Rethinking the Role of Landscape in the Multi-Level Perspective: The Case of Electric Vehicle Battery Production in Europe and China

Abstract

The innovation literature has in its ‘normative turn’ shifted focus away from innovation based industrial restructuring and increased competitiveness towards efforts to tackle dramatic climate change through a sustainable transition of industry and society. Based on studies of the growing international production of electrical vehicle batteries, we argue that in some instances a political route to sustainable transition represents a better analytical framework for studying and understanding transitions than the dominant technological route found in the multi-level perspective (MLP). In the political route developments at the landscape level, i.e political decisions at national or international level, more actively trigger market demand and technological development than the rather passive role assigned to the landscape in conventional MLP. There is a strong case for complementing an ideal type technology route with an ideal type political route in MLP when conducting analyses of sustainable transition.

Keywords: Sustainable transition, sociotechnical system, multi-level perspective, landscape, electric vehicle batteries