Governing Long-Term Structural Changes in Socio-Technological Systems and Their Difficulties: What Do Sustainability Transition Studies Have to Address?

The body of sustainability transition studies has developed an approach for analyzing the long-term and complex non-linear dynamics towards a sustainable society. The analytical focus has provided unique insights into multilayered processes that can fundamentally change (unsustainable) socio-technological systems. At the core of its theoretical framework, the literature shares a multi-level perspective (MLP) to analyze system innovation by accommodating both radical change and dynamic stability in various contexts. Based on the current literature aimed at deepening the MLP, this chapter first offers an integrated model and explores its analytical potential. The model conceptualizes a multi-scalar spatial viewpoint of agency to better capture the trajectories between local sustainability initiatives and multi-dimensional institutions of the systems. The chapter then discusses how such endeavors relate to designing innovation policies and governing their processes, thereby clarifying uncertainties and open-ended policy/political processes characteristic of transition dynamics as well as the ambivalence between short-term contextuality and long-term sustainability orientation. How the dynamics and processes employing the MLP can manage and govern the impossibilities of ex-ante outcome evaluation is also discussed. Finally, this chapter concludes by critically evaluating the notion of a reflexive action framework proposed to navigate policy actors to find and gain desirable transformative change as trajectories continue to move forward.