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This paper seeks to critically assess how 'radical' sustainability approaches that challenge 'mainstream' development trajectories – and politics – are crafted and contested within local government. We assess how sustainability transitions scholars have thus far accounted for dimensions of power and politics within socio-political innovations and explore the extent to which these account for how an 'independent' group in Frome (Somerset, UK), Independents for Frome (IfF), took control of the town council in 2011 and consolidated a non-party political approach within its administrative functions, referred to as its 'Flatpack Democracy' model. The findings reveal the extent of adversarialism within political systems, namely how the capture of local political institutions by 'protagonists' affects questions of legitimacy, accountability, or the validation of sustainability agendas through informal institutional capital, such as the role of personal ties and friendships. These debates remain under-theorised where they concern what we term 'liminal transition spaces' of transformative power at distinct moments, or instantiations, of transition. That is, there remains a much-needed theoretical debate around the fragile and imperfect processes of democratisation within the everyday politics of transition management.

Pre-election alliances have long figured prominently in Indian elections. Has the politics surrounding pre-election alliances changed with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? This article analyzes patterns of election alliance formation across India's states and examines the extent to which these alliances affected the outcome of the 2019 election. It finds that patterns of alliance formation in the run-up to the 2019 election did not, on the whole, differ noticeably from prior elections. Though the BJP's strong performance muted the impact of some key alliances, election alliances nevertheless had a perceptible impact on the final allocation of seats and appear to have influenced voting behaviour largely as anticipated.

The author characterizes memory politics and identity politics as analytical categories formed in a highly competitive field of meanings and interpretations. The methodological approach is social constructivism, which represents the mainstream in the study of memory and identity politics. However, the author considers it necessary to take into account the socio-cultural framework of actions performed by various actors that shape memory and identity. In addition, sharing the methodologically innovative approach advanced by I.S. Semenenko to the definition and analysis of identity politics, the author applies it to the object of her research. The article proposes using the concept of securitization to study not only the politics of memory, but also the identity politics pursued by the European Union. The shaping of a European identity on the basis of memory politics involves many problems, both supranational and national. This article deals primarily with supranational policy, but national discourses of memory and identity politics are also taken into account. In this context, the concepts per se, which have categorical conjugacy, turn out to be associated with courses characterized by considerable discord. The seemingly unshakable foundations of memory politics, established after World War II, are being challenged by the new member states of the European Union, shaping different practices of remembrance and forgetting. As a result, implying the possibility of different interpretations and harmonization of discourses, dialogical memory as the foundation of European identity is giving way to the securitization of memory politics and identity politics, which means their instrumental use to legitimize specific policies.

Environmental movements became a major vehicle for promoting citizen participation in both East and West Germany during the 1980s. Their critiques of industrial society, however, reflected the different constellations of power in their respective countries. Movements in both East and West formed green parties, but their disparate understandings of power, expertise, and democracy complicated the parties' efforts to coalesce during the unification process and to play a major role in German politics after unification. I propose that the persistence of this East-West divide helps explain the continuing discrepancy in the appeal of Alliance 90/The Greens in the old and new German federal states. Nevertheless, I also suggest that the Greens have accomplished their goal of opening technical issue areas—particularly energy—to political debate. This is currently working to enhance their image throughout Germany as champions of technological innovation and democratic openness in the face of climate inaction and right-wing populism.