Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory

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Prefigurative politics and social change: a typology

drawing on transition studies

Anton Törnberg

To cite this article: Anton Törnberg (2021) Prefigurative politics and social change: a typology
drawing on transition studies, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 22:1, 83-107, DOI:
10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161

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DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY
2021, VOL. 22, NO. 1, 83–107
https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2020.1856161

Prefigurative politics and social change: a typology drawing

on transition studies
Anton Törnberg
Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in prefigurative politics, Prefigurative politics;
which refers to the political strategies that model a future society transition studies; social
on a micro level and aim to instantiate radical social change in change; social innovation;
institutional change
and through practice. While most previous studies have focused
on defining the concept and categorizing various types of
prefiguration, this paper contributes by investigating under what
circumstances prefiguration leads to revolutionary social change.
The paper takes an original approach to these issues by turning
to transition studies and the socio-technical change literature.
This field focuses on the technical equivalence of prefiguration:
namely, the relationship between small-scale niche innovations
and large-scale technological transitions. Through theoretical
discussions and empirical illustrations, this paper presents a
typology of five transition pathways through which prefigurative
strategies may result in a range of social change outcomes from
reformative to revolutionary transformation.

Introduction
Spurred by events such as Occupy and Indignados, recent years have seen an upswing of
interest in the concept of prefigurative politics in various strands of literature. This
concept challenges the prevailing state-centric approach in the literatures on social move-
ments and social change that sees existing political institutions as both the main target of
mobilization and the main means of achieving political change. Instead of engaging with
the state, prefigurative politics model or prefigure a future society at a micro level with
the aim to instantiate radical social change in and through practice. In this way, activists’
future political ends are expressed through their means by creating experimental or
alternative social environments in the present society (Yates 2015).
While most research has so far focused on defining the concept of prefigurative poli-
tics, applying it to a specific case, or categorizing various types of prefigurative strategies,
the purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential for these practices in relation to
revolutionary social change. Through theoretical discussions and empirical illustrations,
the paper investigates under what circumstances prefigurative politics contribute to

CONTACT Anton Törnberg Anton.tornberg@gu.se

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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84 A. TÖRNBERG

radically change deeply rooted societal structures and processes, and when they are chan-
nelled, domesticated, and stifled of their transformative potential and incorporated as
institutional reforms. For several reasons, these issues constitute a theoretical lacuna in
the literature. One important reason is that revolutionary societal transitions are
rather uncommon as historical phenomena and tend to occur in distinct contexts and
in different time periods, which limits the possibilities for any systematic comparison.
Another central reason is the well-recognized theoretical disjunction in the social
change literature between revolution studies and social movement studies (Goldstone
and Ritter 2019) that has arguably contributed to a general negligence of the connections
between small-scale forms of resistance and large-scale societal change (Haunss and
Leach 2007; Simi and Futrell 2009; Vinthagen and Johansson 2013).
This paper takes an original approach to these issues by turning to transition studies
and the socio-technical change literature (Geels 2005b; Kemp, Schot, and Hoogma 1998;
Rip and Kemp 1998; Rotmans, Kemp, and Van Asselt 2001). By comparison, large-scale
technological transitions occur relatively frequently. This rich empirical literature has
contributed to the growth of well-developed theories dealing with transition dynamics.
Transition studies explore a technical equivalence to prefigurative politics by focusing
on how and when novel technical innovations fostered in protected niches manage to
break through and replace established technological solutions in society. Therefore,
this paper builds on the key assumption that technological innovations and prefigurative
social innovations are parallel: e.g. they are both attempts at establishing new practices
and norms that challenge the existing system. What makes this process exceedingly
difficult is that these practices initially breach established norms that uphold and serve
to reproduce an existing power structure. This paper builds on recent efforts to integrate
transition studies and social movement theory (Hess 2018; Törnberg 2018) and shows
how such a synthetic approach is useful to understand the revolutionary potential of
prefigurative politics.
In the following, I first define and elaborate on the notion of prefiguration and argue
that its role and potential for achieving radical social change have not been addressed
sufficiently in the existing literature. Second, I turn to transition studies and the socio-
technical change literature to elaborate on the differences and similarities between prefig-
urative practices and technological innovations. Third, I briefly lay out the foundation for
a synthetic framework that integrates social movement theory and transition studies.
Fourth, inspired by empirical studies on socio-technical change, I then present a typology
of five transition pathways and a mixed pathway, and use these pathways to explore what
circumstances for prefigurative politics may lead to social change. These pathways are
illustrated empirically using the cases of the Green party in Germany, the 2011 Egyptian
revolution, the Zapatista movement, the Open Source movement, and the squatter com-
munity in Iran. I conclude by discussing how the approach developed in this paper can
contribute to understanding radical social change.

Prefiguration and constructive resistance

The concept of prefigurative politics has recently attracted growing attention among
social movement scholars and is increasingly used to describe and make sense of
social movements and their activities (e.g. Beckwith, Bliuc, and Best 2016; Biddau,
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 85

Armenti, and Cottone 2016; Chabot and Vinthagen 2015; Cornish et al. 2016; Gordon
2018; Haunss and Leach 2007; Jaster 2018; Leach 2016; Miettunen 2015; Raekstad
2018; Reinecke 2018; Sorensen 2016; Trott 2016; Wallin-Ruschman and Patka 2016;
Van de Sande 2015; Yates 2015). The term was first coined by Boggs (1977), who used
it as a political critique against – and as an alternative to – Leninism and structural refor-
mism. Boggs (1977, 103) thus described prefiguration as the attempt to create change
‘here and now’ through the construction of ‘local and collective structures that anticipate
the future liberated society’. Most subsequent scholars have followed Boggs’ use of the
term. For instance, Yates (2015, 1) defines it as ‘the attempted construction of alternative
or utopic social relations in the present, either in parallel with, or in the course of, adver-
sarial social movement protest’. The concept has been used to characterize a wide variety
of protest activities, from the Spanish anarchists during the civil war, to the autonomous
communities of the Zapatista movement in Mexico, European autonomous movements,
environmental direct action, Anonymous, the Occupy movement, Indignados, and the
Landless People’s Movement (MST), in Brazil. While the prefiguration literature is pre-
dominantly associated with progressive movements, the notion of prefiguration is
however not restricted to particular political orientations but may also include fascist
or conservative ideals, such as Islamist movements implementing Sharia laws in their
areas of control (McCowan 2010).
While it is a fairly new academic concept, the concept of prefiguration has various dis-
tinguished theoretical roots. Gandhi (1948) used the related concept of the ‘constructive’
programme to describe one of the two branches of his strategy of civil resistance. While
civil disobedience and non-violence belonged to the ‘obstructive’ programme, the con-
structive programme was described as a necessary complement, in reference to the con-
struction of concrete structures, systems, and processes as alternatives to oppression and
promoting self-sufficiency and unity within the resistance community. Although his
obstructive programme received the majority of attention, (Gandhi 1948, 3–4) described
civil disobedience as merely ‘an aid to the constructive effort’. Maeckelbergh (2011)
follows in the Gandhian tradition by describing prefiguration as embodying two prac-
tices: i.e. to confront established political structures and construct alternatives, neither
of which can be pursued successfully without the other. Prefigurative politics also has
a long history in anarchist discourse and practice (Franks 2003), representing the
refusal to engage with representative politics and public institutions, and instead
aiming to carve out autonomous spaces that may enable a new world to be built
within the shell of the old world, but without limiting itself to its boundaries.
An essential component in most definitions of prefiguration is the idea of means–ends
consistency. In other words, the newly created structures and processes must prefigure
the desired end by instantiating the central values that should underlie the new
society. This definition is derived from the historical lesson that movements that do
not keep their practice in line with the revolutionary values they seek, inevitably end
up reproducing the system they are trying to overthrow, although under a new ideologi-
cal rationale. In this paper, I therefore follow Boggs’ (1977, 100) original and straightfor-
ward definition of prefiguration as the ‘the embodiment, within the ongoing political
practice of a movement, of those forms of social relations, decision-making, culture,
and human experience that are the ultimate goal’. As Boggs argues, prefigurative politics
86 A. TÖRNBERG

