The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential bene ts, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policyrelevant lessons and research directions for a sustainable CE and identify three narratives -optimist, reformist and skeptical -that underpin the ambiguity in CE assessments. Based on 54 key CE scholars' insights, we identify three research needs: the articulation and discussion of ontologically distinct CE narratives; bridging of technical, managerial, socio-economic, environmental and political CE perspectives; and critical assessment of opportunities and limits of CE science-policy interactions. Our ndings offer practical guidance for scholars to engage re exively with the rapid expansion of CE knowledge, identify and pursue high-impact research directions, and communicate more effectively with practitioners and policymakers.

Understanding environmental politics is crucial for sustainability transitions. We study the transition politics of the shift to a circular economy in the German packaging sector, particularly the curious case of the 2019 German Packaging Act. While the policy was born out of the unanimous wish for radical regulatory change, all actors evaluate the outcome as incremental. Following the Discursive Agency Approach and drawing upon actor interviews and documents, we show that actors' perceived fears of radical changes are critical for transition politics. This fear created a lock-in of two narratives, proposing conflicting organizational designs of packaging waste management. While the narrative lock-in was resolved by trading radical for incremental change, it left many conflicts and challenges unresolved. Our findings suggest that actors' fears not only prevent radical regulatory change but also create incremental change that may intensify unresolved conflicts and, thus, further weaken the actors' capacities for future transition politics.

Understanding environmental politics is crucial for sustainability transitions. We study the transition politics of the shift to a circular economy in the German packaging sector, particularly the curious case of the 2019 German Packaging Act. While the policy was born out of the unanimous wish for radical regulatory change, all stakeholders evaluate the outcome as incremental. Applying the Discursive Agency Approach and drawing upon stakeholder interviews and documents, we show that stakeholders’ perceived fear of radical changes are critical for transition politics. This fear created a lock-in of two narratives proposing conflicting organizational designs of packaging waste management. While the narrative lock-in could be resolved by trading radical for incremental change, it left many conflicts and challenges unresolved. Our findings suggest that stakeholders’ fears not only prevent radical regulatory change but also create incremental change that may intensify unresolved conflicts and, thus, further weaken the stakeholders’ capacity for future transition politics.

Understanding the dynamics of stability and change is key to accelerate sustainability transitions. This paper aims to advance and inspire sustainability transition research on this matter by collecting insights from interpretative environmental discourse literature. We develop a heuristic that identifies and describes core discursive elements and dynamics in a socio-technical system. In doing so, we show how the interplay of meta-, institutionalized, and alternative discourses, dominant, marginal, and radical narratives, as well as weak and strong discursive agency influence the socio-technical configuration. The heuristic suggests three discursive lock-ins reinforcing the stabilization of socio-technical systems: unchallenged values and assumptions, incumbents’ discursive agency, and narrative co-optation. Furthermore, it explores three pathways of discursive change: disruptive, dynamic and cross-sectoral. Overall, this paper puts forward a discursive perspective on sustainability transitions. It offers additional analytical approaches and concepts for discursive transition studies, elaborated insights on the dynamics within and between the analytical dimensions of a socio-technical system, as well as a theoretical baseline for analyzing discursive lock-in mechanisms and pathways of discursive change.

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