What Roles Do Governments Play Vis-À-Vis Niche Actors? A Typology Illustrated with Transition Dynamics in the Dutch Agri-Food System

Regime change is considered essential for sustainability transitions. An important source of regime change is pressure from alternative innovations developed in niches and the actors involved. Governments often play an important role in such niche-regime interactions and whether or not, and how, this results in regime change. However, literature on the roles various governments can play vis-à-vis niche innovations and actors is scant and fragmented. In this paper, we identify a diversity of roles of governments vis-à-vis niche innovations and the actors involved, ranging from facilitating regime change to actively defending incumbent regimes. We propose a typology in a first attempt to enable the characterisation of governmental roles, either statically at a particular moment or dynamically in how roles evolve over time. By illustrating our typology with empirical examples from dynamics in the Dutch agri-food system, we also contribute to the limited empirical work on the roles of governments in food transitions.