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The multilevel perspective (MLP) has emerged as an influential framework for analyzing sustainable transitions. Whilst the MLP has recently incorporated valuable geographical perspectives this paper argues that more nuanced accounts of socio-spatial dimensions are still needed to explain how and why some regions miss opportunities for energy transitions. It does this through a study of the restructuring of the Victorian electricity system in Australia in the 1990s and the resulting failure to build demand side management into the energy market design and regulatory framework. The failure of the demand management niche requires a compelling explanation as to why, despite increasingly porous and seemingly unbounded flows of knowledge and capital and emergent actor networks, the territorial-scalar embeddedness of the electricity regime was reinforced. Drawing on geography literature the paper argues that a multidimensional analysis can do the following: address criticisms of the a-spatial and residual character of the landscape level; situate transitions within a geographical political economy context; and reveal the variations and semi-coherency of regimes shedding light on the degree of regime stability and the opportunities for niches to break through. This paper expands the conversation between theories of geographical political economy and sustainable transitions arguing that the geographies of capitalism and the state need to feature more than as a backdrop to socio-technical change, and instead should be brought directly into the MLP.

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This study focuses on the role of the South African state in environmental governance, with particular reference to transformations in political authority and processes of capital accumulation. Our approach underscores the importance of analyzing state environmental efforts both empirically and normatively, in order to understand the underlying drivers of state policies that perpetuate or ameliorate environmental degradation. The tension between economic and ecological values lies at the heart of South Africa's approach to mitigation. We evaluate South Africa's performance on climate change mitigation policies and programs and show that while, empirically, South Africa may appear to be a partial or emerging green state, its performance is weak when assessed against normative frameworks.

This paper draws on the notion of energopower ( Boyer 2014 ) to show the foundational role of electricity in the (re)production of political power in Australia. I show how conflicts surrounding electricity have reconstituted state-market-society relations and rescaled governance. I study a series of notable national-scale interventions and argue that, through the contingent and chaotic play of events in the political sphere, market-oriented governance regimes for electricity have been weakened, and the issue of electricity decarbonisation has become ‘weaponised’ for electoral benefit. I explain how national political leadership in Australia has stepped in from a constitutionally-weak position to govern electricity under pressure for environmentally-driven adaptation. I show four statecraft techniques that reconstitute electricity in new ways: discursively linking electricity governance to socio-environmental futures; national interest framings that are weaponized for electoral gain; tactical governance through parliamentary compromise and appeasement; and jettisoning market logics in favour of state intervention. This study recognises the limits of centralized state-making under a Federalist system but shows the potential for statecraft to reshape scalar-territorial relations and strengthen the role of the central state vis-à-vis the market. Vital resources like electricity are not just struggled over but, under the right conditions, can come to shape political power. There is neither infinite potential for state rescaling through the performance of legitimacy, nor do rigid scalar hierarchies simply block reconfigurations of state power. To understand the potential for resource struggles to re-scale state power attention must be paid to the techniques of statecraft that support and undermine legitimacy.