13.2.1 Key Concepts: Visions, Expectations and Imaginaries

Though sometimes used almost interchangeably, visions, expectations and socio-technical imaginaries highlight different dimensions of how we relate to the future. While collective expectations can be understood as ‘statements about future conditions or developments that imply assumptions about how likely these are supposed to be and that travel in a community or public space’ (Konrad et al., Reference Konrad, Van Lente, Groves and Selin2017), visions refer to more or less coherent packages of potential future states sketching out a future ‘world’ (Berkhout, Reference Berkhout2006; Eames et al., Reference Eames, McDowall, Hodson and Marvin2006), while not necessarily including assessments of likelihood or plausibility. Socio-technical imaginaries in turn are defined as ‘collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology.’ (Jasanoff & Kim, Reference Jasanoff and Kim2015: 4) Socio-technical imaginaries and expectations share the collective nature, while visions and imaginaries the holistic character.

The performative role of expectations as an element in the discursive and real-world construction and shaping of technologies has been studied in some detail. In particular, it has been shown how collective expectations that have become part of a social repertoire and shared discourse mobilise and legitimate support, be it financial or otherwise, and serve as a coordinating element for heterogeneous actors, such as innovation, policy or societal actors. Expectations guide the direction of innovation activities, and in the case of still ill-defined emerging technologies feature in the sense-making process of gradually defining the ‘identity’ of a certain technology or innovation field (van Lente & Rip, Reference Van Lente, Rip, Disco and Van der Meulen1998). Despite its value for governing innovations or transitions, the sociology of expectations also takes a critical stance with regard to expectations that turn out overly optimistic with time, often resulting in hype-disappointment cycles, or close off the consideration of alternatives (Brown, Reference Brown2003).

In contrast to the often highly dynamic development of expectations in socio-technical change, visions and particularly imaginaries are often part of the explanation of durability and of the development of broad ‘directionalities’ of change. Particularly in the context of transition management, visions are ‘seen as devices for specifying a desired end-state in the form of a particular socio-technical regime’ (Berkhout, Reference Berkhout2006: 300) and are associated with a range of governance tools such as scenario development, backcasting or technology roadmaps. At the same time one needs to ‘recognise that the development of a coherent vision for future regime transformation is far from unproblematic, and that there are likely to be multiple visions’ (Smith et al., Reference Smith, Stirling and Berkhout2005: 1500). Accordingly, storylines and frames articulating different visions are often contested and actors trying to enact particular pathways of change engage in ‘framing struggles’ (Kriechbaum et al., Reference Kriechbaum, Terler, Stürmer and Stern2023; Rosenbloom et al., Reference Rosenbloom, Berton and Meadowcroft2016).

13.2.2 Expectations and the Shaping of Strategic Niches

By definition, niche technologies do not easily fit into established socio-technical regimes and their performance, especially with regard to commonly valued criteria, is typically low, while the future development is still uncertain. Niche technologies would generally stand a difficult chance against more established technologies, if they were evaluated on the basis of current performances and current selection environments only. Thus, expectations and promises about future prospects are extremely important, as technologies are also evaluated against their expected future potential. Furthermore, it matters how the future context is envisaged, for instance, the future regulatory environment, and thus, which criteria a technology is supposed to measure up with in the more or less distant future (Schot et al., Reference Schot, Hoogma and Elzen1994).

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) as an early field in transition research has studied the processes how radical technologies that do not fit into established regime structures unfold (Hoogma et al., Reference Hoogma, Kemp, Schot and Truffer2002; Kemp et al., Reference Kemp, Schot and Hoogma1998; Schot & Geels, Reference Schot and Geels2008; Smith & Raven, Reference Smith and Raven2012). As a key feature, niches have been defined as protected spaces that shield such still emerging technologies from regular selection pressures. Expectations and promises on the potential of niche technologies to perform well in the future are one of the forms of creating such protected spaces. Expectations about the future are an important reason why actors are willing to support and invest in niches (Geels, Reference Geels2004: 912).

