LIST OF PANELS

With the global Covid recession following quickly on the heels of the global financial crisis the discussion of a new and far reaching transformation of economic and social relations has gained additional momentum. A clearer understanding of multiple and interrelated crisis starts to inform social science debates, requiring poltiical response adequate to deal with the crises. For example, while social, economic and ecological goals clearly are considered equal in new approaches such as the Green New Deal, real life policy conflicts are frequently worked out in constellations where some of these goals are pitted against others. This is partly due to the ongoing dynamic of corporate globalization, financialization and neoliberal imperatives of locational competition and competitiveness on the one hand, the rising status of ecological criteria due to the increasing damages related to climate change and to the increasing urgency to address social and regional inequalities within and across borders. How social forces prepare and respond to meet these challenges thus needs to be moved to the center of attention in order to observe and understand different dynamics and conflict constellations where economic, social and environmental actors and movements compete for attention and conflicting alliances. Social actors pre-configure strategies by way of reasoning. Thus it is necessary to observe both actor constellations and discourse constellations in order to improve understanding of obstacles to transformations and re-positioning necessary to overcome obstacles. At a general level questions need to be asked if and how contradictions between social and environmental objectives are resolved in controversies about energy transformation or the transformation of the transport system or the transformation of agriculture and food production if job losses are inevitable to meet ecological objectives, for example. The panel links up to the transformation debate at large, and seeks to add a political sociology dimension involving both concrete actor studies and discourse coalitions. Beyond the traditional policy network study focus in public policy and governance studies, we suggest a need to pay more attention to the wider civil society dimension of social order and the expanded state as many of the conflicts cannot be resolved in the narrow confines of the political and institutional domain with many relevant social forces remaining outside recognized governance structures. 

The debate on transformation is gaining new momentum due to the Corona crisis. Not even a decade after the global financial crisis and the following long recession the public health crisis sparked by the covid pandemic translates once again into a deep economic crisis. Scholars and politicians invested in new approaches such as the Green New Deal to address the interrelated social, ecological and economic dimension of the present system of globalized capitalism and "imperial nature" (Michael Goldman). Normative goals like ecological soundness, social equality and economic sustainability are considered equal in general, yet even broadly progressive actors find themselves in constellations where social and environmental concerns are pitted against each other (e.g. priority for jobs in fossil industries versus meeting climate mitigation goals). Such conflicts can be considered transformation conflicts since different forces continue to attempt influencing the speed and direction of transformation processes. We invite papers that address policy conflicts in which actors and discourses are observed and examined in order to find out more about transformation conflict related confrontations between different groups on the one hand, and about strategies to resolve policy goal conflicts in ways that attempt to reconcile conflicting goals. When and why do social goals like job security lead to trade union alliances with business interests opposed to ecological transformation, for example, and when and why can we find alliances of say trade unions and environmental groups attempting to align and reconcile social and ecological goals? We look both for theoretical and empirical work addressing transformation conflicts and strategies directed at overcoming  fragmentation and divisions. Since the perception of social actors pre-configures actions and strategies by way of developing particular understandings ("story lines", narratives, frames), we are interested in the constellation of discourse coalitions in the wider realm of civil society, knowledge power structures and social order beyond a narrow actor centered focus on policy networks, advocacy coalitions and recognized governance structures.  Policy related and broader think tanks and think tank and general intellectual functions in other organizations are considered of particular relevance in transformation conflicts.