A Collaborative Transformation beyond Coal and Cars? Co-Creation and Corporatism in the German Energy and Mobility Transitions

Jeremias Herberg, Tobias Haas, Daniel Oppold and Dirk von Schneidemesser
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Jeremias Herberg: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Straße 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany
Tobias Haas: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Straße 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany
Daniel Oppold: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Straße 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany
Dirk von Schneidemesser: Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Berliner Straße 130, D-14467 Potsdam, Germany

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-20

Abstract: In this article, we critically discuss the role of collaboration in Germany’s path towards a post-carbon economy. We consider civic movements and novel forms of collaboration as a potentially transformative challenger to the predominant approach of corporatist collaboration in the mobility and energy sectors. However, while trade unions and employer organizations provide a permanent and active arena for policy-oriented collaboration, civil society groups cannot rely on an equivalently institutionalized corridor to secure policy impact and public resonance. In that sense, conventional forms of collaboration tend to hinder the transformation towards a post-carbon economy. Collaboration in the German corporatist setting is thus, from a sustainability perspective, simultaneously a problem and a solution. We argue for more institutionalized corridors between civil society and state institutions. Co-creation, as we would like to call this methodical approach to collaborating, can be anchored within the environmental and industrial policy arenas.

Keywords: just transition; legitimacy; climate protest; industrial lobby; incremental change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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