Pursuing a Circular Economy in the Danish Waste Sector : Scale and Transition Dynamics in Transformative Innovation Policy

The overall aim of this thesis is to advance the conceptual understanding of transformative innovation policy through empirical research focusing on the transition towards a circular economy in the Danish waste sector. Under this broad aim, the thesis is more specifically concerned with exploring issues relating to the geography of transformative innovation policy as well as transition dynamics and agency in socio-technical system change. Three overarching research questions guide the thesis. First, how does the theoretical assumption that transformative innovation policy is best pursued at the subnational scale correspond with current developments in the multi-scalar organization of Danish waste management aimed at stimulating the promotion of a circular economy Second, how can the understanding of transition dynamics and agency be developed to explicitly account for variation in the structural characteristics of sectors? And third, how do empirical insights from the Danish waste sectorillustrate and illuminate this alternative understanding of transition dynamics and agency? In addressing these questions, the thesis makes two key contributions. First, based on analysis of the spatial organization of Danish waste management, this thesis develops a novel conceptual approach to the multi-level governance of transformative innovation policy. This conceptual approach is based on a constructivist notion of scale, which emphasizes the potential transformative power of rescaling and the need to develop a dynamic and variated approach to the spatial organization of transformative innovation policy. Second, this thesis develops a conceptual approach for studying transition dynamics that takes the structural characteristics of socio-technical systems and their influence on agency into account. This approach is influenced by and illustrative of empirical insights from the Danish waste sector, which is characterized by an elaborate structural setup, currently experiencing growing misalignment due to the advancement of circular economy policies and regulation