Normative contestation in transitions 'in the making': Animal welfare concerns and system innovation in pig husbandry

Boelie Elzen, Frank W. Geels, Cees Leeuwis and Barbara van Mierlo

Research Policy, 2011, vol. 40, issue 2, 263-275

Abstract: Previous studies of system innovations mainly focused on historical cases that were driven by commercial motivations of pioneers and entrepreneurs. This article investigates a system innovation in the making that is driven by normative concerns, such as sustainability or animal welfare, initially formulated by outsiders like special-interest groups. Our central research question is: How, when and why is normative contestation of existing regimes effective in influencing the orientation of transitions in the making? The conceptual framework enriches innovation studies and the multi-level perspective with insights from social movement theory (SMT) and political science. SMT is used to analyze the build up of normative pressure (through framing, resource mobilization, and political opportunity structures). From political science we use the notion of multiple streams, in our analysis a problem, regulatory, market and technology stream. The research design consists of a comparative case study of pig husbandry systems. One case analyses the sub-sector of pregnant sows where normative pressures, after several decades, led to the changes advocated by the contestants. The second case concerns the sub-sector of pig fattening where normative pressure was less successful. The difference is partly explained by the normative pressure for pregnant sows being larger than for fattening pigs. The other part of the explanation is that in the first case normative pressure aligned better with the three other streams (regulatory, market and technology) to lead to the changes desired by the contestants.

Keywords: System; innovation; Sustainability; Animal; welfare; Agriculture; Normative; directionality; Multiple; stream; approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048-7333(10)00211-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:40:y:2011:i:2:p:263-275

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().