SNM has identified three interrelated processes on which the development of such niches depends: alongside the formation of actor networks and the articulation of learning processes, the negotiation and alignment of expectations is one of them. Changes in expectations may thus be important for understanding how technology trajectories unfold, either due to learning processes or shifting actor constellations in a niche, or due to niche-external developments, such as newly emerging regime problems. For instance, Geels and Raven (Reference Geels and Raven2006) have related the ups and downs in the developments of Dutch biogas plants to these dynamics. In addition, it has been highlighted that negotiation and alignment (and contestation) are political processes that depend on power relationships between actors that are more or less influential in shaping expectations (Raven et al., Reference Raven, Heiskanen, Lovio, Hodson and Brohmann2008).

In understanding the concrete processes of how expectations influence niche innovations, transition research has drawn on work in the sociology of expectations (Borup et al., Reference Borup, Brown, Konrad and van Lente2006). In particular, the concept of hype-disappointment cycles had an important impact on studying niche and transition dynamics. While some studies focused on the implications of hype and disappointment for strategies of innovation actors (Budde et al., Reference Budde, Alkemade and Weber2012; Konrad et al., Reference Konrad, Markard, Ruef and Truffer2012), others compared the expectation patterns of multiple niche innovations or innovations entering regime structures (Alkemade & Suurs, Reference Alkemade and Suurs2012; Kriechbaum et al., Reference Kriechbaum, Posch and Hauswiesner2021), or studied how expectations on multiple niche technologies (Bakker et al., Reference Bakker, van Lente and Engels2012; Melton et al., Reference Melton, Axsen and Sperling2016; Verbong et al., Reference Verbong, Geels and Raven2008) or networks of expectations spanning niche, regime and landscape levels (Budde et al., Reference Budde, Alkemade and Weber2012; Budde & Konrad, Reference Budde and Konrad2019) compete or support each other. Expectations and discursive frames can go through different phases along technological lifecycles and the unfolding of transitions, from a phase of large frame variation to the emergence of more coherent collective expectations linked to dominant designs, or phases of discontinuity where established frames and expectations are replaced by new ones (Kaplan & Tripsas, Reference Kaplan and Tripsas2008; Kriechbaum et al., Reference Kriechbaum, Terler, Stürmer and Stern2023). Expectations and visions are thus not only important during the emergence of new socio-technical configurations, but also play a crucial role in the stabilisation and destabilisation of incumbent regimes.

With a view on competition between expectations, the role of expectations as a strategic element in the politics of technologies becomes apparent. Expectations are communicated strategically by niche and regime actors to support or undermine particular technologies. A specific interest has been on how policy contributes to the formation and dynamics of expectations and how policy actors deal with the dynamics of expectations, for example by either following successive hype dynamics of different technologies, such as different alternative fuel technologies (Melton et al., Reference Melton, Axsen and Sperling2016), or rather as going against these cycles and introducing a stabilising element in the support for certain technologies, such as hydrogen or smart meters (Budde & Konrad, Reference Budde and Konrad2019; Hielscher & Kivimaa, Reference Hielscher and Kivimaa2019), which may, however, also be seen as a form of lock-in, if the supported technologies lose legitimacy, as in the case of biofuels in the UK (Berti & Levidow, Reference Berti and Levidow2014).

13.2.3 Visions and Imaginaries in Transition Processes

Guiding visions and processes of ‘envisioning’ have been an important element in Transition Management, a governance approach building on insights from transition theory that aims at fostering sustainable transitions in concrete empirical domains, such as energy, agriculture or health (Loorbach, Reference Loorbach2007, Reference Loorbach2022; Loorbach & Rotmans, Reference Loorbach and Rotmans2010). Here the motivating, guiding and coordinating role of shared expectations and visions is actively mobilised as a governance tool. Transition visions are developed by a heterogenous group of social actors assembled in a transition arena, need to be supported broadly and serve as a reference point to develop more specific transition images and pathways that provide guidance on different ways how such a long-term vision of a sustainable energy, agriculture or health sector may be realised. Typically, visions are ‘moralised’ as advocates attempt to attach them to widely shared values, or contrast them with undesired outcomes (Berkhout, Reference Berkhout2006: 309). Wesche et al. (Reference Wesche, Negro, Brugger, Eichhammer and Hekkert2024) show how similarities in visions are crucial for the ‘cooperation among actors from different niches and the emergence of strong coalitions in socio-technical transitions’ (p.2). In this way, the possible contribution of, for instance, different niche innovations can be explored, as part of an envisioning process and in practical transition experiments, while keeping the long-term goal in view.

