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Long abstract:

This paper takes our own participation as lead authors in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as a case to discuss whether the transformative change assessment (TCA) turned out as a constitutional moment, as a window of opportunity to catalyze radical transformations or to legitimize stability.

The paper seeks to highlight the implications of TCA in political terms: for example, how who gets to participate and who is entitled to speak for TCA, as well as who does not belong and hence lacks such voice and wider understanding of what TCA means.

By explicitly addressing the political dimensions of TCA, this paper seeks to uncover the taken-for-granted underlying normative, but often inexplicit, rationales and justifications of policy choices for governing transformations as well as the underlying theory of change.

Our empirical findings illustrate a paradox in the TCA discourse: While transformative change is defined as processes of fundamental, and systemic change, limited attention has been paid to the dynamic, complex, non-linear, and temporal characteristics of how societies transform. As a result, the TCA tends to offer legitimation for business as usual and reinforces the path dependency, lock-ins, and durability of sociotechnical infrastructures. Our experience sparks important questions about our own reflexivity and normativity that hopefully limit the risk that the desired influence of STS will turn "into alien good" (Wynne, 2007).