Energy Depoliticisation in the UK: Destroying Political Capacity

Provides new insights into depoliticisation literatures by applying depoliticisation beyond economic and monetary policy to energy and climate change policy. Demonstrates ways in which forms of depoliticisation can affect political capacity to respond to new policy challenges. Challenges climate change and energy transition literatures by explaining how and why UK energy policy institutions have constrained innovation and sustainable change. Depoliticisation, as a concept, has been utilised to explain specific aspects of economic governance as it has developed over the past thirty years, particularly in certain OECD countries. This article focuses on the outcomes of three forms of depoliticisation, marketised, technocratic and non-deliberative, for political capacity. Political capacity is defined in relation to a notion of politics as social interaction, deliberation, choice and agency. Using UK energy governance as a case study it claims that the depoliticisation of energy policy has resulted in embedded corporate power, a widening disjuncture between experts and majoritarian institutions and limited knowledge structures. As a result the state’s role is still confined to giver of market signals and to temporary interventions in the face of complex and unprecedented commitments to transition the UK towards a low carbon future.