However, creating coherent visions of the future is far from unproblematic as these visions may be multiple, contested and potentially competing (Geels et al., Reference Geels, Turnheim, Asquith, Kern and Kivimaa2019; Smith et al., Reference Smith, Stirling and Berkhout2005). Depending on the learning experiences in the unfolding transition experiments, the transition pathways may be adjusted over time. As Elzen et al. (Reference Elzen, Geels and Green2004) put it in an early text of transition research, such a ‘learning-by-doing’ related to vision building is an important element of the steering philosophy in transition management: the ‘articulation of future visions, setting up experiments to learn about the feasibility of visions, and the evaluation and adjustments of visions.’ (p.12) Transitions can be understood as a participatory goal-seeking process where both transition goals and visions change over time (Rotmans et al., Reference Rotmans, Kemp and Van Asselt2001: 23). The convergence of visions through the alignment of expectations and activities of different actor groups is thus rather an achievement that emerges during transitions, than something that can be planned from the outset. (Geels & Schot, Reference Geels and Schot2007: 402)

Smith et al. (Reference Smith, Stirling and Berkhout2005: 1506) point out how visions about future system innovations can fulfil a number of important functions in transition processes, even if the end-point of these developments is contested: Visions can map a possibility space and identify a realm of plausible alternatives; they can act as a problem-defining tool; they can provide a stable frame for target-setting and monitoring progress; they can specify relevant actors and bind together communities of practice or interest; and they can be crucial for mobilising capital and other resources. Guiding visions play an important role in the strategies of actors attempting to influence socio-technical change and to discursively stabilise and institutionalise desired future developments.

Visions play an important role at all levels of governance, from local and regional to national and global. As Späth and Rohracher (Reference Späth and Rohracher2010) show with the case of ‘energy regions’ in Austria, discourses about visions can connect different levels of governance and geographical scales and can become part of an emergent agenda for transformational change. However, creating, re-framing or contesting visions is but one element in this much more complex, conflict-ridden and dynamic process, which involves the creation and negotiation of societal and material structures as well. And even if broad visions, such as carbon neutrality, seem to converge, the governance consequences drawn by different groups or governance levels may still deviate from each other (Karhunmaa, Reference Karhunmaa2019).

An increasingly used framework to map and analyse visions that are not only explicitly politically expressed but also implicitly enacted in socio-material practices and institutional structures, is the concept of socio-technical imaginaries. As Jasanoff and Kim (Reference Jasanoff and Kim2015: 322) put it, the concept of imaginaries provides ‘a powerful new angle on world making’ with a ‘focus on where transformative ideas come from, how they acquire mass and solidity, and how imaginations, objects and social norms (…) become fused in practice’. Typically such imaginaries have been analysed in relation to specific realms of science and technology policy at a national level, such as in the work of Jasanoff and Kim (Reference Jasanoff and Kim2009) comparing imaginaries of nuclear power in the US and South Korea. Cross-national comparisons can be helpful to identify and shed light on the particularities of imaginaries which in contrast to policy agendas are less explicit, less issue-specific, less goal-directed, less politically accountable and less instrumental; they reside in the reservoir of norms and discourses, metaphors and cultural meanings out of which actors build their policy preferences.

