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Short abstract:

Arguing that STS has developed a blind spot for "normal" politics, this paper explores the role of political parties in shaping energy transition processes. The paper brings attention to how STS can be utilized in understanding relations between energy transitions and representative democracy.

Long abstract:

Based on the assumption that politics is present in most societal spheres, including innovation, science and everyday life, STS has since its inception in the late 1980s asked researchers to probe such arenas to understand the decentralized, distributed, and re-assembled characteristics of political decision-making. This perspective has been echoed in STS-studies of citizen participation and societal contestation in energy transitions. Key contributions have pointed to the distributed and continuous processes of citizen participation, the more-than-human characteristics of transition politics and the interplay of power between diverse actors. While we sympathize with these endeavors, we ask: Has STS’s enthusiasm for the “unlikely” actors of change and the “weird” places for politics made us develop a blind spot and a naïve ignorance about the importance of work done in traditional political institutions?

In this paper, we re-visit the role of representative democracy and institutionalized politics in shaping energy transition trajectories. Drawing on an interview study of political parties in the Norwegian parliament, we explore the roles of ideology and political climate in shaping parties' interpretation of, and willingness to promote, certain socio-technical pathways. Moreover, we unpack the internal party processes leading to technological objects, like nuclear energy technologies, rapidly gaining political attractiveness and public attention. Based on our analyses we shed new light on how technology development and innovation are interpreted and put to work within party political organizations and the government and argue that STS perspectives have been under-utilized in understanding this important socio-technical work that fundamentally shapes energy transitions.