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ABSTRACT
Governance is commonly regarded as pivotal for promoting sustainable development. However, there is a lively debate on the merits of different modes of governance in this respect, especially on the relevance of new, non-hierarchical modes. Adding to this debate, this paper explores the sustainability impacts of the range of governance modes from a comparative perspective. It investigates the relation between modes and induced societal changes and elucidates the role of the mode for promoting sustainability. Guided by a theoretical framework for both the conceptualization of governance modes and their sustainability impacts, five governance arrangements in Swiss energy policy are examined, representing different modes (from hierarchically centralized and decentralized governance to public-private and interactive modes to self-governance). The results do not support the claim that new modes are generally superior to traditional hierarchical ones in terms of promoting sustainability. Rather, the potential of new modes can best be realized in combination with hierarchical governance. Other factors such as the embedding context or the attributes of involved actors are also important for the transformative potential of governance. In view of the findings, future sustainability governance research should increasingly focus on the contextual interplay of governance modes and their meta-governing.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments that improved the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Philipp Lange holds a doctoral degree in sustainability sciences from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He has an interdisciplinary background in sustainability sciences and studied at the universities of Lueneburg (Germany), Kristianstadt (Sweden) and Basel (Switzerland) (Bachelor of environmental sciences from the Leuphana University of Lueneburg and Master of Arts and Science from the University of Basel). He is working at the German Committee Future Earth in relation to the science platform sustainability 2030. His main research interest is the field of governance towards sustainable development within various sectors. He is furthermore interested in principles and practices of transdisciplinary research.
Dr Basil Bornemann has an interdisciplinary study background in environmental sciences and holds a doctoral degree in political science from Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany. Following his overall interest in the governance of societal transformations toward sustainability, he has extensively studied policy integration in the context of sustainable development strategies. Basil’s current research at the Sustainability Research Group, University of Basel, Switzerland, focuses on the relationship between governance, sustainable development and democracy within various fields, such as energy and food policy. He is further interested in principles and practices of transdisciplinary and transformative sustainability science.
Prof. Dr Paul Burger Head of the Sustainability Research Group, Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel. Professor for the socio-cultural within the interfacultary Master in Sustainable Development. Born 1956, initially trained as a technician, he studied philosophy and history (doctorate 1992, habilitation 1997), was scientific assistant for philosophy in Basel und Luzern, SNF-research fellow, lecturer at the universities of St. Gallen, Fribourg, Innsbruck, Maribor, and from 1998 to 2005 head of the interfaculty teaching program People Society Environment at the University of Basel; since 2006 he has been in charge of the Sustainability Research Group and responsible for the social sciences within the tri-faculty Master in Sustainable Development at the University of Basel; among others he is currently head of trinational Upper Rhine Cluster for Sustainability Research, head of the SCCER-CREST work package 2 on change of behavior and member of the SCCER-CREST board. Among his research interests are theoretical foundations for sustainable development including its normative basis as well as approaches to human-nature-interrelations, empirical research on governance of sustainable development in general and of change of individual behavior in particular, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding individual behavior in the energy sector; the role of quality of life issues within sustainability transformation in the North and the South, and epistemology and methodology of inter- und transdisciplinary research.