Investigating the Co-Evolution of Technological Change and Actors’ Attitudes in the German Energy Subsystem

The de-carbonization of the energy sector is key to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. Far from being a mere technological challenge, such an energy transition co-evolves with its surrounding socio-institutional environment and actor constellations. Thus, it is important to better understand actors’ attitudes and the factors explaining their evolution. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has proven to be a valuable conceptual framework for investigating such dynamics in the energy policy subsystem. For instance, ACF studies explain important endogenous aspects of energy-policymaking, such as policy-brokers. Other studies take into account the role of external subsystem events, such as nuclear disasters. However, we argue, existing ACF research underemphasizes the external context of policy subsystems, in particular feedback effects through policy-induced technological change. Yet, such feedback effects are central for tackling “super-wicked” policy problems like climate change. The paper addresses this research gap by asserting that combining the AFC with elements of recent literature on policy feedback can help better explain temporal dynamics of actor and attitude constellations in the energy-subsystem. We aim to combine (1) non-cognitive, external factors inherent in ACF with (2) feedback effects based on policy-induced technological change in the energy sector. Indeed, policy feedback literature is compatible with ACF, since both share the central assumption that significant attitudinal changes in policy-subsystems require perturbations in socio-economic conditions and technology. The paper explores the validity of these claims with an empirical analysis of policy-induced technological feedback effects on the evolution of advocacy coalitions and attitudes in the German energy sub-system. Methodologically, the article identifies these dynamics based on Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) of German parliamentary speeches and newspaper articles from the 1980s to 2013. In sum, the paper investigates how policy-induced technological change affects its socio-institutional environment. Methodologically, the paper is answering calls for longitudinal and rigorous analyses of policy processes using systematic methods, such as DNA.