represent an entirely new kind of politics that collapse the division of labour between
everyday life and political activity.
While prefiguration has been scrutinized from various disciplinary angles in the litera-
ture, most research has so far focused primarily on how to define and characterize the
concept by mapping the terrain and categorizing various types of prefigurative strategies
(see e.g. Sorensen 2016). Considerably less well known is what potential prefiguration
carries as a revolutionary strategy: i.e. under what circumstances may this strategy
manage to scale up and lead to revolutionary social change?

Between social movements and revolutions

This important question has not been addressed sufficiently within established theoreti-
cal perspectives. A key issue has likely to do with the historical and well-recognized
theoretical disjunction in the social change literature between revolution studies and
social movement studies (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Tarrow 2015). For most
of the twentieth century, revolutions and social movements have been treated as
different phenomena and examined by different scholars from different perspectives
(Goldstone and Ritter 2019). On the one hand, revolutions have been primarily analyzed
as macro-social events: e.g. as the consequences of structural shifts in society, such as
class structure (Paige 1975; Wolf 1969), or in the fabric and capacities of the state
itself (Goldstone 1991; Goodwin 2001; Skocpol 1979). On the other hand, social move-
ments have been analyzed as meso- or micro-level events driven by particular groups and
organizations mobilizing with the goal of advancing their own agenda, rather than
(necessarily) to replace the government or transform the political system (McCarthy
and Zald 1977). Today, the line between these fields has been blurred, both theoretically
and empirically. The contentious politics approach has identified common mechanisms
that appear in both social movements and revolutions (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly
2001). The wave of revolutionary movements commonly referred to as the colour revo-
lutions, which include People Power in the Philippines in 1986, the 2004 Orange Revolu-
tion in Ukraine, and the revolutions in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring, have served to
further accentuate the convergence between these fields. Nevertheless, revolutions and
social movements are still often treated separately and scholars struggle to unify
approaches to collective action that stress agency with approaches that focus on struc-
tural explanations (Mahoney and Snyder 1999; Ritter 2015).
Furthermore, we may note that certain types of micro-level social action and disguised
and dispersed forms of resistance – captured by concepts like ‘infrapolitics’ or ‘everyday
resistance’ (De Certeau 1984; Scott 1990) and ‘quiet encroachment’ (Bayat 1997) – have
so far rarely been analyzed in relation to revolutionary transformations. These types of
micro-level, everyday practices have been studied within fields like subaltern studies,
workplace studies, and more recently within resistance studies (see e.g. Hollander and
Einwohner 2004; Vinthagen and Johansson 2013).
Because of these theoretical gaps, prefigurative politics, which typically lie somewhere
in between everyday life and political activities, have arguably been caught between two
stools. While this type of resistance practice has occasionally been categorized as one
strategy in a broader set of social movement repertoires, they have not yet been analyzed
sufficiently based on their own merits, which has arguably led to an under-theorization of
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 87

the role played by prefigurative politics in revolutionary transformations. Comparative

studies on this topic have so far been almost totally absent, which can partly be explained
by the rarity of revolutionary social changes as a historical phenomenon. Revolutionary
social changes also tend to occur in distinct contexts and in different time periods, which
further aggravate any comparisons.
In the next section, I will argue that a potential solution to these issues may come from
a somewhat unexpected quarter: namely, the innovation and socio-technical change lit-
erature. Rather than aiming to replace existing theories, my purpose here is more modest:
i.e. to illustrate what the transition studies frameworks can contribute to social move-
ment theory. As McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001) have observed, if conceptual distinc-
tions are indeed useful to avoid theoretical confusion, a more-intense dialogue among
different streams of literature could help to identify similar dynamics.

Transition studies and socio-technical change

The origins of transition studies can be traced back to the 1990s, and Schot et al. (1994)
and Kemp, Schot, and Hoogma (1998) ground-breaking work. These scholars were
curious as to why so many technical innovations – despite being often more effective
or environmentally sustainable than established technologies in society – never
manage to spread beyond the startup incubators and showrooms at universities and
research and development laboratories. This raised questions as to why these technol-
ogies and promising innovations were not introduced into the market when their poten-
tial benefit to society was so evident? Why are most innovations of a non-radical type
aimed at regime optimization instead of transformation?
These early scholars found that the protection of these societal experiments was essen-
tial in the early phase of their development because of the impending risk of being
rejected by the established socio-technical solutions in society. Accordingly, the scholars
emphasized the role of technological ‘niches’, which were defined as a space for exper-
imentation shielded from market competition where radical, path-breaking innovations
could be developed. Thus, these spaces offer a protective buffer zone where innovations
may demonstrate viability and build a constituency, which is necessary to achieve
broader diffusion of the new technology into the society. One classic example of such
an early niche is the military, which has served as a protected space for the development
of many novel radical technologies, such as radio, aircraft, and computer technologies.
These scholars also emphasized that niche developments do not occur in a vacuum,
but against the backdrop of existing technologies and various structural processes in
society. Thus, the success of niche formation is ultimately linked to structural problems,
shifts, and changes within existing technical regimes and the broader, external context.
Following this ground-breaking work, transition studies have developed considerably
and now constitute the most influential approach for studying socio-technical transform-
ations (Grin, Rotmans, and Schot 2010). This broad field involves a range of conceptual
frameworks, such as the multi-level perspective, strategic niche management, and the
transition management frameworks. While highlighting different aspects of the tran-
sition process, these frameworks share a similar understanding of socio-technical
phenomena as complex, entangled systems consisting of various analytically separated
but interdependent levels and subsystems (Loorbach 2010; Rotmans 2005). Technologies
88 A. TÖRNBERG

