Local quality and certification schemes as new forms of governance in sustainability transitions - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 165

even before this approach was launched in the Czech Republic due to international
networking and reflexive learning.
Rethinking transition in forms of governance
Although the actors in the case studies challenged the governance structures of the
dominant regime, they only partly succeeded in counterbalancing the emerging problems.
The longer term, originally successful, Greek and Czech cases (compared to the Bulgarian
case) now evidence problems linked with a change from strong-weak networks into weak-
strong networks (Granovetter, 1973). That is, ties outside the niche that were important for
anchoring (weak in terms of familiarity among members of various networks but strong in
terms of access to information) have become inwardly focused and limiting (closure of
networks resulting from close familiarity of network members results in weak access to
new information). Local certification is embedded in locality; the initiatives studied appear
to be closed and not expanding. They face difficulties when anchoring local niche networks
into the national regime. On the other hand, under appropriate landscape pressures (for
example consumers' calls for food authenticity in the Czech case or i ncreased demands for
alternative tourism in the Bulgarian and Greek cases) the initiative might influence the
expansion of such local labels at the national scale.
Similar to many other forms of local quality initiatives across Europe (Eden et al. ,
2008) and indeed across the world (González and Nigh, 2005), the three cases offer
guaranteed local quality and information for consumers instead of focusing on quantity
from depersonalized 'nowhere' locations of products from the agri-food regime. The agri-
food regime referred to in the case studies was constructed in accordance with the values
and norms of modernity. These were based on the belief that positive possibilities
discovered in the modern era will prevail over negative features of the modern period
(Giddens, 1990). The emerging problems faced by the regime led participants to question
its sustainability - sometimes tacitly (Greek and Bulgarian cases), sometime intentionally
(Czech case). The key questions raised were: how is the regime to be sustainable when it
contributes to inaction, creates environmental problems, eliminates variety, brings
unemployment and results in depopulation? As a reaction to these problems, a proliferation
of actions was evident. They concerned amenity provision, environmental protection, local
food, food quality, traditions and tourism.
The cases studied did not change agri-food regime governance structures at national
level. Instead, the niches form 'islands of positive deviations' at regional level - a space for
independent thinking and acting (Bútora, 2006). In this way, they significantly differ from
regime governance structures, although the actors in the niche must also operate within
some aspects of the regime (e.g. collection and re-use of cider bottles in the Czech case or
regulations on food processing in the Bulgarian case).
The analysis of the niches shows the transition might be more likely to occur when two
or more sub-regimes are closer in terms of the influence they exert on each other. This was
the case for the agri-food regime and tourist regime in Bulgaria; the agri-food, tourist and
also energy regimes in Greece, where a large lake was being used for energy production;
and the environmental protection regime and agri-food regime in the Czech Republic. This
overlapping of regimes creates the opportunity to bring various views together into a new
niche, with associated novel governance structures. Using the concept of 'paradigmatic