Mutter and Rohracher (Reference Mutter and Rohracher2022: 89) identify four characteristics which are important for analysing the dynamics of imaginaries in transition processes: the potential boundedness of imaginaries to different spatial scales, not only the national level; the contested nature and varying internal coherence of imaginaries; the entanglement of imaginaries with the materiality of the technologies they refer to; and temporalities in the development of imaginaries. Trencher and van der Heijden (Reference Trencher and van der Heijden2019) show, for example, how national hydrogen imaginaries in Japan can create frictions as well as complementarities with regional visions of renewable energy futures, while Mutter and Rohracher (Reference Mutter and Rohracher2022) analyse the contestations between regionally entrenched biogas imaginaries and powerful globalised future visions of electrification which shape the transition dynamics towards sustainable transport systems. Studying the energy transition requires a better understanding of the ‘processes by which the futures of energy are imagined and produced, by whom, under what goals and circumstances, instrumentalities and mechanisms, and the moments at which they are contradicted and negotiated, and erased from or embedded within public discourse’, Delina and Janetos (Reference Delina and Janetos2018: 1) argue. Contestations and frictions between different imaginaries open spaces for politics and power dynamics which need to be navigated in transition processes. Not least, imaginaries are not just created at will but are deeply embedded in socio-material structures which in turn condition how we can think about the future. Mitchell’s (Reference Mitchell2011) study of ‘Carbon Democracy’ and the way material qualities of oil, including its geographical concentration and socio-technical arrangements required for its extraction and distribution, enable and shape a political apparatus for its governance and in extension our way to perceive democracy, is a foremost example of this. A critical analysis of socio-technical imaginaries helps reveal how material and normative dimensions of future-making are bound together and how, for example, certain ideas of progress also animate visions of sustainable energy and thereby ‘promote and foreground certain economic and social virtues and, reciprocally, background or demote others.’ (Jasanoff & Simmet, Reference Jasanoff and Simmet2021) The other way round, unpacking the stable socio-technical imaginary of coal-futures in Poland (Kuchler & Bridge, Reference Kuchler and Bridge2018) and the way it selectively draws on imaginaries of coal-fuelled national modernisation, can help understand the resistance to a sustainable energy transition even in the face of contradictory evidence.

13.2.4 Scenario-Building, Roadmapping and Other Anticipatory Practices Exploring and Shaping Transition Dynamics

The active and systematic work with visions and expectations as an element of transition governance has given rise to a broad range of ‘futuring methods’ such as scenario development, technology foresight and roadmapping, or modelling. Such methods also support an explorative and reflexive deliberation with stakeholders and societal actors as, for instance, suggested in Constructive Technology Assessment (Schot, Reference Schot1992). A conceptual understanding of typical dynamics in transition processes helps to explore possible future transition pathways in a systematic manner. Typical patterns of multi-level dynamics, such as niche–regime interactions, impact of landscape developments or different types of transition pathways (Fraedrich et al., Reference Fraedrich, Beiker and Lenz2015; Geels & Schot, Reference Geels and Schot2007) can be used to explore how a certain socio-technical system or particular niches may develop in different directions, depending on different conditions or strategies chosen.

Socio-technical scenarios are usually of a qualitative nature developing a narrative how a transition process may unfold. As Selin (Reference Selin2006: 1) puts it, ‘scenarios are not intended to be truthful, but rather provocative and helpful in strategy formulation and decision-making.’ The scope of the scenarios may typically be a sector or domain (Elzen et al., Reference Elzen, Geels and Green2004; Hofman & Elzen, Reference Hofman and Elzen2010), niche, or multiple regimes (Konrad et al., Reference Konrad, Truffer and Voß2008). The collaborative development of scenarios can be a useful strategy to manage conflicting agendas and engage key stakeholders, for example, at local level, in dialogues on transition pathways (Magnusson et al., Reference Magnusson, Anderberg, Dahlgren and Svensson2020).