are seen as deeply connected with each other and with socio-cultural ideas and practices
in a seamless web. This interdependency often serves as an obstacle for the emergence
and diffusion of innovations, through e.g. path dependency and lock-in dynamics. On
some occasions, however, this interdependency may also lead to radical transitions
when an innovation manages to break through and leads to cascades that may impact
the entire socio-technical system.
While these frameworks were originally focused exclusively on the diffusion of tech-
nical innovations, scholars have recently argued for a broadening of the concept of inno-
vation to also include social innovations in a more general sense, such as the sharing
economy, transition towns, the Basic Income Earth Network, and even rock ‘n’ roll
(Avelino et al. 2014; Haxeltine et al. 2013; Raven et al. 2016; Seyfang and Smith 2007;
van der Have and Rubalcaba 2016). Recent efforts have also attempted to integrate tran-
sition studies and social movement theory to better understand bottom-up societal tran-
sitions (Hess 2018; Juarez et al. 2016; Törnberg 2018).1
Likewise, it is similarly established in the parts of the social movement literature that
focus on diffusion to approach social movement activities as social innovations. This lit-
erature focuses on how social innovations such as social practices, ideas, and organiz-
ational forms diffuse within and across social movements (Polletta 2005; Soule and
Roggeband 2019), and includes classic studies such as the diffusion of protest tactics
in the civil rights movement (Morris 1981), sit-ins (Oberschall 1989), urban riots (Spiler-
man 1976), and how shantytown protests diffused between campuses in the US (Soule
1997). The shared affinities between social movements and socio-technical innovations
are also clearly manifested in e.g. Smith, Fressoli, and Thomas (2014) study that
focuses on the intersection between social movements for democratization and move-
ments that develop technologies for social inclusion in Latin America. This study illus-
trates how radical groups use grassroots innovations for mobilizing resources and
opportunities to achieve societal change. In this case, the boundaries between the
social and the technical are blurred, and technologies for social inclusion are analyzed
as catalysts for broader social transformations.2 Overall, the convergence of these fields
of inquiry suggests that the definition of social innovation embraced by transition
studies as ‘new social practices, comprising new ideas, models, rules, social relations
and/or services’ (Avelino et al. 2014, 16) is sufficiently broad to include prefigurative
practices. Prefigurative practices thus represent changes in the ‘way of doing things’
that can either be reformative and fit within the logic of existing societal solutions and
institutions, or radical in the sense of challenging established solutions.
Putting these significant similarities aside, there are also important differences
between radical prefigurative practices and technological innovations. The latter is less
frequently seen as an existential threat to existing power relations or to the system as a
whole. In comparison, socio-political systems tend to comprise even more entangled
systems with several and overlapping power centres that share an interest in maintaining
the status quo. Consequently, the reaction to prefigurative practices, such as collective
ownership, is often severely repressive and violent, which consequently makes the
need for protected niches all the more critical. It is also worth mentioning that even
minimal interaction with mainstream institutions can make prefigurative practices that
are incompatible with the central logic of the existing regime all the more difficult to
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 89

develop and establish as countercultural norms because of the system’s tendency to

reproduce itself through socialization and conformity pressures.
All in all, while transition studies and the literature on the diffusion of social move-
ments both share roots in the classic diffusion of innovation literature (Rogers 1962;
Strang and Soule 1998), these fields have since then drifted apart, at least until recently.
The argument pursued in this article is that (re)connecting these strands of literature may
prove useful to analyze the revolutionary potential of prefiguration. As we will see, a key
strength of transition studies is that they comprise a single coherent framework that
enables the study of how small-scale niche innovations can link up with macro-landscape
changes and together lead to revolutionary transformations.
While space prevents me from doing full justice to such a theoretical synthesis, I will
now sketch out the main ideas that are necessary for the argument. As a starting point, I
use the multi-level perspective (MLP), which approaches socio-technical change by dis-
tinguishing three analytical levels: i.e. niches (micro), socio-technical regimes (meso),
and landscape (macro) (Geels 2005a, 2010). These levels are ideal types that facilitate
the analysis of how processes at the different levels connect with each other and together
produce societal change. To better accommodate the analysis of prefigurative practices, I
then adapt and merge this framework with concepts from the social movement literature.
The purpose with the adapted synthesis is thus twofold: first, to provide a basic frame-
work for studying the revolutionary potential of prefigurative practices; and second, to
establish a point of convenience and identify similarities and differences between these
fields to facilitate transdisciplinary development.

A framework for radical social change

Inspired by the MLP, the adapted framework approaches societal change by distinguish-
ing three levels: i.e. socio-political regimes, free spaces, and the socio-political landscape.

Socio-political regimes
The socio-political regime represents the political regime in a broad sense, i.e. it com-
prises not only formal political institutions and organizations, but also institutionalized
rules, norms, values, social relations, and economic institutions and organizations. In this
sense, the regime is the level that is replaced during a radical societal transition. The
regime is generally characterized by dynamic stability because the various parts of the
regime are entrenched within co-dependent relations that lead to lock-in effects and
path dependency. As a consequence of these entrenchments, novel innovations are typi-
cally geared towards incremental changes that do not challenge the incumbent regime.
Radical innovations with the potential of transformative rather than incremental
changes instead emerge in ‘free spaces’; on the outskirts or fringes of established regimes.

Free spaces
Free spaces are here defined as a type of ‘niche’ providing an incubation room for new
path-breaking innovations that cannot yet compete with the incumbent political struc-
tures and norms that are fully integrated in society. Smith, Voß, and Grin (2010, 440)
90 A. TÖRNBERG

observed that while ‘change within the regime tends to be incremental and path-depen-
dent … “revolutionary” change originates in “niches”’. The importance of such protected
spaces is emphasized in both transition studies and in the social movement literature. In
the terminology of transition studies, niches are described as protective spaces that fulfil
both shielding, nurturing, and empowering functions (Raven et al. 2016; Smith and
Raven 2012). In much the same way, concepts like free spaces (Evans 1979; Polletta
1999) cultural havens (Fantasia and Hirsch 1995), social movement scenes (Haunss and
Leach 2007; Leach and Haunss 2009), and critical communities (Rochon 2000) are
emphasized in a social movement context, referring to arenas of social interaction that
are partly protected from physical repression and the hegemonic ideologies of main-
stream society, and where individuals may experiment with alternative world views, life-
styles, radical ideas, and social practices.
In this sense, free spaces comprise cultural laboratories for prefigurative practices,
allowing activists to struggle against pre-existing cultural and institutional narratives
through the construction of embryonic counter-cultures that violate the hegemonic cul-
tural order and the prevailing common sense. In the words of Mukerji (2014, 349), they
provide a shelter for ‘dreams of possibilities that lie outside political discourse’. As noted
above, due to the risks of repression and conformity pressures, free spaces are particularly
important in the context of radical prefiguration.

