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The article explores conflicts around energy system transition, explaining them as manifestations of challenges to democracy, namely, progressive politicization of society, increasing political differentiation, and growing epistemic asymmetry between citizens, experts, and elites. We argue that technocratic guardianship, participatory governance, and populist simplification represent three ways of dealing with these challenges. Technocracy and participatory governance attempt to reconfigure energy-policy by fostering the principles of guardianship and civic competence. Populism, in turn, employs a different principle: simplification. It drives a retrograde protest that becomes effective if neither technocracy nor participatory governance provides a generalizable response. Viewed in this way, populism turns out to be a reaction to the deficiencies of the other two perspectives. In order to illustrate this thesis, the article draws on empirical illustration from the German experience of the Energiewende and its inherent conflicts, and the discourse of the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland.

This article addresses the future of coal in the European coal heartland, i.e. in the area of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, which together account for nearly 57% of coal consumption and 87% of coal-mining jobs in the EU. It approaches the problem within the interpretative tradition of social research and explores the coverage of the future of coal in major newspapers and political magazines in the three countries. The results show that despite similar material conditions, the issue is presented in a fundamentally different manner as the media tend follow the dominant energy policy paradigm in their countries: in Germany, they facilitate the phase-out policies; in Poland, they act as an inhibiting factor; while in the Czech Republic, their coverage echoes the political uncertainty around lignite mining in the northwest part of the country. The results also suggest that the media act mainly as a platform for the countries' decision makers and energy policy stakeholders to voice their perspectives. The prevalent media coverage thus simultaneously enable and constrain policy options by promoting dominant discourses and preventing alternative views from surfacing.