The political economics of civic energy: A framework for comparative research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Deep civic engagement in energy transitions has been limited and unique to specific political economic contexts. This study develops a generic policy mix enabling civic energy, drawing on a systematic overview of barriers and policies for civic energy by country and region from 1980 to 2023. We show that when policy mixes support widespread diffusion of civic energy, they are likely to be “thick”; meaning that they align a wide range of corporate legal, market access, energy subsidy, localised planning and facilitation, access to finance, and capacity building policies - extending well beyond the domain of energy policy. Literature suggests that “thick” policy mixes emerge in contexts where there are narratives and conscious strategies for participation, political opportunities and resources mobilised towards enabling participation, with high degrees of fiscal and legislative decentralisation and policy coordination. In contrast, contexts characterised by low levels of civic energy are posited as having “thin” policy mixes, with limited opportunity for inclusive visioning or experimentation in multi-stakeholder platforms, limited decentralisation and policy coordination, resulting in marginalisation of civic arenas, conflicting framings and lack of high-level strategies for civic participation. We identify countries characterised by thick and thin policy mixes based on literature and identify research needed to confirm the existence of exclusive and inclusive governance and policy settings in relation to key indicators for both inclusivity and speed of transitions, allowing for better articulation of the value of inclusive innovation as a practical and beneficial approach to meeting emission reduction goals. • Shape and extent of diffusion of civic energy influences energy transition dynamics. • Distinct political economic contexts shape opportunities for civic energy. • This study develops a framework for evaluating and comparing civic energy policy. • Thick policy mixes extend well beyond energy policy. • Thin and thick policy mixes are associated with specific country contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.026 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.016 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".