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Dedication -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Contributors -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Introduction. Germany's Energy Transition in Context -- Introduction -- Political and Institutional Setting -- Theories of Institutional Continuity and Change -- Chapter Overviews -- Notes -- 1: The Grassroots Origins of the German Energy Transition -- Introduction -- Linking Protest and Innovation in NIMBY Theory -- A Note on Research Design -- "We Said No": The Successful Site Occupation at Wyhl -- From Anti-Nuclear Capital to Solar Region

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.

The energy revolution poses a fundamental challenge to the German corporatist institutional model. The push for renewables in Germany arose almost entirely outside the prevailing channels of institutional power. Eventually, federal legislation helped support the boom in local energy production that was already underway, and it encouraged the further development of new forms of community investment and citizen participation in energy supply. Recently, the federal government has tried to put the genie back in the bottle by shifting support to large energy producers. But, as this article shows, the energy transition has provided a base for local power that cannot easily be assailed. The debate over German energy policy is becoming a contest between centralized and decentralized models of political and economic power. Prevailing institutionalist theories have difficulty accounting for these developments. I analyze the local development of renewable energy by means of a case study of the Freiburg area in southwestern Germany, which has evolved from a planned nuclear power and fossil fuel center to Germany's "solar region". Incorporating insights from ecological modernization theory, I show how the locally based push for renewables has grown into a challenge to the direction of German democracy itself.

AbstractThis article links contemporary critiques of regional governance to the 'crisis of the state' in the 1970s and 1980s. Using the example of the politics of sprawl, I explain why collaborative regional planning institutions in New Jersey and the East of England have received such low marks from government participants and local populations, despite their success in completing land‐use plans. I argue that these new governance institutions inadvertently revive issues of power, accountability and democratic legitimacy stemming from the crisis of the state. British and American governments interpreted it as a crisis of ungovernability, and their subsequent reforms were aimed at freeing state and market from societal demands. Berger, Castells and Harvey argue that, for many citizens, the crisis had more to do with the impermeability of the state to non‐economic quality of life concerns. Regional planning institutions rekindle this critique by offloading policy accountability to the regional level — from above in the UK case, from below in the USA case — while leaving the underlying power of state or market intact. Moreover, the 'post‐political' nature of the collaborative institutions prevents competing values from being debated and resolved. The result is a reemergence of legitimation issues around land use.RésuméLes critiques contemporaines sur la gouvernance régionale peuvent être reliées à la 'crise de l'État' des années 1970–1980. L'exemple de la politique d'étalement urbain permet ici d'expliquer pourquoi, bien qu'ayant réalisé leurs plans d'occupation des sols, les institutions collaboratives d'aménagement régional, dans le New Jersey comme dans l'Est de l'Angleterre, ont été si peu appréciées des acteurs gouvernementaux et des populations locales. Sans le vouloir, ces nouveaux organes de gouvernance ravivent des questions de pouvoir, de responsabilité et de légitimité démocratique qui découlent de la crise de l'État. Les gouvernements britannique et américain y ont vu une crise d'ingouvernabilité, produisant alors des réformes pour libérer l'État et le marché des revendications sociétales. Berger, Castells et Harvey avancent que, pour nombre de citoyens, la crise tenait davantage à un État hermétique aux préoccupations non économiques relevant de la qualité de la vie. Les nouvelles institutions attisent cette critique en déchargeant sur le niveau régional la responsabilité des politiques publiques (attribuée jusque‐là au niveau supérieur au Royaume‐Uni, et au niveau inférieur aux États‐Unis), sans pour autant atténuer le pouvoir sous‐jacent de l'État ou du marché. De plus, la nature 'post‐politique' des institutions collaboratives empêche les valeurs en concurrence d'être discutées et résolues. C'est ainsi que réapparaissent des questions de légitimité autour de l'utilisation des terrains.

In Germany, the mobilization of grass-roots citizen groups in the past two decades has posed a fundamental challenge to institutional politics. One important aspect of this challenge, which is often overlooked, is the relationship of democratizing movements to technology. Grass-roots protest arose mainly in reaction to large, state-sponsored technological projects. Citizen movements reopened the question of the citizen's proper role in technological decision making, which had long been part of theoretical discourse. Grassroots activists challenged not only policy decisions but also the legitimacy of the bureaucratic institutions that produced those decisions. Informed political participation has raised the technical competence of policy in Germany while eroding the legitimacy of traditional policymaking institutions. Citizen groups have since directed their efforts toward developing alternative political forms that will reconcile technical competence and participatory democracy. The theories of Claus Offe and Jürgen Habermas illuminate the legitimation problems that lead to citizen protest. A comparative analysis of grass-roots movements in several issue areas explores the various forms of citizen activism and their impact on German politics.

Grass-roots citizen groups have posed a fundamental challenge to institutional politics in West Germany over the past twenty years, an important aspect of which has been their adverse reaction to state-sponsored technological projects. Citizen protestors have challenged not just government policy decisions, but the legitimacy of the bureaucracies producing them, & have sought alternative political forms that would reconcile participatory democracy & technological development. Case studies of specific protest movements are subjected to a comparative analysis exploring their different forms & their impact on German politics. Adapted from the source document.