Socio-political landscape
The socio-political landscape comprises various contextual developments that form a
wider and relatively stable structural context for both the regime and niche actors.
This includes both material and institutional developments such as economic crises,
(de-)industrialization, international conflicts, economic inequality, and demographic
change, but also deep-seated socio-cultural factors like established worldviews, ideol-
ogies, and values in the society. The latter defines the boundaries of common-sense
reality and sets the limits for what is seen as ‘realistic’, ‘responsible’, and ‘reasonable’
in society. Accordingly, these factors are central in preserving and reproducing the
status quo by justifying, legitimizing, and normalizing the existing institutions. In
some cases, the landscape may have a direct or ‘objective’ impact, but often its effects
are mediated by agents of change. The involved actors typically perceive, interpret,
frame, and exploit structural changes as opportunities, which often occurs based on
their interests and previous experiences (Gamson and Meyer 1996). A main difference
from the notion of political opportunity structures, that relate to the various exogenous
factors that limit or empower social movements (Koopmans 1999; Meyer and Minkoff
2004), is that the concept of landscape is more systemic and refers to the ‘rules of the
game’ in a broader sense. In this sense, this concept refers to the patchwork of societal
systems in which both the socio-political regime and free space actors are embedded.
Notably, the political opportunities literature has also devoted considerably less attention
to the type of micro-level practices that are located within free spaces in this framework.
While the landscape comprises the slowly changing structural context, it can also
include sudden events that are perceived to drastically alter the ‘rules of the game’,
which are commonly referred to as ‘destabilizing events’ (e.g. McAdam 1999; Tarrow
1993) or a ‘quotidian disruption’ (Bernburg 2016) in the social movement literature
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 91

and ‘game changers’ in transition studies (Avelino et al. 2014). Such events typically
embody landscape developments, in the sense that pressure from the landscape finds a
concrete expression through a specific event that is interpreted and co-constructed by
actors who draw upon these events to pursue their own agenda. An example is police
repression, when a long-standing culture of repression culminates in a specific event
of violent repression. While the specific event may be performed by regime actors (e.g.
the police), it connects with and represent broader landscape developments. In this
sense, the incumbent regime relates to and adapts to the set of slowly changing dominant
discourses in society, but also carries out institutional practices that reproduce these dis-
courses. This implies a circular interaction between regime and landscape because
culture and hegemonic ideologies are typically embedded in institutional practices.
Despite the complexity involved, it is nonetheless necessary to keep these concepts ana-
lytically separate to study the relationship between them.

Incremental and revolutionary changes

Socio-political regimes are typically characterized by stability and incremental change.
Due to the various stabilizing mechanisms mentioned above, novel social innovations
are most often channelled into institutional reforms and become integrated into the
incumbent regime. Revolutionary social transitions are fundamental changes in the
established regime structure and occur when changes at all three levels reinforce each
other into an overall systemic transformation. For instance, when the existence of a
strong social innovation fostered in free spaces is combined with destabilization
within an existing socio-political regime, this provides a window of opportunity for
these innovations to scale up and eventually replace the existing regime. These processes
often occur rapidly and unexpectedly because small changes in interconnected and
entangled systems sometimes initiate cascades of changes (Geels and Schot 2010).
As studies of socio-technical transitions have shown (de Haan and Rotmans 2011),
such regime destabilization can emerge both due to stress: i.e. when the regime is intern-
ally inconsistent and there is a discrepancy between what is done and what is preached,
such as political corruption and deep elite divisions. In these cases, the regime can no
longer provide solutions to basic problems. Another central factor can be tension: i.e.
when landscape changes exert pressure that reveal and enforce vulnerabilities within
the incumbent regime, which create impulses for change. This includes both structural
tension (e.g. problems with physical, economic, and legal aspects, such as dramatic
demographic changes and fiscal crises) and cultural tension (e.g. problems concerning
discursive, normative and ideological aspects, such as pressure from public opinion).
Tension and stress are often inter-connected because landscape changes may serve to
accentuate and lay bare regime incompetence. A final factor for regime destabilization
is pressure: i.e. when free space actors challenge the regime from below by providing
alternative solutions.
These factors are central drivers for societal change. Transition scholars have empha-
sized that the timing and nature of these multi-level interactions are central determinants
for producing different transition pathways (Geels and Kemp 2007; Geels and Schot
2007; Grin, Rotmans, and Schot 2010). Most important is the timing of landscape devel-
opment considering niche development. If landscape changes occur when a novel
92 A. TÖRNBERG

Table 1. Typology of five transition pathways to prefigurative social change.

Moderate landscape
No landscape change change Strong landscape change
Under-developed or Reproduction Adaptation – repression De- and realignment
repressed innovations Adaptation – top-down
adjustment
Adaptation – co-optation
Developed innovations Reproduction – Reconfiguration Regime substitution
compartmentalization (revolutionary reforms) (radical innovations)

innovation is insufficiently developed, this generates different pathways compared to

when they are developed.3 The nature of the interaction also is of great importance
whether landscape changes have a reinforcing effect on the regime and serve to stabilize
it, or have a disruptive effect that provides an impulse for change. Similarly, niche inno-
vations can have a competitive relationship with the regime and aim to replace it, or a
symbiotic relationship in the sense that they can be adopted to increase the efficiency
or performance of the regime.
In the context of prefigurative practices, I identify three main factors relating to the
timing and the nature of multi-level interactions that appear to significantly shape the
outcome of prefigurative attempts at social change. These are: [i] changes in the socio-
political landscape; [ii] the degree to which prefigurative practices have been sufficiently
developed in free spaces and are ready to be scaled up when the opportunity arises; and
[iii] regime configurations and strategic reactions to prefigurative movements. Based on
combinations of these factors, we may develop a proposition about five transition path-
ways that range from no changes at all to revolutionary social transitions that fundamen-
tally change the established regime. Table 1 illustrates these pathways, which include
reproduction, adaptation, de- and realignment, reconfiguration, and regime substitution.
These pathways are inspired from the transition studies literature (Geels and Kemp
2007; Geels and Schot 2007; Grin, Rotmans, and Schot 2010), but are here adapted to
better accommodate prefigurative practices. Using empirical examples, I will now
discuss and elaborate on each of these pathways to explore under what circumstances
prefigurative politics may lead to radical societal change.

Five pathways to prefigurative social change

Reproduction pathway
In the cases of regular or no external landscape change, regimes tend to remain dynami-
cally stable. Minor problems may exist within the regime, but the shared perception
among most actors is that these are solvable within the regime. While radical innovations
may exist, there is little chance of any breakthrough because the landscape serves to
reinforce and stabilize the regime. In certain cases, such innovations may instead be
developed within delimited areas (i.e. a type of compartmentalization), such as the
Rote Flora squat in Hamburg or Christiania in Copenhagen, but these do not seriously
challenge the established regime.
Due to the entrenchment of material and social factors, and the exercise of established
political powers to maintain the status quo, this often results in lock-in dynamics and a
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 93

certain bias towards incremental knowledge development rather than paradigmatic shifts
(Smith and Raven 2012). Therefore, this pathway and the adaptation pathway described
below are the most common pathways for societal changes, which are exemplified by
most societies over time.

