Environmental Movements, Conflict & Politicisation

Abstract

This panel brings together papers that examine how social movements, policy entrepreneurs, philanthropic actors, and knowledge communities navigate, contest, and reshape environmental governance under conditions of structural constraint and transformative ambition. The first paper adopts a bottom-up perspective on Swiss federalism. Drawing on multilevel governance theory and the multiple streams framework, it shows how policy entrepreneurs strategically navigate veto points and coordination failures, reframing federalism as a resource rather than a constraint for advancing environmental agendas. The second paper examines the “twin transition” of digitalisation and sustainability as a sociotechnical imaginary. It critically interrogates how this imaginary shapes democratic debate, power relations, and possibilities for social resistance, asking whether shared future visions enable coalition-building or depoliticise environmental contestation. The third paper turns to post-disaster governance in Japan, analysing how philanthropic organisations shape resilience through moral and managerial practices. Drawing on the concept of humanitarian governmentality, it conceptualises philanthropy as a form of humanitarian investment that redefines justice, responsibility, and vulnerability, highlighting the role of non-state actors in producing norms that may displace collective claims-making. The fourth paper investigates power dynamics within EU-funded transformative change research projects. Using a power-mapping approach, it reveals a systematic imbalance between prefigurative and countervailing forms of power, raising questions about the capacity of research-driven mobilisation to sustain transformative change. Together, the papers advance a relational understanding of social movements and environmental transformation, highlighting how power, imaginaries, and institutional contexts shape the possibilities and limits of collective action across governance levels.

Title	Details
The Power to Transform? Mapping Transformative Power in EU Research Projects and Policy Contexts	View Paper Details
Resilience for Whom? Philanthropic Power and Social Justice in Japan’s Post-Disaster Governance	View Paper Details
Imagining the Twin Transition: Digitalization, Decarbonization and Democracy	View Paper Details