15.1 Introduction: The Political Economies of Transition

In the study of socio-technical transitions and of pathways to sustainability more broadly, there has been increasing attention to questions of politics and governance (Meadowcroft Reference Meadowcroft2009; Scoones et al. Reference Scoones, Leach and Newell2015). Studies have highlighted, for example, the important role of institutions, ideas and political interests in shaping transition pathways (Kern Reference Kern2011). There is also growing interest in applying theoretical insights from different approaches to political economy as discussed in Section 15.2. However, significant scope remains to strengthen accounts which centre relations of power in seeking to understand who wins, who loses, how and why from prevailing governance arrangements and social-technical configurations (Newell Reference Newell2018). One of the benefits of political economy research on transitions is that it relates the underlying causes of problems that transitions are said to address to the structures within which they will be governed (Newell Reference Newell2018). This can lead to an overly pessimistic account of why change does not occur because of its focus on how incumbent or hegemonic power gets reproduced by dominant social and economic actors charged with addressing the problems they helped to create. On the other hand, it provides invaluable resources for critically assessing current landscapes of power in order to then explore the prospects of change and from whence openings for change might come. Concretely, this more practical application of political economy analysis can take the form of analysis of the potential for coalitions and broader alliances for change, for example (Meckling et al. Reference Meckling, Kelsey, Biber and Zysman2015; Hess Reference Hess2018, Reference Hess2019).

Classic political economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes sought to understand the processes of wealth creation and exchange in society, while critical political economists, most notably Karl Marx, explored the injustices and exploitation that these relations rely upon to generate wealth for the few at the expense of the many. It is important to note, firstly, that there are many political economies and ways of understanding power, therefore, production and reproduction of order in society. The starting point is often the relationship between states and markets (Strange Reference Strange1988) and the different forms that this relationship can take more liberal, coordinated and regulated, for example (Hall and Soskice Reference Hall and Soskice2001): the different ways in which they are governed and their distributional impacts. Political economy accounts tend to place centrally control over key areas of the economy from production and trade, to finance and technology as a means of understanding the material basis of uneven distributions of power. This provides a basis for understanding the ways in which governance arrangements seek simultaneously to expand the economy and manage the social and ecological conflicts which arise from that expansion. We will suggest here that political economy approaches can be refined and adapted to shed important light on the ways in which dominant socio-technical configurations reflect broader social and economic relations in society, just as disruptions associated with transitions can shift the power relations that political economy accounts seek to explain.

15.2 Historical and Thematic Development: From Governance and Politics to Political Economy

Early critiques of the neglect of questions of governance, politics and power in transition studies (Meadowcroft Reference Meadowcroft2009; Shove and Walker Reference Shove and Walker2007), led to leading authors in the field attempting to ‘bring politics in’ (Geels Reference Geels2014, Reference Geels2019). Transition scholars have incorporated insights from political science in a number of different ways. Some scholars have developed historical accounts of key institutions involved in the governance of transitions (Lockwood et al. Reference Lockwood, Kuzemko, Mitchell and Hoggett2016) or focused on ‘feedback effects’ (Lockwood Reference Lockwood and Scoones2015): the generation of benefits from transitions for key actors that help to secure their support for them and the role of ‘political coalitions’ in supporting and resisting change (Hess Reference Hess2018). Other research has focused on questions of incumbency and elite power (Sovacool and Brisbois Reference Sovacool and Brisbois2019) which is often exercised to resist or slow transitions threatening to status quo interests. This is sometimes organised around particular regimes of finance and production (Baker et al. Reference Baker, Newell and Phillips2014) and increasingly tied to questions of hegemony (Ford and Newell Reference Newell2021a). In turn, this has solicited growing interest in the role and nature of the state: not just its ‘entrepreneurial’ role in supporting innovation (Mazzucato Reference Mazzucato2011), but also adopting a relational view of tensions and complexities which arise from the multiple roles that states are expected to play in relation to transitions (Silvester & Fisker Reference Silvester and Fisker2023; Johnstone and Newell Reference Newell2018). Rather than adopt a monolithic view of the state, scholarship on varieties of state-market relations and forms of capitalism has explored the different approaches of coordinated (more social democratic) versus liberal market economies in how and by whom transitions are organised (Ćetković & Buzogány Reference Ćetković and Buzogány2016).

