Governance of sustainable transitions: about the 4(0) ways to change the world

Transitions are radical system innovations that usually take 1–2 generations. Using Cultural Theory as a heuristic, this paper presents four archetypical approaches to transition management. The fatalist approach refrains from transition management (motto: ‘First, disaster must happen’). The system is in a stalemate that no experiment or hierarchy can break; external events must bring the window of opportunity for change. The hierarchic approach relies on a dominant actor coalition to steer change (motto: ‘Let's put a man on the moon!’). The individualist approach relies mainly on changing the financial ground rules (motto: ‘Sustainability through the market’). Finally, the egalitarian approach relies on process management, doing experiments, etc. (motto: ‘A good transition arena will solve it all’). This approach makes sense if the situation is not clear enough to be managed via one of the other approaches, and there is a clearly identifiable learning objective.