ICS Working Paper Nº1/2018

ICS W O R K I N G P A P E R S 2018 21 power in transition processes and to which extent this power is shifted from the situated regime to these niche actors. In short, understanding this ‘power struggle’ is crucial for knowing if and how CBIs can fulfil their potential as game changers in wider transition initiatives towards sustainability. This section seeks to shed some light on the agency of the previously identified types of CBIs (section 3) in societal transition towards sustainability in Portugal. Outward-looking CBIs (Section 3.2) believe their agency to have a role to play in the wider socio-ecological transition. However, the crucial scaling-up of their transformative practices is acknowledged as a highly complex issue. If the scale of this initiatives is too small, it will never constitute a truly visible and validated alternative to the growth-driven neoliberal capitalist system, unable to decolonize the predominant societal mindset and ultimately trigger a system change. Scaling-up is primarily not about growing in a literal sense, but about setting transition pathways. In other words, we are not referring to upscale in a quantitative sense (i.e. growing in numbers of members or initiatives), but as a process of gaining societal relevance and political power by CBIs turning into a visible political actor and their practices a viable alternative vis-à-vis the incumbent regime. As Baumgarten (2017) noticed, CBIs’ practices and their sustainable transition discourses are still invisible in the Portuguese media, public or political arenas (i.e. outside their communities of practice). In fact, a large amount of CBIs monitored by CATALISE focus on the horizontal transferability of knowledge (i.e. replication and collaboration) instead of engaging in upscaling and organising their efforts in order to build up momentum for a bigger change (Rocha et al., 2016: 22). Therefore, CBIs’ development challenges include: replicating, delivering, and embedding (Hof et al., n.d.). In this sense, CBIs must learn how to better pool resources and capacities and articulate new and old ways of doing. On a different note, CATALISE’s policy recommendations claim that CBI’s upscaling and transferability depend largely on the exterior context (e.g. cultural norms and practices) and on existing system and its structures (e.g. public policies, legislations, funding possibilities) (Rocha et al., 2016). However, acknowledgment alone makes little impact. Portuguese CBIs upscaling efforts need dedicated champions, knowledge and policy brokers, that focus specifically on enabling their interaction with the private and public economic, political and institutional spheres (i.e. polity and markets). The culture and value change (see section 1.2) underpinning socio-ecological transitions will not happen on its own. CBIs are perceived as being able to influence the former. However, in Portugal they are yet to fully embrace their agency forwarding the replication and scale-up of their practices, ideas, and values. This means that they have to actively seek to gain the political power needed in order to place transition among the public and political debates. However, this is hardly a consensual goal among Portuguese CBIs. Some fear “being co-opted, or being taken over by the corporate sector or higher-level governance, and are skeptical about the capacity of top-down policies to spark a real transition to a sustainable society on their own” (Hof et al., n.d.: 8).