Alongside growing attention to governance and the state, there has been growing interest in the global governance of key issue areas such as energy, water and food; systems that are of interest to transition scholars (Van de Graaf Reference Van de Graaf2013; Goldthau and Witte Reference Goldthau and Witte2010), though the global governance and global political economy (GPE) of transitions per se remains a neglected area (Newell Reference Newell and Simms2020, Reference Newell2021). In terms of the conceptualisation of the global governance of transitions, critical GPE helps to inform an understanding of ‘the broader political and economic landscapes which shape transition pathways, the global interrelationships between national level transitions and to an appreciation of the shifting role of the state in a context of globalisation’. This helps’ not just to account for existing distributions of power and wealth in society, but to explore and engage with the potential for transformation beyond existing systems’ (Newell Reference Newell2020a: 344). In particular, such accounts can help (i) situate sustainability transitions within particular historical conjunctures, thereby contributing to work on ‘deep transitions’(Kanger and Schot, Reference Kanger and Schot2018). This body of work locates a series of connected and sustained fundamental transformations of a wide range of socio-technical systems in a similar direction such as moves towards increased labour productivity, mechanisation, reliance on fossil fuels, resource-intensity, energy-intensity and reliance on global value chains. A GPE account would relate these transformations to shifts in the stages of capitalism from Fordist models of production, for example, to a more financialised stage of late capitalism. Such an account can also provide rich historical accounts of technological, social and political lock in over time (Malm Reference Malm2016): how incumbent pathways are often supported and reinforced while alternatives are marginalised (Unruh Reference Unruh2000) (ii) provide an account of the inter-relationships between transitions in different parts of the world. These reflect the uneven distribution of power in the international system and the ways in which both benefits are captured by wealthier groups and costs passed on to the poorer ones through spatial and temporal fixes (Newell Reference Newell2021a,Reference Newellb) (iii) appreciate how the state’s insertion into the GPE shapes the degree of policy space and autonomy that states have to chart their own transition pathways. This space is affected by the nature of the trade, investment and aid relationships they have with other states and regions.

Going further still in this direction, there is increasing attention in political economy accounts to capitalism (Feola Reference Feola2020) and extractivism (Gudynas Reference Gudynas2021); the ways in which transitions are organised (and on whose behalf) in capitalist economies (Newell and Phillips Reference Newell and Phillips2016) and scope for transitions within and beyond capitalism (Newell and Paterson Reference Newell and Paterson2010) including deeper transformations. Given the emphasis on distributional questions in political economy, it is unsurprising that there has been increasing attention to questions of justice which inevitably foreground questions of power, politics and social relations. These have been applied to questions of just transition (Swilling and Annecke Reference Swilling and Annecke2012; Newell and Mulvaney Reference Newell and Mulvaney2013) in relation to specific sectors such as energy (Healy et al. Reference Healy, Stephens and Malin2019), but also explored in relation to the role of global governance institutions in frustrating and enabling just transitions (Newell et al. Reference Newell, Daley, Mikheeva and Pesa2023).

15.3 Empirical Application: The Political Economy of Energy Transitions in India

This section provides an empirical illustration of the political economy of energy transitions using India as a case study of a country that operates as a globally significant ‘rising power’ shaping energy transitions elsewhere in the world (Power et al. Reference Power2016), while also embroiled in its own national and state level transition politics.

15.4 Ongoing Debates & Further Needs on the Political Economy of Transitions

Firstly, we can see ongoing debates in transition studies about how best to understand the power relations which most scholars now accept are critical to understand and engage with as both an academic enterprise and in order to effect real-world change. Different approaches emphasise discursive power, institutional power as well as more material expressions of power (Isoaho & Karhunmaa, Reference Isoaho and Karhunmaa2019; Kuzemko et al. Reference Kuzemko, Lockwood, Mitchell and Hoggett2016). In reality these are not mutually exclusive and often overlap and combine to both enable and frustrate different transition pathways. Despite recent advances, we still lack a deeper and more holistic understanding of the state and how its different dimensions of power and arenas of function interrelate and the implications of this for transitions. This includes, across different state agencies and levels of sub-national decision-making as the Indian case makes clear. But also how military, welfare, foreign policy and entrepreneurial functions of the state impact the pursuit and nature of sustainability transitions. Related to this is the need for a more nuanced understanding of industry in (Newell 2025) the ‘business’ of transition (Newell Reference Newell2020a). Not just the lobbying and financial and political ties which bind the state and capital in different ways across diverse governance systems, but also the everyday politics of industrial organisation and re-ordering along complex power-laden value chains and through global production networks which shape transition pathways (Baker and Sovacool Reference Baker and Sovacool2017). It is here that opportunities for challenging incumbent power and de-stabilising dominant regimes can become more visible (Leipprand & Flachsland Reference Leipprand and Flachsland2018).

