Normative alignment and institutional resilience in legal governance of the European energy transition

In the current European energy transition we witness that the recent (and in part still ongoing) shift from energy provision by government enterprises to provision by private corporations (albeit not always fully privatized), is followed by a shift towards energy provision by private collectives (e.g. communities) - as the energy market does not seem to live up to the desired sustainability objectives. From a legal governance perspective this latest shift begs the question if upon the hybrid outcomes of the first shift (leading to 'regulated markets' as institutional environments in between public hierarchy and the free market) we find ourselves confronted by further hybridization, matching regulated markets to the institutional arrangements of civil society co-operatives. The paper focuses especially on the normative understanding of these institutional shifts, i.e. the related normative alignment or institutional resilience in terms of legal opportunities and constraints to these shifts. While ‘normative alignment' focuses attention to the legal liberties and legal abilities that, as legal opportunities, characteristically fit a particular institutional environment (including the use of green certificates), ‘institutional resilience’ is especially about the question to what extend normative institutional settings are legally constraining to certain governance arrangements, especially when either governments and/or corporations become strongly involved in community initiatives. The paper presents an analytical approach built upon institutional legal theory and geared towards supporting legal design in the field of the European energy transition.