Varieties of disagreement in transformative policy missions: A Q study on the decarbonization of Swedish industry

• Varieties of disagreement in transformative policy missions are conceptualized. • Q methodology is used to analyze the decarbonization of Swedish industry. • Four contrasting stakeholder narratives reveal factual and normative disagreement. • Findings show that missions are shaped by both alignment and disjointment. • Policy should support experimentation, dialogue, recognition, and compensation. Governments increasingly launch transformative policy missions to address complex societal challenges such as climate change. While the literature on mission-oriented innovation policy highlights the role of stakeholder contestation and emphasizes the need to promote alignment, it often overlooks the nature of underlying disagreements. This paper distinguishes between factual and normative disagreement across problems, solutions, and interventions, and applies Q methodology to identify and analyze four distinct stakeholder narratives in the mission to decarbonize Swedish industry. The narratives reveal different varieties of disagreement, ranging from factual concerns about technological feasibility and policy effectiveness to normative critiques of directionality and legitimacy. Our findings demonstrate that missions involve not only alignment, but also disjointment – persistent divergences of opinion rooted in fundamentally conflicting values and beliefs. Recognizing disjointment underscores the need for mission-oriented policymaking to balance efforts to foster alignment with strategies that address enduring conflict through mediation, recognition, redistribution, and compensation.