Short course description
The governance of transitions, including the energy transition, a transition to a circular society, and for example to a sustainable food system is challenging for many governmental and other actors: how to move beyond the current institutionalized unsustainable practices in policy and law; how to collaborate; and how to cope with societal resistance and competing knowledge claims and uncertainties?  

This course provides an overview of the state-of-the-art literature on the governance of more sustainable socio-technical systems, including that of different generations of policy instruments, to transition management and transformational governance.  Participants will be challenged to apply these concepts and empirical insights to their own research projects.  

Many transitions can be seen as ‘wicked’ issues, with a high degree of uncertainty, cause by contested knowledge, conflicting values and interest, and decision-making in often polarized, politicized societal settings. Governing these transitions calls at the same time for combinations of in-depth changes (transformations); large scale, systems changes; as well as an acceleration of the transitions needed. We will provide PHD researchers with the conceptual and methodological tools to not only understand and analyse the governance of sustainability transitions, but also to design governance arrangements that are more collaborative, reflective and adaptive and have supportive policy mixes, and at the same time are capable of coping with the conflicts that will arise.