The dynamics of participation

Abstract

Participatory processes in the energy transition rarely stay within the boundaries of the meetings, practices, and methods in which they are designed. They interact, accumulate, and resonate within and across institutional, spatial and temporal boundaries. Recent scholarship has begun to recognise this, developing systemic perspectives on participation. While these richly describe what these interactions look like in practice, we require additional conceptual tools for explaining how their adaptive dynamics unfold. This paper addresses this gap by conceptualising a collection of participatory processes as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). We develop a framework that empirically applies CAS concepts – nestedness, coupled fitness landscapes, path dependence and emergence – to a collection of participatory processes in the Netherlands. Our results from 21 interviews show how participatory processes are nested within multiple spatial, temporal, institutional and social scales and domains, both within and beyond the energy sector. Furthermore, participatory processes continuously learn from and respond to each other. We observed an interaction with two main emergent patterns in the system as a whole: the development of a milieu of learning on participation and the institutionalisation of participation. Finally, we observed processes of self-reinforcing behaviour and path dependence. Our CAS perspective provides conceptual and methodological tools to better understand the complexity, interdependencies, and change implications of participatory governance in sustainability transitions. Our findings underline the need for (normative) reflexivity in designing and evaluating participatory processes as dynamic components of larger, evolving systems.