge claims (Ockwell and Rydin 2006). This led to the commissioning of a second report: the ICIS-MERIT report.

This second report for the preparation of NEPP 4 was commissioned to a group of researchers led by Jan Rotmans, director of ICIS and Rene Kemp, researcher at MERIT, and was entitled Transitions & Transition Management. The case for a low emission energy supply (Rotmans, Kemp et al. 2001a). In this report Rotmans et al. described transitions as long-term structural change processes in societal subsystems and outlined a

13 The original title in Dutch is: 'Transities: kunnen drie mensen de wereld doen omslaan?'

model of how such processes could be influenced in their direction and pace – transition management. The model was exemplified by using energy as an illustration. This report was of crucial importance in getting the ideas of transition management into NEPP 4 (Kemp and Loorbach 2005: 129). They claim that this was due to the close interaction between the NEPP 4 team and the authors of the report. This interpretation is supported by other participants in this process (interviews 3; 4). An observer points out that this “was a very peculiar window of opportunity for both science and policy makers” (interview 19).

Given the context described in the preceding section, ideas about ‘system innovations’ had been debated between policy makers and researchers for some time. In the write-up of NEPP 4 this debate crystallised and led to the adoption of the ideas of transition management into official governmental policy. This was due to the continuous cooperation between researchers and policy makers. The usual practice of commissioning a report by policy makers and presenting the final report by researchers was not followed. Instead the research group held a workshop with energy experts where the initial ideas were presented for the energy case. After that,

“A number of meetings have also been held with the Energy workgroup, or its members, as well as with a larger group of people involved with the NMP4. Through these meetings…a collective learning process was created where the ideas of transition management were crystallised through a proportional contribution from the researchers and officials”

(Rotmans, Kemp et al. 2001a: 11).

The outcome of the process was not predetermined but arose through the interaction:

transition management was thus an idea that gradually emerged from discussions between the research group and the group of policy makers preparing NEPP 4 (Kemp and Loorbach 2005: 129). One participant described this process as a series of meetings “with a lot of confusion, a lot of ideas, a lot of discussion, a highly iterative and interactive process during which the concepts co-evolved” (interview 17). During this process the ICIS-MERIT research team had approximately 30 meetings with policy makers to help them internalise the concept of transitions. Methods used to persuade policy makers included a play, a fairy tale, discussions, and involving a painter in order to represent the main ideas.

Consultants also played an important role in this process as they could build bridges

between policy makers and researchers (interview 17). The bottom line of most observers’

comments is that Jan Rotmans and other members of the ICIS-MERIT team were very active, entrepreneurial and influential in getting the transition management idea accepted by policy makers (interviews 3; 4; 7; 10; 19; 21; 23). They were “people who had the right words, pointing towards new directions … who also had the authority and the communicative skills to affect others” (interview 7).

This section has argued that the transition management ideas were formulated through a process of in-depth cooperation between a small group of researchers, consultants and civil servants from VROM and EZ. The following section will analyse the process through which the ‘transitions’ storyline became adopted by the Dutch Government as the basis for their long-term environmental policy.

4.4.1.3 The departmental politics around accepting the ‘transitions’ approach