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Politics & Governance for Practice in a Post-Carbon World
- 1. Politics and governance for practice in a post-carbon world Dr Catherine Butler and Dr Karen Parkhill @drcbutler
- 2. The argument 1. Practice theory and research within this traditional orients us to think differently about the role government and policy in shaping energy demand 2. Show empirically how policy operates across other department or areas of government seemingly unrelated to energy to shape patterns and trends in demand 3. Argue for a distinctive approach to or role for governance that can deliver on the requirements for a post carbon world 4. Analysis of interview data to highlight challenges in achieving such forms of governance
- 3. Practice Theory • Efficiency and behavioural approaches are limited in achieving high levels of demand reduction, in part, because they fail to engage with fundamental questions about how our requirements for energy are constituted (Shove, 2004; 2010) • Need for policy to move beyond improving the efficiency of technologies that support or engender particular practices or trying to ‘nudge’ behaviour and instead examine the specification of need and the collective transformation of convention (Shove, 2004) • ‘What energy is used for, or how energy needs are made, is in part a reflection of how governments shape objectives, investments and ways of providing and working across many different policy domains’ (Shove et al. 2012)
- 4. Empirical case analysis • Working practices – DWP policies on work (benefits and worklessness; economic recovery and unemployment) • Digitalization – DWP policies on moving to digital systems allied with closure of government buildings (reduction in estate) • Buildings, housing and household demographics – DWP role in codifying particular ideas about living arrangements and energy use; largest government estate
- 5. Post-Carbon Governance • Requirements for post-carbonism addressed as part of all government policy • Energy intensity and use addressed as an inter-governance issue • Reflexive engagement with the ways that different departments constitute need and could reshape configurations
- 6. Challenges – boundary work “No, it’s bad enough trying to get DWP to work with directly related policy areas… I’ve done a lot of work on childcare fairly recently and the Department of Education thinks that childcare is about giving the best educational support to the child and doing what’s best for the child in education terms, DWP thinks childcare is about letting parents go out to work and those two areas totally conflict” (Interviewee – policy/agency) “The Civil Service is still constructed in such a way as it defends its own bit of its own empire and is very unhappy about pooling resources….” (Interviewee charity – policy) “…all the different evaluation projects that were happening to look at specific issues. This tends to happen in isolation effectively with research, because people get so focussed on the one specific thing that they’re looking at, but there was no overarching of bringing them all together”. (Interviewee – policy)
- 7. Challenges – legacy policy and politics “From that point of view things like the Winter Fuel Payment and the Cold Weather Payment are hugely welcome and greatly appreciated. Older people will fight fairly furiously to keep them despite the fact that every winter somebody somewhere is running a campaign saying we really can't let all the fat rich cats over the age of 80 have a Winter Fuel Payment”. (Interviewee charity – policy)
- 8. Intention, power, and policy change How did we get change? To some extent because they brought in a review just about the time I was going in, it had started, where they were tightening up the descriptors and one of the things they did was talk to the agencies and they did interact with us and we did win a few descriptor changes, so there were a few things they changed but that doesn't mean remotely that we were happy with the result! It just means we got a few changes. (Interviewee Policy/Agency) Work is – and always will be – the best route out of poverty and with welfare reform, Universal Credit, tax cuts and the introduction of the National Living Wage, we are making sure that it always pays to work (David Cameron, 2016)
Editor's Notes
- Intro – I’m going to talk about my current work that I’m doing with colleagues KP and KB to look at the way that policy steers how we live in ways that have implications for energy demand – so I’m going to talk about the issues raised in my abstract about the methodological issues involved in researching steering – or more accurately questions about how we can analyse the relations between policy - or state and governance activities more widely – and social life So I’m not going to address the questions in the position paper directly but I will broadly speak to the questions that were posed about how we can conceptualise and research change and steering – and how we can So I’ll start by introducing the research very briefly, then I’m going to talk through some theory and concepts that I have found useful for thinking about steering, and then I’m going to build from that to introduce an analytic approach and offer one case example from our analysis of welfare policy that applies this approach. Then to finish I’m going to open up some further questions about steering that are coming out of some of the initial analysis of interviews that we’ve been undertaking over the past few months. This contribution explores some of the methodological challenges involved in analysing the relationship between policy and practice, and how policies can steer energy demand. The paper will include a discussion of different ways of thinking about welfare policy impact and outline an approach to examining the ways that policy shapes practice, with implications for energy demand.
- A large body of research argues that such approaches are limited in terms of achieving the high levels of demand reduction required because they fail to engage with more fundamental questions concerning how our particular requirements for energy are constructed and reproduced (e.g. see Shove, 2004). Rather than focusing on improving the efficiency of technologies that support and engender particular kinds of practices, we are directed to examine the specification of need and the processes by which various forms of demand come to be considered normal. Equally, to understand why people do or do not buy more efficient technologies or drive more frequently, the challenge becomes one of ‘understanding the collective transformation of convention and hence the dynamics of energy demand’ (Shove, 2004: 1055). This approach to thinking about energy demand gives us cause to examine the ways that everyday practice is shaped and comes to be seen as normal.
- Existing trends related to energy demand and work (commuting, high job densities, relationship between domestic-work energy use) Time travel surveys show increasing levels of travel related to work (Carlson-Kanyama and Linden, 1999). Other studies have shown how high job densities (the spatial concentration of work in particular places cities, city centres and business parks) contribute toward increasing the distances that are travelled for work (Boussauw et al. 2010). This allies with road development and other processes that favour car travel to mean that high levels of commuting are energy intensive. Work place energy use – impacts of being out at work versus domestic energy use in the home – so we have debates about the relative energy merits of different configurations of work say toward home working (Spurling and Mcmeekin, 2015) Digitalisation – trends toward increasing level of energy use for digital and information tech – possibility of balancing potential for decreases in other energy uses (e.g. travel, buildings) but is this being genuinely addressed or analysed – Dwp – fully digitalise the benefits and pensions systems – no more paper forms being entered by teams of people but filling in online instead – closure of job centres Housing, buildings and household demographics – cold weather payment and winter fuel payment – topping up the economic cost of energy rather than addressing the need for using that energy
- Hhow boudnaries are constructed and why? Financing but also problem framing and evaluation practices – different departmental cultures
- But just because there are aspects of policy like this – we do see quite major changes in policy - how you actually get change? And if in post carbon contexts we’re trying to shift things in particular directions or for specific ends then what scope for this kind of intentional goal directed form of policy is there-