Navigating an Emerging Knowledge Structure: Where Does the EU Stand on Sustainable Finance?

To operationalize and visualize the emerging knowledge structure and to determine the position of the EU interventions in relation to a number of communities, a method that is able to display relational phenomena is required. This chapter outlines the theoretical background for understanding sustainable finance from a network perspective. The findings suggest that the EU’s efforts on sustainable finance are very cohesive and are closely related to the dominant actors of the transnational expert community on sustainable finance. By looking at the historical context of the actors with whom the EU partners in its knowledge production, it is possible to identify where it stands in the debate. Emergence is a concept from complexity theory that holds that a structure at the meso-level is constructed by the uncoordinated but related activities of actors at the micro-level.