Adaptation pathway
In this transition pathway, moderately disruptive landscape changes create pressure on the
regime. This may include widespread poverty, structural and economic injustice, and
urbanization. However, there is no viable and sufficiently developed alternative that can
take advantage of the landscape pressure and replace the incumbent regime (or the exist-
ing alternative is repressed violently by regime actors). Instead, regime actors respond by
trying to modify and adapt the existing regime to deal with the structural challenges and
decrease tensions, which typically leads to mutations and gradual adjustments from within
the regime, rather than any radical changes (de Haan and Rotmans 2011). Actors outside
the regime, such as experts, professional scientists, engineers, and activists may attempt to
demonstrate viable alternatives and these are imported by the regime actors if the distance
from the regime’s knowledge is not too large (Geels and Schot 2007; Pel and Bauler 2014).
Thus, symbiotic niche innovations add to the regime without disrupting the basic infra-
structure and new regimes ‘grow out of the old through cumulative adjustments and reor-
ientations’ (Grin, Rotmans, and Schot 2010, 58). This pathway does not result in any
radical changes, but rather incremental changes and cumulative adjustments. In the
context of prefiguration, I believe there are reasons to distinguish between the three
types of this pathway: repression, top-down adjustment, and co-optation.

Repression
In the first type, alternative radical social innovations are violently repressed by regime
actors before they have the chance to develop into realistic alternatives. Compared to
technological innovations, this is fairly common in a prefigurative context. That is, the
prefigurative innovation is not necessarily under-developed per se, but fails to diffuse
because of reprisals from elite actors. One example among many is the Black Panther
Party in the US during the 60s and 70s, which created ‘survival programmes’, designed
to provide food, education, medical care, and clothing for individuals outside of tra-
ditional capitalist relations and the municipal, state, or federal systems. These pro-
grammes embodied, at least on a small scale, the kind of self-determination in the
Black community that the Panthers were working toward on a large scale. Violent repres-
sion from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state, however, contributed to
suppress the movement and eventually brought an effective end to these initiatives.

Top-down adjustment
In the second type, established regime actors adapt to and include new practices and/or
knowledge in society. Radical innovations are thus incorporated ‘from above’ and trans-
formed into institutional reforms that do not challenge the regime’s status quo. An
example is organic foods, which started as a small-scale niche innovation, but was
soon picked up by regime actors, such as large food companies and supermarkets, and
is now well-established and welcomed by most regime actors. In this case, free social
94 A. TÖRNBERG

space actors serve ‘as front runners, whose routines and practices gradually tricked down
and changed regime practices and rules’ (Geels and Schot 2007, 406).

Co-optation
In the third type, free space actors adapt their innovations according to the logic of the
established regime. Accordingly, the radical innovation is stifled of its transformative
potential and domesticated to fit the incumbents’ rules, norms, and practices. While
such innovations may indeed manage to break through and become part of the regime
by replacing some regime actors and forming new networks, they do so without seriously
challenging the logic of the incumbent regime. An example is the factory occupations by
workers in Argentina around 2001, such as Zanon. While these led to improving working
conditions in many cases, their need to compete in the market reduced the sphere of col-
lective decision, leading to centralization of power and divisions between directive and
productive workers (Atzeni and Ghigliani 2007).
The fact that adaptation is indeed one of the most common pathways for prefigurative
practices can be related to Michels (1915) concept of the iron law of oligarchy, which
claims that large-scale organizations inevitably lead to a rational bureaucratic structure.
This structure leads to the concentration of power in the hands of a minority, which in
turn creates corruption and the interest among this minority group in maintaining the
status quo. As a result, leadership becomes susceptible to co-optation and goal displace-
ment for the sake of maintaining the organization. A typical example of this pathway,
involving co-optation, oligarchization, and goal displacement, is the Green party (Die
Grünen) in Germany, which transformed itself from being an ‘anti-party’ advocating
radical changes in the political and economic system to gradually becoming an institu-
tionalized and reformative political party.

Die Grünen in Germany

The 70s and 80s saw a general rise of environmental awareness across Europe. New social
movements and scientists increasingly drew attention to the growing environmental pro-
blems, which put pressure on the established political parties. The inability of the main-
stream political parties to take these issues seriously provided fertile grounds for the rise
of alternative green movements in Western Europe. The Green party in Germany grew
out of the extraparliamentary left and green movements, and shared similar qualities
with these movements concerning social issues, such as feminism, squatters, and the
anti-nuclear movement (Katsiaficas 1997; Mayer and Ely 1998).
From its very beginning, the Green party wrestled with the contradiction of being an
anti-party in a party system and engaging with power while simultaneously trying to
prevent the emergence of leaders, media stars, and the formation of a new elite within
the party. The Green party was originally built upon a radical concept of anti-capitalism
and envisioned a decentralized grassroots democracy (basisdemokratie), which was fun-
damentally different from the parliamentary system in Germany.
Following their initial success in the 1982 election, two opposing perspectives emerged
between the radical fundamentalists (fundis) and the realists (realos) within the Green
party. These perspectives can be conceptualized as a radical prefigurative strategy
versus a pragmatic or reformist approach. The fundis were mostly concerned with devel-
oping their free innovation of a radical anti-capitalistic system and used the parliament as
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 95

merely one platform among others to spread this idea. This was reflected in their philos-
ophy of ‘der Weg ist das Ziel’ (the way is the goal). Therefore, they refused to join any
political coalitions and argued that the Green party should serve only in the parliamen-
tary opposition, which would maintain their integrity ‘as an antiparty aimed at funda-
mentally transforming the political and economic structures of the world system’
(Katsiaficas 1997, 198). In the words of one of the more influential fundis, Petra Kelly
(cited in Katsiaficas 1997, 198):
Within their parliamentary process, the Greens should not enter into the old established
structures or take part in the powers-that-be, but should do everything to demolish and
control it. Accordingly, their role remains one of fundamental opposition that depends
upon the success of grassroots movements in the streets

In contrast, the realos advocated a radically different strategy, expressed in the phrase ‘der
Zweck heiligt die Mittel’ (the ends justifies the means). They maintained the need to act
pragmatically within the current economic and political structures, and reform the
system from within. They co-operated positively with the Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD) and other parties to enhance popular participation in government
and to integrate the demands of the emerging new social movements. The vision of
the realos was that revolutionary movements should introduce their values and ideas
within the established political forums and use reforms as a strategy to encourage
popular participation and raise political consciousness. If existing institutions failed to
create an ecologically viable society, this would convince people of the need for a
whole new system (Katsiaficas 1997).
Once inside the parliament, the gulf between the direct-action movement and their
parliamentary expression broadened. Thus, the Green party was trapped between
protest activism and power. Their co-operation with the SPD further estranged the
Greens from their activist base. The events related to the demonstrations following the
collapse of the Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl further contributed to tearing
the party apart because activists claimed that the state had attempted to criminalize
radical opponents of the system.
By the end of the 1980s, a new pragmatic stratum of professional politicians emerged
within the Greens. In line with the party’s realist flank, these pragmatists called for
‘utopian dreams’ to be abandoned and replaced with a new slogan of ‘ecological capital-
ism’. In 1987, a silent end to rotation in the political leadership was instituted and the
party established itself as a left-wing ecological reform party. As one autonomist activist
put it:
A little more than ten years after its founding phase, this party, consisting of a core member-
ship of technocratic ecology managers, has become a political mouthpiece for reactionary
conservationists, epicureans, and upwardly mobile petit-bourgeois citizens. (Katsiaficas
1997, 204)

