Summary
The multi-level perspective is a framework from sustainability transitions research for explaining how whole systems such as energy, transport and food change over decades. Associated mainly with Frank Geels, who set it out in 2002 building on 1990s work by Rip and Kemp, it works across three levels. Niches are protected spaces where radical innovations develop. The regime is the dominant, stabilised set of technologies, practices, rules and institutions. The ‘landscape’ is the slow-moving wider context, such as demographic trends and cultural values.
Transitions happen when landscape pressure and maturing niches destabilise the regime. Geels and Schot (2007) set out four typical pathways this can take.
Rationale
Culture appears twice in this model: as slow ‘landscape’ values and as meanings held inside a regime, like the car’s. Deep dispositions live in both, “continually being formed and reinforced” in everyday life.