This conceptual paper applies a mobilization model to Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) in the energy sector. The goal is to synthesize aspects of sustainable transition theories with social movement theory to gain insights into how CAIs mobilize to bring about niche-regime change in the context of the sustainable energy transition. First, we demonstrate how energy communities, as a representation of CAIs, relate to social innovation. We then discuss how CAIs in the energy sector are understood within both sustainability transition theory and institutional dynamics theory. While these theories are adept at describing the role energy CAIs have in the energy transition, they do not yet offer much insight concerning the underlying social dimensions for the formation and upscaling of energy CAIs. Therefore, we adapt and apply a mobilization model to gain insight into the dimensions of mobilization and upscaling of CAIs in the energy sector. By doing so we show that the expanding role of CAIs in the energy sector is a function of their power acquisition through mobilization processes. We conclude with a look at future opportunities and challenges of CAIs in the energy transition.

This paper investigates the suitability of the community cooperatives (CC) model for the implementation of renewable energy communities (REC), as prescribed by art. 22 of EU Directive 2018/2001, and temporarily transposed into the Italian law by art. 42-bis of the Law Decree n. 162/2019. The hypothesis explored analyses the potential synergies between RECs and CC, based on their similarities. In particular, the article takes into consideration: the actors involved in both the RECs and the CCs; the geographical scope in which they develop, and the purposes that these two legal forms intended to achieve. Through a literature review and the analysis of EU, national and regional legislations, the paper aims at (1) clarifying the main features of RECs and the CCs in Italy; (2) exploring the main differences between CCs and the other legal forms of cooperative (e.g., mutual cooperative, cooperative benefit, etc.) and assessing the extent to which CCs are more suitable to implement renewable energy communities. As a result of the literature and regulatory review, several similarities between CCs and RECs can be detected, particularly, in reference to the strategic valorization of the cooperation between citizens and the local public entities. These similarities allow the authors to provisionally conclude that, in Italy, CCs may be adopted as a tool to implement RECs.

Energy communities (ECs), intended as collective action initiatives in the energy field involving citizens’ participation, have been gaining relevance for the past decades as an alternative way to organize the energy chain to challenge the incumbent system. With Europe’s recently adopted Clean Energy Package, ECs found a formal recognition by the European Union as potential actors of the transition of the energy system towards a wider and more decentralized use of renewable sources. Although the potential role of ECs in the transition is therefore hardly questionable, a thorough comprehension of the enabling factors that might foster their diffusion and scaling up is still lacking. Through a comparative analysis of the evolutionary trajectories in six EU countries regarding their energy systems, their regulatory frameworks and their historical evolution of ECs, namely through the example of cooperative models, this paper aims at providing some preliminary evidence about the factors and dynamics that seem to have played, and may play, a role in hampering or facilitating EC model diffusion. Attention is therefore specifically paid to three dimensions of analysis referring to: the energy mix and market structure; the institutional and policy landscape; the wider social attitudes towards environmental issues and cooperation among citizens. In addition to providing a wide comparison of different EU countries, the paper shows that the historical evolution pathways have to be carefully taken into account to understand what might trigger ECs exploitation in the EU.

Racism and racial prejudice, considered a relic of obsolete and outdated social systems, is emerging in the depths of ultra-modern Western societies with different characteristics from the past but with a surprising and worrying virulence. These waves of prejudice and racism testify to the many fears that fill the horizons of advanced societies, undermining not only their internal reliability, but also just their democratic settings. This paper presents a critical review of Islamophobia as a racial prejudice, showing that two main definitions are at work: Islamophobia as xeno-racism or linked to the so-called clash of civilizations. Then, it presents the outcomes coming from a Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) survey led among a representative sample of the Italian population (n = 1,523) on Antisemitic and Islamophobic attitudes. The cogency and structure of anti-Muslim public discourse and connected mass attitudes, revealed by our investigation, confirm the emergency of these two relevant dimensions of Islamophobia, which claim for a more accurate definition of Islamophobia. Moreover, the distribution of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attitudes illustrate an interesting overlapping of Islamophobia and Antisemitism which claims that racism is multi-targeted and that there is not so much options between Antisemitism and Islamophobia. Finally, we use three main variables—anomie, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism—as predictors of Islamophobia and Antisemitism. We tested the strength of these three predictors with the aid of path technique based on multiple regression analysis, which helps to determine the direct and indirect impacts of certain independent variables on dependent variables in a hypothetical causal system.

The categories of biopolitics and biopower were invented by Michel Foucault, who wanted to underline a shifting in state political power toward the caring of biological life of the entire social body. This transformation of political power allowed a combination of techniques that aimed to control the individual body and the standardised multitude of bodies. This paper analyses the biopolitical mechanisms and how did they work during the era of totalitarian states, and how do they act today. During the totalitarian era, biopolitics became a tool of surveillance and regulation of the social body, shifting toward racism. During the second half of the 20th century, biopolitics sought to minimise social risks. Criminal and underclass policies, as well as new genetics, are all aspects of the new authoritarian biopolitics. Far from being a neutral tool to improve people's well being, the spectre of eugenics casts a shadow over the new biopolitics.