In the 1994 election, the reformed Green party became the third largest party in the Bun-
destag. In the following election in 1998, they entered a Red–Green coalition government
with the SPD. Many activists left the party in direct connection to these elections in the
belief that the Greens, by choosing to play the parliamentary game, had finally become
part of the social repair mechanism of the established system.
96 A. TÖRNBERG

De- and realignment pathway

In this transition pathway, a large and sudden landscape pressure serves as a ‘game
changer’ that causes intense pressure and leads to internal problems within the
regime, which rapidly loses credibility. This change may include e.g. a fiscal crisis or a
popular uprising, which leads to incumbent actors losing faith in the potential of the
regime and not defending it. As a result, the regime collapses and de-aligns.
If niche alternatives are not developed sufficiently when the old regime falls apart or
are suppressed violently, there is no clear substitute to fill the gap, which creates a power
vacuum: i.e. a space for multiple embryonic niche innovations carried by outsiders that
coexist and compete for attention and resources (Geels and Schot 2007; Grin, Rotmans,
and Schot 2010). Because of the lack of any stable rules to guide the development in any
specific direction, this vacuum leads to a prolonged period of uncertainty and the
exploration of multiple directions and innovation trajectories (and often mutual
fighting) until one niche innovation or the prior regime finally manages to gain momen-
tum and become dominant. This change is followed by realignment and reinstitutiona-
lization in a new regime.
In the context of societal change, this situation is fairly common when a political
regime collapses without any concrete alternative to take its place. This often results in
political unrest and violent power struggles between various groups attempting to
retain or acquire power. Accordingly, this pathway is the result of the lack of any clear
and well-developed prefigurative practices. To further elaborate on this pathway, we
will look closer at the 2011 Arab Spring revolution in Egypt.

The Egyptian revolution

On 25 January 2011, over 50 000 protesters occupied Cairo’s Tahir Square in Egypt.
Under the context of high unemployment, lack of basic human rights, low wages, and
increasing police brutality, the protesters demanded freedom, justice, and the end of
the brutal Mubarak regime. In the following weeks, the number of protesters swelled
to several hundred thousand. These large popular protests generated a political crisis
and created a free space where prefigurative practices could emerge. Protesters described
Tahir Square as a society-under-construction: i.e. a social laboratory where alternatives
could be formulated and experimented with (El-Wardani 2011; Van de Sande 2013).
As much of the discontent with the Mubarak regime was of a material character (e.g.
the lack of proper housing, food, or jobs), the satisfaction of basic human needs was
prioritized in the camp, including distributing medicine, clothing, food, and building
barricades and self-defense systems (Elshahed 2011; Fathi 2012).
The protesters referred to Tahir Square as ‘liberated ground’ (Khalil 2012, 248). The
space created in this square provided an opportunity for the activists to freely express
themselves politically. They wrote journals and pamphlets, set up wireless networks,
and constructed an illegal radio station. Many women participated in the revolt with
many taking leading roles in its planning and organization. As Van de Sande (2013,
236) observed, the protesters tried experimentally to represent an idea of the different
society that they longed for and the community provided ‘a space of freedom where
equality and democracy was lived; not just as the headquarters of a political movement,
but as a sort of social laboratory in which a new political community began to take shape’.
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 97

On 11 February 2011, Egyptian armed forces removed Mubarak from power,

which marked the final de-alignment of the regime. However, alternative prefigura-
tive practices were still at an early state of niche formation and were not developed
sufficiently, which was combined with various aggravating structural conditions such
as the fact that Egyptian army controlled a significant share of the economy. Con-
sequently, in the power vacuum that emerged, the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces took power, followed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist
Mohamed Morsi. Morsi later tried to change the law to grant himself more
power, which sparked massive protests and he was later deposed by a coup d’état
led by the Minister of Defense, who subsequently became the new president in
2014. This type of backlash development is not uncommon when established politi-
cal and institutional structures are adapted for a certain type of political regime
because they typically pave the way for realignment and reinstitutionalization of
similar political institutions.
Other examples of this pathway include the Spanish civil war in 1936 and the Rojava
region during the civil war in Syria in 2011. In both cases, there was a regime collapse
and a subsequent civil war, which led to a power vacuum and conflicts between various
groups aspiring for power. In Syria for instance, a Kurdish-dominated coalition of
different groups sought to establish a new constitution for an autonomous region,
building on democratic confederalism and gender equality. After taking control over
several cities in the Rojava region such as Kobani and Manbij, they organized a co-
operative economy, opened schools, community centres, and established a model of
grassroots democracy. While their prefigurative model was arguably relatively well
developed, it collapsed in 2018 when Turkish forces and Syrian militias launched an
offense and regained control over Kobani. The region is now again in a state of
unrest and de-alignment.

Regime-substitution pathway
In this transition pathway, strong landscape pressures exerting a strong influence on the
regime combined with the existence of radical innovations that have developed
sufficiently in free spaces lead to a full-blown transition.
Radical innovations may have lingered inside free spaces for a long time without
managing to break through because of the stability and entrenchment of the established
regime. Without landscape pressure, these innovations would likely remain stuck in this
condition and the regime could solve any potential problems through incremental inno-
vations from within. In this pathway, however, a sudden and strong landscape pressure
leads to strong tensions within the regime, which open a window of opportunity that may
be exploited by free space actors if they are developed sufficiently. This pathway is often
characterized by a rather abrupt form of scaling up instead of a gradual increase in
support because the entrenchments of different established technologies and innovations
often produce a domino effect that affects other regimes and initiates wider co-evolution-
ary processes leading to broader social changes (de Haan and Rotmans 2011). As this
pathway depicts a full-scale transition, it is interesting to consider the pathway in relation
to prefigurative politics. One example is the 1994 Zapatista movement in Chiapas,
Mexico.
98 A. TÖRNBERG

