title: Italian parliamentary debates on energy sustainability: How argumentative 'short-circuits' affect public engagement.
abstract: Public engagement is considered a crucial process in the transition towards sustainable energy systems. However, less space has been devoted to understand how policy makers and stakeholders view citizens and their relationship with energy issues. Nonetheless, together with technological advancements, policies and political debates on energy affect public engagement as well as individual practices. This article aims at tackling this issue by exploring how policy makers and stakeholders have socially constructed sustainable energy in Italian parliamentary debates and consultations during recent years (2009-2012). Results show that societal discourses on sustainable energy are oriented in a manner that precludes public engagement. The political debate is characterised by argumentative 'short-circuits' that constrain individual and community actions to the acceptance or the refusal of top-down decisions and that leave little room for community empowerment and bottom-up innovation.
authors.affiliation: Sapienza University of Rome, ItalyItalian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), ItalyUniversity of Padua, ItalySapienza University of Rome, Italy sonia.brondi@uniroma1.it.
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brondi
authors.affiliation: Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sarrica
authors.affiliation: Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Caramis
authors.affiliation: University of Padua, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Piccolo
authors.affiliation: Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Bruno M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Mazzara
mesh_terms: D003256:Community Participation; D058735:Environmental Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D035082:Federal Government; D007558:Italy; D011057:Politics; D059205:Renewable Energy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*
keywords: deficit-expertise themata; energy policy; hierarchic-egalitarian themata; models of public; public engagement; renewable energy technologies