205actors and the environment that enable institutional change to come about (Battilana et al., 2009). Related literature makes use of the term institutional work in order to illustrate and explain how all actors in fact both inﬂuence and are inﬂuenced by J.-E. Bergkvist et al.

206institutions on a more constant basis (e.g., Garud & Karnoe, 2003). Among the core ideas of this literature, relevant for this chapter, is the observation that change agency requires both a certain degree of power and inﬂuence, and a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the current situation. Therefore, we should not expect to ﬁnd change agents at the top of a hierarchy in an industry (regime) because they have fewer incentives to challenge the current situation, and neither at the bottom of the same hierarchy, because they have limited inﬂuence. Thus, change agents are most likely found in the mid-level of hierarchies. Below is a condensed review of some of the core mechanisms upon which these ideas are based, adapted to the speciﬁc context of innovation and system transformation.

3.3 Resistance and Regulatory Capture

The emergence of a more signiﬁcant innovation (and subsequent system transformation) is contingent upon the ability of actors to either inﬂuence institutions and thus function as institutional entrepreneurs or the ability of vested interests to stop such inﬂuence from taking place. The political economy literature provides insight into the workings of such negotiation processes. Here, it is assumed that various interest groups exert pressure on both the political process and informal rules (Epstein, 1980). Models of rentseeking behavior often assume that vested interests have stronger incentives than the general public to inﬂuence policymakers. With more ﬁnancial and relational resources, larger incumbent organizations are, according to these theories, more likely to gain the upper hand in the policymaking process and consequently, smaller organizations introducing radical innovations that may distort the positions of established players are likely to be unsuccessful. The costs of such dysfunctions in the political system are distributed over time and over an entire population, and hence, resistance is likely to be limited. This pattern is also at times referred to as “regulatory capture,” which suggests that established, resourceful interest groups can captivate the regulatory process and inﬂuence it in their favor at the expense of others (Mokyr, 1994). As a consequence of this unequal distribution of power and