Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
In terms of assessing the internal structure, one of the promising recent contributions in
this respect is the detailed examination of a regime in terms of three dimensions: technical,
human-societal and institutional, proposed by Elzen
et al.
(2012), which draws on a
modified version of an analytical scheme initially proposed by Geels (2004). In this
classification, all technology or production process-related aspects of a regime are included
in the technical dimension. The human-societal dimension indicates all individual and
collective actors as well as networks whilst institutions comprise the third dimension,
divided into three distinct categories: cognitive or interpretative institutions; normative
institutions; and economic institutions. Besides simplification, this seems to be a powerful
and very useful analytical tool for two additional reasons. First, it can be used for a similar
analysis of the niche(s), making clear both its internal structure and its comparability with
the regime and, second, as a consequence it accommodates the exploration of the process of
linking between the niche and the regime.
After the regime, the second 'level' in the MLP is the
socio-technical landscape
,
conceived as a broad exogenous environment that as such is beyond the direct influence of
regime and niche actors (Geels and Schot, 2010). In this research the landscape pressures
and opportunities which create regime tensions were identified, such as: Common
Agricultural Policy reforms; demographic decline; health crises; food safety concerns;
increased environmental awareness and activism; consumption patterns; climate change;
and agriculture as a producer of energy. The next step was to clarify the ways these
pressures and opportunities impact on the regime and the niche and, more specifically, on
the three dimensions identified above. Landscape pressures were also examined in relation
to their contribution to the stabilization of the regime; the territorial level (European,
national, regional, local) at which they caused changes in the policy framework; their
degree of articulation towards a particular problem; and their role as supporting or
hindering factors for the farm succession in the given regime.
Niches
are the third basic component of the MLP framework. A niche is
conceptualized as a protected space: a specific domain in which radical innovations can
develop without being subject to the selection pressure of the prevailing regime (Kemp
et
al.
, 1998). The description of the niche takes place along the same three dimensions which
have already been used for the description of the regime: technical, human-societal and
institutional. The competitive or symbiotic character of the relationship between the niche-
innovations and the existing regime is also explored. A criterion which has been used for
the distinction between a niche and the regime is the granting of various forms of subsidies
in order to sustain the respective activity (Elzen
et al.
, 2012). However, several emerging
transitions studied within this research involve grants to farmers (and other actors) for
example in the context of multi-annual agri-environmental schemes, creating a need for a
clarification about the character of the respective initiative: if those grants are considered as
part of the protection environment, then we still have a 'niche', otherwise it is an integral
part of a 'regime'.
A number of additional challenges, thus, emerge. As already noted, the MLP provides
a theoretical apparatus which has been used in a historical perspective, for completed
transitions. In the study of an emerging transition, caution is needed because of the possible
implications concerning the
distinction between regime and socio-technical landscape
elements
. In this respect, a telling example is product prices. In particular, when the notion
of regime is used, as in 'global agri-food regime', then prices are endogenous since price
formation takes place within the regime. However, the same term is used in these specific
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