Secondly, questions of justice are central to any political economy account of transition processes. These centre on the politics of who is included and excluded from decision-making over pathways to sustainability and what this means in terms of the winners and losers from transitions and deeper transformations. Scholars and practitioners have started to analyse the inevitable trade-offs and tensions between procedural and distributional dimensions (Ciplet and Harrison Reference Ciplet and Harrison2020) including debates about how to reconcile speed and inclusivity (Roberts et al. Reference Roberts, Geels, Lockwood, Newell, Schmitz, Turnheim and Jordan2018; Newell and Simms Reference Newell and Simms2020; Sovacool Reference Sovacool2016; Kumar et al. Reference Kumar, Höffken and Pols2021). For example, does the ‘need for speed’ mean that slower and more inclusive forms of deliberation are not viable or is deepening democracy a prerequisite to more progressive transformations? (Stirling Reference Stirling2014). Political economy accounts that emphasise the ways in which the state and dominant systems of governance both reflect and are embedded in broader social relations of class, caste, race, gender and coloniality help to broaden and deepen the analytical frame of transitions research (Lennon Reference Lennon2017; Newell Reference Newell2021a). Attention to coloniality in particular underscores the need to attend to restorative justice in transition debates, something indigenous communities know only too well (Gilio-Whitaker Reference Gilio-Whitaker2019). But such accounts need to be grounded in concrete struggles for just transitions which seek to challenge and overcome the multiple hierarchies, gendered and racialised assumptions and biases which structure and delimit the scope for more inclusive and progressive transitions (Bell et al. Reference Bell, Daggett and Labuski2020)

Thirdly, a key challenge is how to conceptually connect global, national and local political economies as our analysis above shows they must. Global dynamics still need to be located in specific political economies to make sense of the peculiarities and situated nature of national and sectoral transitions (Baker et al. Reference Baker, Newell and Phillips2014) and to draw on ‘local’ research traditions and trajectories to make sense of them (Broto et al. Reference Broto, Baptista, Kirshner, Smith and Alves2018). The nature of this global terrain is, of course, shifting amid major realignments in geopolitics with huge implications for the prospects of energy transitions. The pace of transition away from gas, for example, has been sharply affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparking conflicting demands: both to exploit more fossil fuels locally and to chart a path away from fossil fuels to avoid such dependencies in future. Refining accounts of the geopolitics of transitions building on existing strands of work (Shen and Power Reference Shen and Power2017; Power et al. Reference Power2016; Blondeel et al. Reference Blondeel, Bradshaw, Bridge and Kuzemko2021) will clearly be increasingly important in transitions research.

Fourthly, intersections with ecology and more than human transitions means broadening and challenging political economy by bringing in insights from political ecology (Lawhon and Murphy Reference Lawhon and Murphy2012) to understand the ‘ecologies of transition’ (Newell Reference Newell2021a): how demands for water, energy and land combine and solutions to one problem often exacerbate others. In turn, this requires an appreciation of how transitions ‘travel’ as costs and benefits are allocated unevenly between and within societies along temporal and spatial lines. Concrete contemporary examples might be how transitions in transport towards the use of biofuels produce conflicts over land and food security elsewhere in the world (Smith Reference Smith2000) or how the drive to electrification in richer parts of the world intensifies struggles over mining for critical minerals in places like the ‘lithium triangle’ in Latin America (Hernandez and Newell Reference Hernandez and Newell2022). Normatively, this gives rise to strategic questions of how to challenge dominant modes of extractivism and the political economies that give rise to them.

Finally, though we started the chapter by emphasising how political economy accounts of transitions are often grounded in analysis of economic structures, there is growing attention to cultural political economy which draws attention to norms, behaviours and practices in the production of energy and food cultures, for example (Strauss et al. Reference Strauss, Rupp and Love2013), such as work on petro-masculinities (Daggett Reference Daggett2018). Political economy accounts which are more attentive to the power of discourse, ideology, knowledge politics and the everyday cultural reproduction of patterns of production and consumption through social practice (Shove et al. Reference Shove, Pantzar and Watson2012) will be better placed to capture the mutually reinforcing nature of material, institutional, discursive and social and cultural power as they are expressed in sustainability transitions.

As power relations reconfigure and the political systems within which transitions are organised and contested evolve in relation to shifting ‘landscape’ pressures, the diverse set of tools and approaches introduced in this chapter provide a rich set of conceptual and empirical resources to draw on in making sense of contemporary sustainability transitions.