Participation in Energy Transitions: A Comparison of Policy Styles

Stakeholder and public participation in policymaking for energy transitions is one of the most promising approaches to fulfilling the promises of a democratic sustainability transition. Over the years, many studies have been published about concepts, methodologies, and empirical results of participatory approaches and implementations. In this paper, we focus on the compatibility of participatory processes with different policy styles of democratic governance. We conducted a systematic literature search comparing different concepts of democratic governance and applying them to public participation, in particular that associated with energy transitions. Our main objective in this paper is to link the requirements for a sustainable energy transition to governance processes and structures; we further aim to delineate suitable formats for stakeholder and public participation. Our analysis provides a basis for a wide-ranging and multi-perspective research agenda that promises to provide a deeper understanding and explanation of complex governance arrangements for energy transitions. The five democratic policy styles that we selected for this review are: autocratic, adversarial, collaborative, reflexive, and inclusive governance. We conclude that none are adequate on their own, and so we put forth a novel hybrid we call the “mediative approach.” From this approach, we derive a new research framework for addressing the current challenges of democratic decision-making in energy transitions. Three pressing questions emerge, one relating to the interplay of top-down and bottom-up modes of governance; a second to the conditions for actor collaboration; and a third to the perception of democratic legitimacy by affected parties.