Transition: Revisiting a Troubled Concept in the Age of Climate Change

This article examines the concept of transition as it is employed in climate-change discourse, drawing lessons from earlier usage in the context of post-communist change. Approaching the green transition as both an analytical and a political concept, the article explores the intentions to which it responds, the assumptions that come with it and the extent to which these are well founded. As the article argues, the concept of transition carries an alluring promise of peaceful change that can be guided to completion by elites. Underpinning this, however, is a misleading image of linear movement towards a new state of equilibrium, the political effect of which may be to weaken the cause of climate-change mitigation and the democratic institutions on which it depends.