The Politics of Selection: Towards a Transformative Model of Environmental Innovation
Journal Paper by Daniel Hausknost and Willi Haas
Sustainability, Vol 11(2)
January 2019
Institutions for transformative innovation need to improve the capacities of complex societies to make binding decisions in politically contested fields, a journal paper by CUSP researcher Daniel Hausknost and his colleague Willi Haas argues, proposing the design of novel institutions that integrate expert knowledge with processes of public deliberation and democratic decision-making.
Abstract
As a purposive sustainability transition requires environmental innovation and innovation policy, we discuss potentials and limitations of three dominant strands of literature in this field, namely the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP), the innovation systems approach (IS), and the long-wave theory of techno-economic paradigm shifts (LWT). All three are epistemologically rooted in an evolutionary understanding of socio-technical change.
While these approaches are appropriate to understand market-driven processes of change, they may be deficient as analytical tools for exploring and designing processes of purposive societal transformation. In particular, we argue that the evolutionary mechanism of selection is the key to introducing the strong directionality required for purposive transformative change. In all three innovation theories, we find that the prime selection environment is constituted by the market and, thus, normative societal goals like sustainability are sidelined. Consequently, selection is depoliticised and neither strong directionality nor incumbent regime destabilisation are societally steered.
Finally, we offer an analytical framework that builds upon a more political conception of selection and retention and calls for new political institutions to make normatively guided selections. Institutions for transformative innovation need to improve the capacities of complex societies to make binding decisions in politically contested fields.
The article is openly available on the MDPI website. Should you have difficulties accessing the paper, please email us for a copy.
