A New Policy Style for the Energy Transition

"Research shows that affording stakeholders, experts, civil society and affected citizens opportunities for participation – and how this is done – is crucial to the success of democratic transformations towards sustainability. Based on this finding, we analysed different policy styles and then developed a proposal for a style that is better suited to address the complex relationships between companies, public administration, policymakers, and civil society in the context of the energy transition," says Jörg Radtke (RIFS), lead author of the study, which has been published in the journal "Energy Research & Social Science". In the study, the authors describe five styles of democratic policymaking and analyse their compatibility with public participation in the energy transition.

• Autocratic policymaking is characterised by a top-down approach. Economic efficiency and centralised control determine decision-making in this style, with citizens enjoying few or no opportunities for participation.
• Antagonistic policymaking is also organised along strongly hierarchical lines. Decision-making tends to be highly contested by two political camps that compete for the support of interest groups and constituencies in a polarized policy landscape. 
• Collaborative policymaking involves interest groups and, to a lesser extent, citizens in political decision-making. This approach is based on the idea of achieving a cross-party consensus through intensive negotiations and compromise.  
• Reflective policymaking emphasises deliberative, argument-driven decision-making. It promotes public debate and the legitimacy of decision-making and emphasises local knowledge. This policy style is characterised by discursive, bottom-up planning processes with strong public participation. 
• Inclusive policymaking emphasizes the representation of diverse population groups in shaping the energy transition. Citizens are heard at citizens' assemblies and can directly influence political decisions through referendums. 

These five prototypes attach varying degrees of importance to public participation and consultation. According to the authors, top-down policy styles (i.e., the autocratic and antagonistic styles) struggle to mobilise public support for energy transitions.

The three styles that integrate bottom-up strategies are better suited to this task. “When it comes to public participation, each of these policy styles has unique benefits and weaknesses: Collaborative systems can undermine ambitious policies and result in ‘rotten’ comprises. Reflective systems can generate commitment, but struggle with implementation. Inclusive systems, on the other hand, can be challenging to manage and unpredictable due to the conflicting and often inconsistent preferences of the actors involved," says co-author Ortwin Renn.

In light of this, the researchers propose a new policy style, which they term "mediative". This style combines the benefits of the reflective and inclusive styles and adds a spatial dimension. It places considerable emphasis on communities and builds bridges between the municipal, regional, national and European levels of governance. “Ultimately, energy transition projects are implemented at the local level, where conflicts arise and compromises have to be negotiated, so focussing on the municipal level is the most promising approach to tackling the dilemmas of the energy transition," says Radtke. 

The researchers formulate four principles of mediative governance:

1. The first step consists of bottom-up activities to establish deliberative discourses within the community. This would enable communities to address issues of social justice, energy demand, environmental impacts and sustainable development.
2. The second step comprises flexible and inclusive formats to facilitate the participation of stakeholders, experts, and the public. Such co-creative approaches foster a sense of ownership and shared responsibility among affected parties, mitigating conflicts in the transition process and securing both procedural and recognition justice. These can take the form of citizen assemblies or digital planning workshops.
3. The third step is to share the benefits of the energy transition with the local community. People should be empowered to be both the designers and beneficiaries of the envisioned energy transition. 
4. The fourth and final step is to link communities to a larger concept of sustainability and the common good and the obligation to remain within planetary boundaries so that community egoism at the expense of other communities is discouraged. 

According to the authors, combining effective public administration and governance with inclusive forms of participation and citizen engagement can establish optimum conditions for overcoming the democratic challenges of the transition to climate neutrality. Utilising interconnecting participatory processes, they argue, provides a means to highlight the advantages and benefits of the energy transition and make them tangible for citizens on the ground in affected communities.

Publication:

Jörg Radtke, Ortwin Renn: Participation in Energy Transitions: A Comparison of Policy Styles, Energy Research & Social Science Volume 118, December 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103743