From early on, reflexive governance approaches have been problematised for lacking explicit consideration of formal governance and decision-making structures. Developed over two decades ago, transition management is not an exception; it has been specifically critiqued for being democratically illegitimate and depoliticising issues. Contributing to these debates, this article develops a legitimacy framework for understanding how transition management practices can be legitimised within liberal democratic structures, while safeguarding their transformative potential, or, ‘radical core’, while navigating innovation capture. This framework guides a comparative analysis of six European cities, who employ transition management practices for developing decarbonisation roadmaps towards 2050. We discuss the emphasis on liberal democratic norms, the fuzziness of practices of participation and the closing down of policy options. We recommend the legitimacy framework to be used as a heuristic for reflexive governance, tool for explicating the conditionality of ‘radicality’ in transition management, and guide for designing accountability governance structures.

从一开始，反思性治理方法就因缺乏对正式治理和决策结构的明确考虑而存在问题。二十多年前发展起来的过渡管理也不例外。它被特别批评为民主非法和非政治化问题。为了促成这些辩论，本文开发了一个合法性框架，以了解如何在自由民主结构中使过渡管理实践合法化，同时保护其变革潜力，或“激进核心”，同时引导创新捕获。该框架指导对六个欧洲城市的比较分析，这些城市采用过渡管理实践来制定 2050 年的脱碳路线图。我们讨论了对自由民主规范的重视，参与实践的模糊性和政策选择的关闭。我们建议将合法性框架用作反思性治理的启发式方法，解释过渡管理中“激进性”条件的工具，以及设计问责制治理结构的指南。