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Many countries are committed to sustainability but are struggling with how to do this. Most countries opted for sustainability councils and the development of sustainability indicators. The Dutch government followed a different track. It believed that sustainability requires some fundamental changes in functional systems of for example energy, transport and agriculture. It conceptualised the quest towards sustainability as an issue of managing transitions in functional systems. In this paper we examine why the Dutch government became interested in transitions. We will see that transition management was attractive because it allowed different ministries to pursue their own agenda but in a different way: with more attention to innovation and learning. We will look at the model of transition management and the Dutch policies for managing the energy transition. The model is believed to be an interesting model of governance, employing an integrative and multi-scale framework for policy deliberation, choice of instruments, and actions by individuals, private and public organizations, helping society to escape lock-in while avoiding new evolutionary traps.

The term transition is a key term of the fourth national environmental policy plan (NMP4, 2001), which put forward transition management (Rotmans et al, 2000) as a new policy approach for dealing with persistent and highly complex societal problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, overexploitation of resources and health risks related to the use of dangerous, non-natural substances. The NMP4 selected the energy supply, mobility, agriculture and the use of biodiversity and natural resources as priorities for developing transition management activities. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (holding responsibility over energy and innovation policy) has since the NMP4 been the leading actor in the so-called 'energy-transition'. Several activities have been undertaken, based on the basic principles underlying transition management; long term visions as framework for short-term action, a multi-actor approach and a focus on learning and experiments. The approach has stimulated the involvement of a large number of stakeholders and led to the developments of shared visions, ambitions and strategies, experiments and projects. Besides, the approach itself has generated questions regarding regular policies, for example innovation and technology policies, and led to debates on policy integration and barriers in existing regulations. This discussion has been actively picked up by the Ministry and governmental advisory boards for energy and environment (Energieraad and VROM-raad 2004). It is an example of policy learning in which it was believed that sustainability requires some fundamental changes in functional systems, which in turn require policy-innovation. In this paper we will look at why the Ministry was interested in fostering an energy transition (where we will see that economic reasons, notably the willingness to create green energy business, was an important consideration). The paper will describe the policies and stakeholder process, which will be assessed from a transition management perspective. This means that the paper uses the multi-level, multi-phase transition management framework (Loorbach 2004b) to evaluate the energy-transition approach as developed by the ministry of Economic Affairs, in terms of content (what types of visions and experiments are developed?) and in terms of process (what kind of actors are involved, what instruments are used?). Special attention will be given to the nature of the policies developed and their difference with and implications for 'regular' policies. We will compare the difference with past policies and the changes in the system of governance. The paper will also seek to answer a more speculative issue: What are the prospects of the Dutch approach to achieve a transition and a flourishing sustainable energy business?

Transition management has rapidly emerged over the past few years as a new approach to dealing with complex societal problems and governance in the context of these problems. In the Netherland, UK and Belgium, serious efforts have been and are being undertaken to develop transition policies in areas such as energy, building, mobility and water management. This is the result of a much broader scientific development of transition research as an interdisciplinary field of study in which innovation studies, history, ecology and modeling are combined with sociology, political and governance studies and even psychology. Because of the focus on integrated sustainability problems and the applied nature of transition research, the natural interaction between science and policy has led to a continuous co-evolving theory and practice of transition management. The emergence of transition management as a new paradigm for governance and research has surprised many researchers and policy-makers, leading to skepticism and doubts as well as enthusiasm and new élan. How was it possible that a new approach that aims to promote transitions, in fact evolutionary revolutions fundamentally altering existing regimes, could be taken up so quickly by policy and was able to simultaneously develop scientifically into a, still very young, discipline? This paper describes the predevelopment phase leading up to the introduction of transition management as national policy in the Netherlands. It will explain the following development as a result of the co-production process between research and policy in which all elements that constitute the transition management approach were brought together. The paper will show that these basic elements were already being developed and implemented for years but had to come together in an active co-production process to become integrated and internalized. Since its introduction into the policy arena, transition management has been widely debated, challenged, tested, and because of this further developed, ...

Transition management has rapidly emerged over the past few years as a new approach to dealing with complex societal problems and governance in the context of these problems. In the Netherland, UK and Belgium, serious efforts have been and are being undertaken to develop transition policies in areas such as energy, building, mobility and water management. This is the result of a much broader scientific development of transition research as an interdisciplinary field of study in which innovation studies, history, ecology and modeling are combined with sociology, political and governance studies and even psychology. Because of the focus on integrated sustainability problems and the applied nature of transition research, the natural interaction between science and policy has led to a continuous co-evolving theory and practice of transition management. The emergence of transition management as a new paradigm for governance and research has surprised many researchers and policy-makers, leading to skepticism and doubts as well as enthusiasm and new élan. How was it possible that a new approach that aims to promote transitions, in fact evolutionary revolutions fundamentally altering existing regimes, could be taken up so quickly by policy and was able to simultaneously develop scientifically into a, still very young, discipline? This paper describes the predevelopment phase leading up to the introduction of transition management as national policy in the Netherlands. It will explain the following development as a result of the co-production process between research and policy in which all elements that constitute the transition management approach were brought together. The paper will show that these basic elements were already being developed and implemented for years but had to come together in an active co-production process to become integrated and internalized. Since its introduction into the policy arena, transition management has been widely debated, challenged, tested, and because of this further developed, enriched and grounded scientifically. The debate concerning the 'manageability' and predictability of transitions has been picked up by Meadowcroft (2005, 2007), Shove and Walker (2007), who warn against possible pitfalls concerning transition management and raise interesting questions regarding scope, effectivity and legitimacy. In their commentaries, they thus touch upon relevant issues, but especially Shove and Walker seem unaware of most of the research and practical experiences of the last years. They for example seem unaware of the social systems approach underlying transition management, the focus on the role of immaterial elements and consumers in transitions, the reflexive use of sustainable development as guiding instead of prescribing notion and the new insights about the role of research and researchers in transition management. In all these areas, important progress has been made. The paper will explain how the transition management approach further evolved and how it necessarily will continue to do so in the future. We will discuss in-depth major points of criticism and concern as put forward by various authors over the past years.

Continuing economic turbulence has fuelled debates about social and political reform as much as it has stimulated actions and initiatives aimed at a more fundamental transition of dominant economic systems. This paper takes a transition perspective to explore, from a Western European viewpoint, how the economic crisis is actually viewed through a variety of interpretations and responded to through a range of practices. We argue that framing societal phenomena such as the economic crisis