Contextualizing Reflexive Governance: the Politics of Dutch Transitions to Sustainability

TLDR

Sustainability steering operates in contemporary politics where roles are ambiguous and power dispersed, and reflexive governance—conceptualized as a strategic opening/closing process, state‑led transition facilitation, or network coordination—has been studied, yet its political context and generated politics remain under‑explored. This study empirically investigates reflexive governance and proposes an alternative conceptualization that situates reflexivity within a broader discursive system of multiple arenas, actors, and political communication. The authors analyze a Dutch case study of reflexive governance, applying their conceptual framework to examine how actors’ reflexive practices interact with existing political structures. The analysis reveals that actors struggle to reconcile reflexive demands of openness, self‑critique, and creativity with closed preferences, agenda‑driven politics, and control, highlighting the political work required to legitimize more reflexive governance for sustainability.

Abstract

Abstract How does steering for sustainability work within the world of contemporary politics, where roles are increasingly ambiguous and power dispersed? This paper explores this question empirically by studying the practice of reflexive governance—a mode of steering that encourages actors to scrutinize and reconsider their underlying assumptions, institutional arrangements and practices. The practice of reflexive governance has been conceptualized in various ways: as a strategic process of opening up and closing down, as a state-led activity of facilitating socio-technological transitions, and as a mode of network co-ordination to promote system innovation. What all these accounts underplay is the political context of reflexive processes, and the politics that they generate. This paper offers an alternative conceptualization of reflexive governance that situates sites of reflexivity within a broader discursive system composed of multiple arenas, actors and forms of political communication. Applying this framework to a Dutch case study reveals a host of struggles involved in enacting reflexive governance, particularly as actors try to reconcile the demands of reflexivity (being open, self-critical and creative) with the demands of their existing political world (closed preferences, agenda driven, control). The analysis sheds light on the work—and indeed politics—involved in legitimizing more reflexive modes of governing for sustainability.