The Political Economy of Transitions

In the study of socio-technical transitions there has been increasing attention to questions of politics and governance. We suggest here, however, that 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. Diverse 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. We use the case of India's energy transition to empirically illustrate dynamics of power between and across federal jurisdictions, distributional conflicts over material resources and state revenues, and conflicts between producer coalitions which impact the speed and inclusivity of sustainability transitions. Finally, the chapter discusses future research directions, emphasizing the need to account for different forms of state power, justice implications, the intersection of global and local political economies, the integration of ecological perspectives, and approaches to the everyday expressions of power in knowledge, cultures and ideologies.