Socio-technical transitions in farming: key concepts - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 25

regime actors will counter, resulting in a changed situation which demands context-specific
actions by niche actors, and strategies adjusted to the revised understanding of the situation.
Given the context-dependence of opportunities for action and the co-evolution of strategies,
clear cause-effect relationships for inducing a transition are bound to remain elusive. As
Rip (2006) has pointed out, gathering data about cause-effect relations to design an
intervention with a predicted outcome contributes to the 'illusion of agency'. Indeed, based
on the insights of complexity and of co-evolutionary processes driving societal change, it
becomes clear that transitions cannot be technologically driven, expert-led or 'rationally'
planned (Woodhill, 2009). The development of societal systems remains inherently
unpredictable.
This conceptualization of complexity implies that better understanding processes will
not necessarily enhance the capacity to manage. Actions (by niche or regime actors) can
help steer processes in the desired direction but they do not do that by definition (Duineveld
et al. , 2009). This implies a modest approach to the ability to 'manage' or 'steer' long-term
changes in society. In other words, much caution needs to be used with the implicit
assumptions conveyed by terms such as transition 'management', actors 'shaping' niches or
'selecting' one pathway over another (Shove and Walker, 2007). Many of these terms seem
to imply that deliberate intervention in pursuit of specific goals is possible and potentially
effective. However, care must be taken not to slip into an engineering mindset, or a belief
that social change can somehow be planned and executed in a linear fashion. A transition is
a long-term process involving a multitude of societal agents and is thus fraught with
scientific uncertainty, social ambiguity and unpredictability.
One way forward can be to enhance learning capacities, thus enabling a greater
responsiveness. In essence this means “tackling transition processes by distributing
understanding, improving feedback linkages and enhancing capacities for adapting to
change in a dispersed and non-hierarchical, yet coordinated, manner” (Woodhill,
2009:281). This requires capacities to design, facilitate and support such processes in ways
that lead to real learning and change. For such learning networks to be successful, some
critical factors can be identified, such as creating heterogeneous groups of stakeholders,
developing mutual trust and social cohesion, or finding a communal perspective for the
future and good process management (Vogelezang et al. , 2009).
The analysis of case studies can contribute to better understanding how actors have
navigated complexity and unpredictability, how they have used ambiguity to their
advantage, how they have been able to seize favourable moments to 'anchor' with the
regime, and how they have co-constructed 'windows of opportunities'.
Power: resisting and steering transitions
A defining property of a regime is the interdependent, highly institutionalized alignment
across heterogeneous processes that serves to reproduce the regime, and which tends to
engender path-dependent development (Stirling and Smith, 2008). This constitutes a form
of structural power which privileges certain actors at the expense of others. Indeed, some
regime members command key positions in the reproduction of incumbent regimes by
ensuring the maintenance of the rules, infrastructures and values underpinning socio-
technical practices. However, by definition a transition to sustainability implies a radical
shift. A transition leads to new technologies, social practices, institutional forms, and/or
policies becoming valued. Transitions necessarily involve disrupting established personal,