RETRACTED: Three Responses to Democracy Problems of Energy Transitions (Retracted Article)

The article explores conflicts around energy system transition, explaining them as manifestations of challenges to democracy, namely, progressive politicization of society, increasing political differentiation, and growing epistemic asymmetry between citizens, experts, and elites. We argue that technocratic guardianship, participatory governance, and populist simplification represent three ways of dealing with these challenges. Technocracy and participatory governance attempt to reconfigure energy-policy by fostering the principles of guardianship and civic competence. Populism, in turn, employs a different principle: simplification. It drives a retrograde protest that becomes effective if neither technocracy nor participatory governance provides a generalizable response. Viewed in this way, populism turns out to be a reaction to the deficiencies of the other two perspectives. In order to illustrate this thesis, the article draws on empirical illustration from the German experience of the Energiewende and its inherent conflicts, and the discourse of the right-wing populist party Alternative fur Deutschland.