The recent surge in populist politics in Europe and North America has challenged many of the policies aimed at advancing sustainable shifts. In this article we argue that this surge necessitates a rethinking of transition and transformation. The mainstream perspective on transitions understands it largely as the proliferation and upscaling of innovative technologies and policy frameworks. We recast sustainability transitions and transformations as continuous processes of assembly and disassembly, driven by rupture and instability. Rather than seeing populist resurgence as a “barrier” to change toward sustainability, we argue that these ruptures and instabilities should be considered inherent to the transformation process itself. The recent local election in Bergen, Norway, witnessed the surge of a new “anti-elite” political party dedicated to protesting road tolls that finance public transport. We hold that although such movements certainly pose challenges to sustainable transitions, they also provide opportunities for revitalizing democratic politics—moving beyond postpolitical managerial governance and inviting new concerns into local and urban transformation processes.

最近欧洲和北美民粹主义政治的激增对许多旨在推进可持续转变的政策提出了挑战。在本文中，我们认为这种激增需要重新思考转型和转型。关于转型的主流观点在很大程度上将其理解为创新技术和政策框架的扩散和升级。我们将可持续性转变和转型重新定义为由破裂和不稳定驱动的连续组装和拆卸过程。与其将民粹主义的复兴视为向可持续性转变的“障碍”，我们认为这些破裂和不稳定性应被视为转型过程本身所固有的。最近在挪威卑尔根举行的地方选举，目睹了一个新的“反精英”政党的兴起，该政党致力于抗议为公共交通提供资金的道路通行费。我们认为，尽管此类运动无疑对可持续转型提出了挑战，但它们也为振兴民主政治提供了机会——超越后政治管理治理，并在地方和城市转型过程中引入新的关注点。