Transformation fatigue

Policy makers and scholars often lament a transformation fatigue for the ongoing energy transition. They caution against quick changes or struggle to find participants for their studies, especially in the areas of the former GDR because people have recently lived through transition to capitalism. However, the people we talked to during our fieldwork in the east German mining areas were not tired of transformation. To the contrary they longed to participate more in the energy transition but struggled to find adequate formats to do so. To be sure, there were available options, but they fell in roughly two categories, which were both inadequate each in their own way.

First, there is the formal participation as part of the official planning process. During a fixed period, anybody can respond to planned infrastructure projects such as Germany's second largest solar park Peres III that will be built in the municipality of Groitzsch by the mining company MIBRAG. However, it requires reading hundreds of pages of bureaucratic documents and formulating a written objection on technical grounds. As one of our interlocutors pointed out, it just amounts to “negative participation” because one can only state what one did not want and had to give a technical reason, such as environmental protection. This might stop or delay such projects, but at this point, they are an accomplished fact, and only minor details will be changed, such as the height of the fences around it so that animals can pass underneath. But when we encouraged the interlocutor to bring his idea for an alternative municipal energy company into the city council, the first time the solar park was discussed during the public part of the city council meetings, it was already too late.

Second, there are scientific participation formats, such as future workshops, which are designated to make the transformation both more democratic and efficient. However, our interlocutors who facilitated these workshops themselves questioned whether deliberative planning methods could realistically fulfill the desired acceleration and acceptance. One facilitator emphasized that the usefulness of such formats depended less on the method itself than on the person conducting it, on situational skills, moderation style, and the ability to hold deliberation together under time pressure. At the same time, the very openness that gives these formats democratic legitimacy makes them slow, fragile, and hard to standardize. Participation thus becomes highly labor-intensive, uncertain in outcome, and difficult to scale, yet it is repeatedly mobilized because projects must demonstrate innovation, inclusiveness, and progress to funders.

Adapting David Graber's (2018) concept of bullshit jobs, we call these two kinds of bullshit participation. Just like jobs that have little purpose except to keep us working, this is participation for the sake of it itself: to check legal boxes or fulfill funding criteria. But participation must be more than an end itself. It should serve the purpose of taking part in the actual decision-making process and becoming materially invested in the energy transition.

For many of our interlocutors, disengagement was not a sign of apathy but a rational response. Participation was often offered on topics they did not perceive as most urgent, while more pressing everyday concerns remained unaddressed. At the same time, meaningful participation required significant investments of time and effort – unpaid labor that not everyone can afford. Those who cannot participate are easily reframed as uninterested or silent.

These dynamics are reinforced by the fact that many participation formats are designed and organized by external actors. Framed as inclusive, they often remain detached from local rhythms and capacities. Against this background, interlocutors frequently connected current participation offers to earlier experiences, such as the round tables after the collapse of the GDR – moments of intense engagement later overridden. People, then, are not tired of transformation or participation itself, but of bullshit; of being asked to invest time, labor, and hope into processes that systematically limit what participation can be.

Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.