Uncovering the Origins of Transformation – A Critical Examination of Policy Core Belief Analyses in Nascent Subsystems

Today's society is confronted with a variety of pressing sustainability issues. Resource scarcity, decarbonisation and environmental pollution are just a few examples. These issues affect many sectors, including construction, energy and agriculture, and require transformations towards sustainability within and across these sectors. Solutions to these issues, such as recycling, hydrogen technologies and pesticide reduction, often cannot be accommodated within existing policy subsystems. This can lead to the formation of nascent subsystems that emerge from or span across existing ones. To advance transformation processes, understanding and identifying policy core beliefs of the actors involved and their translation into concrete policies and practices in such new subsystems are essential. According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, these beliefs, alongside coalition dynamics and shifting power, drive transformation processes. While the importance of these beliefs is widely recognised, particularly for policymaking, relatively little is known about their formation in nascent policy subsystems. The literature typically characterises them as “fluid” or “amorphous”. This limits our understanding of what drives transformation processes and how first policy outputs come about and define the (regulatory) foundation of new subsystems and sustainable transformation. Based on a literature review and comparative cross-case analysis, we develop an overview of definitions and methods for assessing policy core beliefs, using examples from different sectors and types of nascent subsystems. We discuss these definitions and methods and suggest a standardization, aiming at a better understanding of transformation processes and thus policymaking toward sustainability.