Governance and Sustainability Transformations – An exploratory mixed methods analysis to inform practitioners

Abstract

Due to the multifaceted and complex challenges of the Anthropocene, many scholars and institutions urgently call for sustainability transformations of societal systems to remain within the safe operating space of the planetary boundaries. This paper explores what sustainability transformations and its interlinkages to governance arrangements mean empirically through employing a novel mixed-method approach. This paper first surveys recent scholarly efforts focusing on sustainability transformations and governance, from which it presents an analytical framework. It then analyses a large sample dataset of comparative case studies stemming from a systematic literature review through descriptive, cluster and statistical significance analyses. To supplement these empirical insights and to identify the extent to which they can be usefully translated for practitioners seeking to enact or steer sustainability transformations, the quantitative insights are further explored through a single qualitative case study. In doing so, this paper provides both a theoretical and empirical grounding to the complex concept of sustainability transformation and interlinked governance dimensions, as well as highlighting the barriers and expectations of those working in practice with advancing sustainability transformations.