Scenario techniques have also been combined with other future methods, for example modelling (Geels, Reference Geels2020; McDowall, Reference McDowall2014) or Delphi methods (Szabó, Reference Szabó2020). Concepts for modelling transition pathways have significantly evolved during the past years. As Holtz et al. (Reference Holtz, Alkemade, de Haan, Köhler, Trutnevyte, Luthe, Halbe, Papachristos, Chappin, Kwakkel and Ruutu2015: 55) point out, models can serve multiple purposes, from providing explicit, clear and systematic system representations to inferences about underlying factors of system dynamics or the facilitation of system experiments. Particularly when dealing with sustainability transitions, it is important that sectoral models, for example, of the energy system, are combined with qualitative scenarios of long-term policy and societal context development. Such an approach has been operationalised with the method of ‘cross-impact analysis’ for socio-technical energy scenarios (Weimer-Jehle et al., Reference Weimer-Jehle, Vögele, Hauser, Kosow, Poganietz and Prehofer2020) or as Formative Scenario Analysis which builds on storylines of broader societal developments (Burger et al., Reference Burger, Emmenegger and Sohre2022). Also, Rogge et al. (Reference Rogge, Pfluger and Geels2020) combine model-based analysis with insights from socio-technical transition analysis to develop socio-technical storylines that show how low-carbon transitions can be implemented and how specific transformative policy mixes can be applied to achieve these goals.

A scenario method which has frequently been applied in the context of sustainability transitions is the method of ‘backcasting’. Here, the participative creation of a desirable (sustainable) future vision or normative scenario is followed by a reconstruction of steps and pathways leading towards that future (Quist & Vergragt, Reference Quist and Vergragt2006). During the past years this method has been further refined and applied to different contexts, such as strategic planning and urban heat transitions (Pereverza et al., Reference Pereverza, Pasichnyi and Kordas2019).

Rooted in traditions of innovation policy, various methods of foresight exercises have been developed to articulate possible futures (van Lente, Reference van Lente2012). A diversity of foresight methods can be applied at different levels, as exemplified in Weber and Schaper-Rinkel’s (Reference Weber and Schaper-Rinkel2017) study on European sectoral foresight exercises. Other techniques such as technology roadmapping have been developed in the context of strategic decision-making in large companies, but have also been applied in the form of policy roadmaps to evoke future visions and plan long-term policies fostering sustainability transitions (Miedzinski et al., Reference Miedzinski, McDowall, Fahnestock, Rataj and Papachristos2022). As a combination of envisioning processes, experimentation and design thinking involving a diversity of actors, methods such as urban living labs (Bulkeley et al., Reference Bulkeley, Marvin, Palgan, McCormick, Breitfuss-Loidl, Mai, von Wirth and Frantzeskaki2019) or policy labs (Trei et al., Reference Trei, Hornung, Rychlik and Bandelow2021) have increasingly gained traction in sustainability transition contexts. Hajer and Pelzer (Reference Hajer and Pelzer2018) and Oomen et al. (Reference Oomen, Hoffman and Hajer2022) have suggested the concept of ‘Techniques of Futuring’ to highlight the practice-based, material and dramaturgical features of specific futuring practices and the conditions that enable them to become performative.

Increasingly, the role of institutionally embedded anticipatory practices, for example, supported by international organisations such as the IPCC, for authoritatively delineating visions has been highlighted, specifying their core features and thereby exercising ‘world-making’ power by defining political problems and devising solutions (Beck & Mahony, Reference Beck and Mahony2018; Berten & Kranke, Reference Berten and Kranke2022). For instance, different forms of climate modelling that generate the climate scenarios and pathways discussed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been forceful in prestructuring the imaginative and political space for climate governance. Beck and Mahoney (Reference Beck and Mahony2018) have argued that changes in the modelling practices have created new performative effects. While climate scenarios initially projected the development of emissions based on societal trends, they now model pathways that explore the technical feasibility of ambitious emission targets. As a result, the initially merely explorative pathways turned into widely considered policy options, and with this also the speculative technologies the modelled pathways involve, such as negative emissions technologies. Such a ‘politics of anticipation’ (Beck & Mahony, Reference Beck and Mahony2018) is however not limited to public actors, but often pursued by multinational companies, for example, by providing global energy scenarios (Blondeel et al., Reference Blondeel, Price, Bradshaw, Pye, Dodds, Kuzemko and Bridge2024). The more general point here is that such institutionally embedded anticipatory practices, be they modelling-based approaches, structured qualitative scenario processes or negotiated strategic agenda documents and roadmaps have a special role in catalysing, solidifying and justifying expectations and visions that circulate in wider societal discourses (see Textbox 13.1).