Activating community participation in policy-making: the role of the perceived relevance of sustainability transitions

Moving away from unstainable practices implies complex transitions that have uneven and long-term impacts on local communities. While such sustainability transitions (ST) occur in times of disillusionment with democracy, they require inclusive place-based policy responses that address diverse vulnerabilities and create opportunities to shape one’s future (Barca, 2008). Considerations should be made, however, that communities approach ST from varied starting points, interpreting their relevance through the lens of the social and cultural structures they are embedded in. These differences affect if and how communities engage in shaping ST policies. Meanwhile, ST have gained traction on policy agendas. While the latter frame transitions differently, there is a notable focus on technology and industry, leading to top-down policy-making and technocratic policies. This hinders communities’ understanding of how their lives will be affected, and how they can voice their interests. Against this background, this paper investigates the involvement of communities, vulnerable to transitions but systemically marginalised by policy-driven participatory processes, in the deliberative governance of regional ST. It emphasises the engagement of these groups in public interventions’ design, focusing on European regions with energy-intensive industries. Specifically, the paper explores an innovative approach to the proactive articulation and strategic consideration of communities’ expectations and hopes for the future in the multi-level policy landscape that ST present. The central question is if and how this approach, which is expected to enhance communities’ perceived relevance of sustainability transitions, transition policies and policy-making, influences citizenship, including the willingness to participate. Results draw on case study research conducted in the Horizon Europe project Democratising jUst Sustainability Transitions (DUST) in regions in Bulgaria, Germany, Poland and Sweden. Data are acquired via participatory methods including eleven focus groups and four living labs. Key to the qualitative sampling of participants was the conceptual distinction between communities’ ability and willingness to participate in political life. This approach resulted in the identification of one meta-community (e.g. defined by occupation) and several distinct sub-communities per region. In theoretical terms, research employed a design-led experimentalist social governance approach, progressing through stages that emphasise learning through reflexivity between bottom-up community perspectives and top-down policy perspectives (Balz, 2021; Morgan, 2018). Additional conceptual inspiration were the UNESCO Futures Literacy Lab approach (Miller, 2018b). The process started with community members exploring the meaning and personal impact of transitions. During next stages, these baseline interpretations were firstly used to uncover detailed communities’ assumptions and dreams concerning their futures; envisioned futures were secondly compared to the scope of ongoing and upcoming transition policies; and matches and mismatches between community and policy perspectives were thirdly deliberated among lab participants and a broader public. At each stage of the process the perceived relevance of transitions and transition policies for communities was traced through qualitative text analysis, emphasising sentiment and emotions about transitions. A concluding comparative assessment will investigate how this relevance changed across the stages of the experiment, how these changes corresponded to communities’ willingness to participate, and how these findings can explain processes of learning and knowledge co-production both theoretically and practically.