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Short abstract:

The state-community encounter is a key element of sustainability transitions, but lacks a relational understanding. Integrating literature from public administration into TS, this paper outlines an ecology of theoretical state-community encounters and explores them empirically in the Netherlands.

Long abstract:

Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are garnering attention as critical elements of transforming complex socio-technical systems, such as that of energy. These forms of engagement have classically been understood as separate from state-centered approaches, such as the structuralist (Offe, 2000) and institutionalist perspective (Ostrom, 2010). Others, however, have highlighted that “self-organization does not occur in an institutional and regulatory vacuum” (Celata & Coletti, 2018, p. 1; Chilvers & Longhurst, 2016). They rather co-produce each other through tensions and bargained collaborations in ever changing policy landscapes. These relations go beyond traditional participation initiated by government; indeed, this strand of research views state-community dynamics as encounters that are emergent, relational and contested.

Academic research of this state-community encounter in sustainability transitions remain scarce and unsystematic (Celata & Coletti, 2018; Raj et al., 2022). As a result, we lack both a theoretical understanding and a more robust empirical foundation about how CBIs and government relate to advance sustainability transitions. The proposed paper aims to fill these gaps by integrating literature of self-organization (Edelenbos et al., 2018; Edelenbos & Meerkerk, 2016; Igalla et al., 2019) and co-production (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012; Brandsen & Honingh, 2016), which complements sustainability transition studies with an exploratory empirical base in multiple public domains, and a more zoomed-in understanding of how CBIs operate. The outlined ecology of theoretical state-community encounters will synthesize hitherto unconnected research fields. The paper will explore this ecology empirically using an emerging database of sustainability-related CBIs in the Netherlands.