ABSTRACT
This chapter explains regime change; scholars of the system innovations approach to socio-technical transitions highlight the importance of experimentation and learning in niches. The approach of strategic niche management in particular stresses the need to create alternative configurations in niches. Empirical and historical studies have shown, however, that the existence of technological alternatives, even those clearly superior to dominant configurations, is not a sufficient precondition for regime change. At the meso-level of the socio-technical regime, socio-technical configurations are temporarily stabilized and supported by a rule set or grammar that structures the socio-technical co-evolution process. Contemporary transition literature characteristically refers to the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), which distinguishes socio-technical niches, regimes and landscape as three "levels of structuration". In 2003, the head of the regional Energy Agency of Upper Styria, together with a professional facilitator of participatory processes, launched an initiative to develop and implement the Energy Vision Murau.
