Crises call for different transition policies

Having put off taking difficult decisions for years, we as a society and economy are now paying the price for it. Agriculture, water, housing, and energy systems are now bursting at the seams. We are in a state of crisis, one that needs to be addressed immediately. This is creating violent upheavals in policy with little time for citizens and businesses to prepare, compensation for those on the receiving end, plus an overstretched civil service.

Mode 1: the ideal transition path

“Addressing transitions as a crisis is a cruel way of conducting policy,” Prof. Marko Hekkert, director of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, noted very succinctly in the Transformative Government magazine. We should have done things differently, and there are good recommendations for that:

1. Policy must focus on the long-term.
2. Officials must assume the role of guardians of the transition and analyse where the transition is failing.
3. Transitions bring a lot of uncertainty, and we need to be comfortable with that.
4. Operational transition management needs to be implemented at institutions, and collaboration has to take a more integral form.
5. The underlying values in old systems are being carried over into existing processes and procedures, so these should be held up to the light.

We really should have done that 20 years ago. Let’s call that Mode 1: the ideal transition path, where we still have plenty of time.

‘That’s great’, I hear people thinking... ‘but then what? We are in this crisis right now, because the social dynamics today are so huge and everything is politically sensitive’. And they’re right, this does call for something different: an adapted repertoire. I think the principles of Mode 1 still serve as guidelines, but we need to develop a Mode 2 for officials working in a transition crisis. There have to be other answers. Crisis management must be tied to the long term.

Mode 2: in-depth transition knowledge for times of change

The transition crises call for deeper knowledge of the transition; this is where Mode 2 comes in. It is crucial to bear the following mind:

• Keep calm to make the right choices when you are under pressure.
• Remain open and willing to adapt in the process, so you can continue to deal with uncertainty.
• Stay in touch and be responsive towards society while making the systemic change needed.
• Maintain consistent transition policies in an erratic political climate.
• Always keep fairness in mind when faced with so much pressure.

The value of an ideal timeframe

Transition knowledge is indispensable, but it has to be coupled with insights from management science, organisational science, change management, ethics, psychology, political science, and economics to answer the questions.

Thinking about an ideal timeframe does have value, but that alone does not always provide all the answers to the ‘how’ when you’re in a crisis. Separate scientific knowledge is too difficult to apply in the here-and-now of civil service and politics.

To move away from a crisis approach, which focuses on short-term interests, insights from crisis management and long-term perspectives need to be combined and conveniently made available.

While this may feel like paradox, I see this precisely as our work at TNO Vector. Building a bridge to make scientific recommendations that are seemingly difficult to reconcile applicable to policy practitioners. Good transition policy requires a vision of the ideal transition path, fundamental insights from a variety of other scientific disciplines, experiences of policymakers and society, and the bridge between them.