The Zapatista movement

The socio-political landscape in Mexico in 1994 was characterized by institutionalized
racism, extensive poverty, and discrimination that particularly targeted the large indigen-
ous population. Chiapas and its neighbouring states, Guerrero and Oaxaca, belonged to
the three most impoverished states of Mexico and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI), was notorious for their widespread corruption, repression, electoral fraud,
and exploitation of indigenous territories. The highly centralized political institutions
systematically excluded the indigenous population from political participation and neo-
liberal reforms have had a large impact on the poor population. For instance, low quality,
but highly subsidized corn from the USA had flooded the Mexican market, which inevi-
tably drove small farmers out of business. These events constituted a low-intensity but
constant landscape pressure.
Parallel to this, the indigenous population in Chiapas had advanced their own alterna-
tive political system for self-governance in their communities for many years. These com-
munities have a long tradition of autonomy in relation to the state and provided a space
where alternative socio-political processes have been protected, developed, and
implemented on a small scale. These prefigurative practices include alternative infra-
structures, political institutions, value sets, and social practices in conflict with the
incumbent governmental institutions. But due to the high levels of polarization
between indigenous communities and the local government, and the very limited insti-
tutional and discursive space available, indigenous communities had little room for
protest and advocating their own political solutions.
On 1 January 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) declared open
war on neoliberalism and the Mexican government by seizing several towns in the state of
Chiapas. In their released manifesto, the EZLN declared the government to be so out of
touch with the will of the people as to make it illegitimate. The uprising became a sym-
bolic tipping point that drew attention to the existing injustices and exploitation of the
indigenous population. This attention led to increasing public support for the movement,
both internationally and within Mexico. In this sense, the movement created their own
landscape change in the form of a dramatic change that opened a window of opportunity
for advancing their prefigurative practices in the form of a parallel political system. Thus,
these prefigurative practices were transformed from a relatively fragmented and small-
scale existence to pose an increasingly concrete alternative and a growing challenge to
the incumbent regime. Accordingly, this is also an interesting example of how niche
actors may consciously amplify and frame certain issues to initiate or enhance landscape
pressure. For instance, it is not a coincidence that the rebellion started on the same day as
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect: i.e. the Zapatista
movement consciously used the NAFTA to highlight the prevailing structural
exploitation.
While the Zapatistas did not manage to perform a full-scale political transition in
Mexico, they arguably succeeded in performing a partial or local transition. That is,
they took control over a large territory, which is still today governed autonomously,
and implemented their alternative political system with horizontal leadership, schools,
hospitals, and a sustainable agro-ecological system. A member of the civil society wing
of the Zapatista movement, Javier Eliriaga (cited in Zugman 2001, 113), stated that:
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 99

They say we are dreamers or fanatics. The institutional left continues to regard politics as the
art of the possible. And Zapatismo doesn’t. We have to do politics in a new way. You can’t
accept only what is possible because it will bring you into the hands of the system. This is a
very difficult struggle. It is very, very difficult.

Indeed, political systems are highly entrenched multilayered systems that consist of close
interrelations between processes at both local and global levels. This means that despite
the transition of a local system at one level of the regime (e.g. in a single province),
another level of the regime (e.g. the nation state) often intervenes and may interrupt a
full-scale societal transformation. This also explains why full-scale societal transitions
are relatively uncommon.

Reconfiguration pathway
In the fifth pathway, innovations first develop in free spaces. If these innovations appear
compatible with the regime, they can be adopted as symbiotic add-ons (i.e. ‘better, faster,
cheaper innovations’) to solve minor problems within the regime, but without seemingly
or explicitly challenging its underlying logic. The central difference between reconfigura-
tion and the adaption pathway is that once the innovations are integrated into the regime,
they not only improve and strengthen the regime, but also trigger subsequent changes in
the regime’s basic architecture. Despite that these innovations are not explicitly radical in
the sense defined above, they may nonetheless initiate novel patterns of human inter-
actions and lead to organizational transformations that will undermine the regime.
Grin, Rotmans, and Schot (2010, 72) observed that ‘sequences of component innovations
can thus, over time and under influence of landscape pressures, add up to major reconfi-
gurations and regime change’. In this sense, these innovations can be described as radical
innovations in disguise, resembling a Trojan horse that is sneaked into the regime, but
comprising an incomputable core of deep-going changes that may grow from within.
Thus, the new regime emerges out of the old.
This pathway is highly interesting in relation to prefigurative politics and highlights a
different and somewhat neglected way in which prefigurative practices may initiate
broader patterns of social change, albeit more subtly. This corresponds to the concepts
of revolutionary reforms (Gorz 1964, 1968), i.e. measures that at first may appear legiti-
mate in relation to established systems, but which may actually run counter to the logic of
capitalism and push against its limits. Thus, while reformist reforms subordinate its
objectives to the criteria of rationality and practicability within a given system, revolu-
tionary reforms, in contrast, are designed to break out of this logic and destabilize the
system. By destabilizing the system, revolutionary reforms necessitate
the implementation of further measures to deal with the effects of this destabilization –
measures which themselves run counter to the logic of capitalism and which will thus, in
turn, stimulate further reforms and so on in a radicalising dynamic of cumulative change.
(Rooksby 2018, 44)

In other words, such reforms constitute an indirect mean to overthrow the system
because the enforcement of such reforms would gradually cripple it from within.
This implies that the main emphasis in this pathway relies on the nature of the free
space innovations instead of the type of landscape change. Thus, several types of land-
scape changes may influence this path if they impose pressure on the regime and
100 A. TÖRNBERG

create the need for symbiotic add-ons, although it is arguably most common in the case
of moderate or strong landscape changes.

The copyleft movement

A typical example of this pathway is the copyleft movement. Copyleft is a form of open
source licensing for computer software, which gives every person who receives a copy of
the code permission to use, reproduce, adapt, and distribute it freely, with the require-
ment that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same agreement.
Copyleft is part of the free software movement, the roots of which go back to computer
science practices in academia and computer user groups in the 1960s (which were further
entrenched by the end of the 1980s through the creation of organizations like the Free
Software Foundation). Copyleft was created as a reaction to what was perceived as con-
straining copyright regulations and freedom-stifling proprietary policies of established IT
companies. Instead of the established regime of proprietary software, the free software
movement advocated decentralization, transparency, and unrestricted sharing of ideas
and information.
What is particularly interesting about copyleft is that it fits rather well into the existing
judicial system and is not, at least at first glance, in direct conflict with the more estab-
lished concept of copyright. In its strongest form, however, copyleft requires that any
work derived from copyleft-licensed software must also carry a copyleft license, which
means that when adapting and redistributing the software, you cannot add restrictions
to deny other people the central freedoms of the free software. Therefore, copyleft has
been called ‘viral licensing’ because the code spreads from work to work like a virus.
For instance, the former Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer declared that
code released under copyleft is useless to the commercial sector and described it as ‘a
cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches’
(Newbart 2001).
In this sense, copyleft has the potential to change the license system from within.
While it may appear as a harmless add-on to solve various problems, such as the increas-
ing complexity of software that may require the many-eyes effect of networked and
decentralized organizations to deal with, copyleft potentially carries a more radical
core that may spark far-reaching changes in the established regime.

Mixed pathways
The typologies described above are ideal types and do not describe deterministic pro-
cesses. This means that these causal sequences are not guaranteed and they are
seldom, if ever, enacted in their pure form in actual transition cases. Reality is
complex and often exhibits aspects from multiple pathways, which may occur simul-
taneously or as sequences of transition pathways. I will therefore conclude this section
by discussing the case of the squatter communities in Iran in the 70s and 80s, which
exhibited multiple pathways over time.

