This volume explores steering strategies and governance arrangements for sustainable development with a view to these problem dimensions. By combining theoretical reflections with insights from empirical research in European and American contexts, it maps out conditions and identifies approaches which both reflect the limits of steering and reveal options for constructively taking up the task of sustainable development in science and practice.

Editorial / Introduction 1. Steering for Sustainable Development: A Typology of Problems and Strategies with respect to Ambivalence, Uncertainty and Distributed Power Ambivalence of sustainability as a goal 2. Ambivalence, Sustainability and the Governance of Socio-Technical Transitions 3. The Futility of Reason: Incommensurable Differences Between Sustainability Narratives in the Aftermath of the 2003 San Diego Cedar Fire Bruce Goldstein Uncertainty About Socio-Ecological Dynamics 4. Working Towards Sustainable Development in the Face of Uncertainty and Incomplete Knowledge Armin Grunwald 5. Risk Management at the Science-Policy Interface: Two Contrasting Cases in the Field of Flood Protection in Germany 6. Managing Uncertainties in the Transition Towards Sustainability: Cases of Emerging Energy Technologies in the Netherlands Distribution Of Control Over Development 7. Who is in Charge here? Governance for Sustainable Development in a Complex World 8. Assessing the Dutch Energy Transition Policy: How Does it Deal with Dilemmas of Managing Transitions? Governing With Ambivalence, Uncertainty And Distributed Power 9. Contextualizing Reflexive Governance: the Politics of Dutch Transitions to Sustainability 10. Moving Outside or Inside? Objectification and Reflexivity in the Governance of Socio-Technical Systems