The Governance of Transformation in Utility Systems: Challenge and Practice

The utility sector in industrialised countries is undergoing a process of transformation. Liberalisation and privatisation policies have triggered changes in the social, technological and ecological dimension of the provision of electricity, gas, water and telecommunications. These processes interact in complex ways, bringing about transformation dynamics which are highly uncertain while having large potential impact for the sustainability of industrial society. My contribution analyses the specific governance problem of shaping long-term transformation processes in utility systems as one of a) uncertainty about the complex dynamics of socio-technical change, b) ambigous goals linked to the contested notion of sustainability and c) distributed control by various actors in the field of production, consumption and policy-making. Against this background I present the general rationale of Evolutionary Governance as mode of problem-solving which actively works with complexity by putting a focus on the following elements: integrated knowledge production, adaptive strategies and instutions, anticipation of systemic effects, iterated participatory goal formulation and interactive strategy development. Conceptual reference is given to literatures on governance in policy and management contexts, science and technology studies with a focus on innovation in large technical systems and fundamental research on the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. The conceptual elaborations set the scene for an exemplary discussion of the governance of transformation in the German and the Dutch electricity system. Empirical cases are related to the concept of Evolutionary Governance. Conclusions are drawn as hypotheses about the relevance of Evolutionary Governance in real world policy contexts. Further leading research questions are formulated with regard to explaining the empirical differences in the governance of transformation within the German and the Dutch electricity system and with regard to the transferability of successful strategies from one sectoral governance systems to the other. 1 Jan-Peter Voß, Öko-Institut – Institute für Applied Ecology, Novalisstr. 10, 10115 Berlin, Germany, E-mail: [email protected], URL: www.oeko.de, www.sustainable-transformation.net