Energy Policy and Politics: Conceptual Challenges, Core Problems and Emerging Issues

In his recent article, entitled “What are we doing here?”, Benjamin Sovacool highlights a few negative patterns associated with contemporary energy research. The discipline’s perspective is, in his view, dominated by male researchers coming from affluent, Western countries, which results in neglecting problems such as energy poverty or the inequitable access to energy services. Furthermore, the discipline seems to be overly focusing on “hard science” while neglecting the “human elements” in energy, and the approaches that could compensate for such imbalance, i.e. those stemming from social science, are treated as secondary and peripheral (Sovacool 2014, 2015). At the same time, interestingly, it has become the norm to open energy-related books, articles or conference abstracts with a statement expressing the crucial importance of energy for communities and nations, and their policymakers. This contrast inevitably leads to the question of where, if energy is so important for our societies, is the social and political science-driven energy research? By attempting to answer this question, this section seeks to contribute to a firmer establishment of the political science research agenda within contemporary energy studies. It intends to approach energy policy issues from the standpoint of the core concepts of political science, combining the perspectives of concepts already familiar to energy scholars (such as security and sovereignty) with those that are have only recently attracted more attention (justice and democracy). The section and the proposed panels therefore reflect the following subject areas: energy democracy and participation (the role of citizens in energy decision-making; the role of local acceptance and opposition in building energy infrastructure), energy justice and equity (the social sustainability of energy), energy security and sovereignty (the security of the energy supply; regional energy security complexes and clusters), and energy institutions and governance (inter/national energy regimes and organizations). Furthermore, the section remains open to subject areas in which political science approaches intersect with those of related disciplines. This section will present contributions that will tackle some of the discipline’s negative patterns as highlighted by Benjamin Sovacool, theoretical and conceptual contributions that bridge political science and energy research, and will present carefully drafted discussion panels that encourage interaction between presenters as well as between presenters and the audience.