Fostering Just Transitions in Transformative Innovation Policy: Channeling instruments across multiple levels to engage marginalized communities

To address grand challenges like climate change, transformative innovation policies (TIPs) are emerging as a framework for societal prosperity. Unlike traditional innovation approaches, TIPs prioritize social and environmental goals, which then should lead to economic growth through improved welfare. Implemented through various instruments, TIPs may operate in a multi-level governance setting whereby policies originate at a supra-national level and extend to national, regional, and local tiers. Despite their emphasis on inclusivity and engagement with marginalized communities, practical insights on these aspects for TIPs are limited. This paper explores the channeling of TIP instruments across levels and their engagement with marginalized communities. Taking Belgium as the setting for our paper, we focus on the European Green Deal as a TIP and the Just Transition Fund as the instrument. Findings from semi-structured interviews reveal challenges in multi-level governance that hinder local engagement. Consequently, we propose an emergent model promoting bottom-up participation and the inclusion of marginalized communities in TIP implementation. We moreover discuss how to build upon the TIP literature by integrating the participatory governance school of thought.