The squatter communities in Iran

The structural context in Iran in the 1970s was characterized by strong urbanization,
leading to socio-economic marginalization and a shortage of housing. In response,
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 101

citizens began constructing houses in slums and built squatter communities. Rather than
a deliberative political strategy, these initiatives were often a practical solution to a
problem. By 1980, around 35% of the population of Tehran lived in such illegal commu-
nities (Bayat 1997, 29). The squatters challenged three central arenas of the state: physical
movement and migration; redistribution of public goods like land; and extended auton-
omy from the state by relying on local norms instead of state legislature. In this sense, the
communities formed a counter-hegemonic force against officialdom. Organized into
neighbourhood committees (NCs), the squatters set up medical units, built water reser-
voirs, organized garbage collection, laid pipes, paved roads, and illegally tapped into
power grids (ibid: 42). The squatters also organized cultural activities and direct action
and, with the help of students and activists, they established libraries and taught
classes. The state response during most of the 70s was through competition and repres-
sion, thus representing a variant of the adaptation pathway because the regime attempted
to prevent the development of these communities into a realistic alternative. In 1977, the
squats became battlegrounds as municipality demolition squads escorted by paramilitary
soldiers raided and violently evicted residents. This was met with direct action, demon-
strations, and vigilante groups trying to defend their homes.
The 1979 Islamic revolution served as a game changer that radically altered the pol-
itical landscape. The daily clashes in the shantytowns hooked up with broader revolu-
tionary protests in Teheran and the mobilization of the squatting communities
became subject of competition among different political groups that attempted to
mobilize poor neighbourhoods. This initiated a period of instability and de- and realign-
ment. Central authority collapsed and the power vacuum was filled by various grassroots
organizations, and landless peasants confiscated large agribusiness estates. This served as
a window of opportunity for the squatters and the number of shanty dwellers increased
rapidly from the first years of the revolution. Hotels and empty private buildings were
occupied and the struggle became more collective and public. Hundreds of factories
were taken over by workers and revolutionary youth took control over the police.
The post-revolution clergy had a somewhat ambivalent relation to the squatters.
While they acknowledged their important role for the revolution, they would not tolerate
diversity or autonomy. In most cities, the state offered loans, granted plots of land, and
provided material, and the illegal communities were increasingly formalized and inte-
grated into state structures. Many NCs were taken over and (pro-regime) representatives
were selected by the government. This represented a shift towards an adaptation
pathway, as many of the NCs became extensions of the ruling Islamic Republican
Party. But the friction between the squatter communities and the state remained. The
state felt increasingly challenged and saw the squatter community as a ‘threat to the revo-
lution’ that ‘altered urban order’ by bringing about social groups and social practices
upon which the central authority would have little practical control. This arguably led
to ‘urban unrest’ and ‘destroying social and Islamic values’ (Bayat 1997, 101). This
unrest motivated a return to repression as a political strategy. As part of government
crackdown against opposition, demolition work and attacks by security forces thus
became more systematic in the middle of the 1980s. By the end of 1992, the state had
succeeded in evicting about 80% of the squatters in some cities.
This case illustrates the complexity often involved in transition processes and that a
specific case may involve a sequence of different pathways over time. While reality
102 A. TÖRNBERG

may seldom fit within specific ideal types, I argue that these typologies are nonetheless
useful as heuristic tools to help us know what to look for in these complex processes
because they provide a way to structure analytical narratives and facilitate comparison
across cases.

Conclusion: from prefiguration to revolution

By elaborating on a theoretical typology of transition pathways inspired by transition
studies, this paper has contributed an explanation of under what circumstances prefig-
urative politics manage to scale up and lead to revolutionary societal changes, and
when they are domesticated and transformed into institutional reforms. By extending
the concept of social innovation to include prefigurative politics, this paper has also
taken a step towards integrating the fields of transition studies and social movement
theory, which enables the study of transition dynamics in different settings and to
develop generalized typologies that are relevant across disciplines.
A main conclusion of this paper is that small-scale niches or free social spaces are
central to societal transitions by providing a protective space for prefigurative inno-
vations to grow. However, the success of such radical innovations ultimately depends
on the surrounding context and the presence of various kinds of landscape changes.
In the absence of landscape pressures, the incumbent regime is likely to remain dynami-
cally stable, despite the presence of a strong, viable free space innovation (reproduction
pathway). Similarly, under moderate landscape pressure combined with underdeveloped
niche innovations that do not constitute a threat to the regime, regime actors tend to
internally implement incremental changes and may at most incorporate elements of
the innovations, but without challenging the logic of the existing regime (adaptation
pathway). These are the standard pathways because the established political powers
are typically exercised to maintain the status quo, which results in a bias towards refor-
mative changes and incremental developments.
Revolutionary transitions occur when sudden and vast landscape changes are com-
bined with sufficiently developed free space innovations. This opens a window of
opportunity that can be exploited by upcoming free space innovations, which may
subsequently replace the established political regime (i.e. regime substitution
pathway). Importantly, actors of change are not necessarily passive observers
during these processes, but may contribute by deliberately initiating landscape
changes to create a window of opportunity for their upcoming innovation. These
societal transition processes can often be rapid and unexpected, as illustrated by
numerous examples in the histories of both social and technological transitions. An
alternative (and perhaps less dramatic) type of radical societal change is when sym-
biotic niche innovations are adopted that may appear compatible with the incumbent
regime, but which contain a radical core that gradually cripples the very foundation
of the regime, eventually leading to a full-blown transition (i.e. reconfiguration
pathway).
Overall, experiences from transition studies strongly suggest that radical change does
not happen by simply fighting the old, but through building the new. Thus, actors advo-
cating radical societal change must confront the old forms and simultaneously articulate
concrete alternatives. This conclusion dramatically repositions the role of prefiguration
 DISTINKTION: JOURNAL OF SOCIAL THEORY 103

in social change by dislodging it from a relatively peripheral activity and centres it as a

vital component in many cases of radical societal transitions.

Notes
1. See also the EU-funded TRANSIT project, focusing on transformative social innovations
http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu.
2. Copyleft, which is discussed below, is another interesting case that illustrates the affinities
between socio-technical change and social movement-driven societal change, in the sense
that it can be studied not only as a socio-technical innovation, but also as a social movement
innovation that initiated broader processes of social change.
3. While describing pathways as being developed is not entirely objective and partly depends
on the interpretation of the involved actors, the strategic niche management literature pro-
vides some proxies as indicators of whether a niche innovation is ready to break through: i.e.
a) learning processes have stabilized in a dominant design; b) powerful actors have joined
the support network; c) performances have improved and there are strong expectations
for further improvement; and d) the innovation is used in niche markets (Geels and
Schot 2007).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Anton Törnberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at
the University of Gothenburg. He has an interdisciplinary profile and his research interests revolve
around issues relating to social change, including fields such as social movement theory, transition
studies and complexity science.

ORCID
Anton Törnberg http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5847-3033

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