Post-Coal Fantasies: An Actor-Network Theory-Inspired Critique of Post-Coal Development Strategies in the Jiu Valley, Romania

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.      I would suggest the authors follow the following (minor) improvements:   i. IMO, the location map would need to include the location of the case study regions not only in relation to Romain, but also in relation to its wider European context (including some administrative references that may help understand the policy/administrative scale of analysis, such as NUTS/LAU)  

2.        I would insist on including a graphical synthesis of the research method and stages followed in their sequence. This is extremely useful for the reader to be able to ascertain the overall logic and replicability of the overall research process.

3.      Cross-scalar governance is a key concept that seems to be neglected from this article, focusing exclusively on place-based (i.e. local) actions/policies. I would suggest expanding on the relevance of multi-scalar decision-making, including coherence, trade-offs, and synergies. A better description of the diverse methods employed and participants engaged is required.

It is not clear, however, what the connection of these problems is with the placed based theory and who is responsible for these weaknesses. The central or regional level? For example, in the assumption of a purely top-down approach that would work effectively? In other words, is the responsibility for problematic planning goes to central planning or it is the result of the inadequacy of local players? To put it differently, is it the outcome of supra-regional interest (i.e. energy sector elite) or the inability of local actors to resist these logics?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on the actor network theory, this paper systematically researches Romania's energy utilization structure and strategy in different historical stages, and analyzes the key points of Romania's energy utilization structure transformation in the post-coal period. Under the background of global warming and the energy revolution, the contents of manuscript fit the needs of the international community and have some enlightening significance for the transformation of global energy utilization. Nevertheless, the manuscript still has room for further improvement. It is suggested to modify and improve it from the following aspects:

1. the manuscript does not systematically sort out the current research literature in related fields. It is suggested that the author should add a summary of relevant research on energy utilization transformation in the part of introduction;

2. the author also needs to further clarify the contribution and innovation of the research. It is suggested to discuss from two aspects: first, compared with the existing research, what is the theoretical innovation of this paper; Second, explain what effect it has for the current global energy utilization transformation and environmental protection.

3. it is suggested that the author add a discussion on the social and economic development of the six cities in the "3. methodology and case description" section, and explain the sources of information and data used in this article.

4. the lessons of "5. conclusions" is very important. It is suggested to add the content of the last paragraph. Can you consider discussing the relevant experience and enlightenment from a broader perspective or a global scale?

5. it is suggested to adjust the format of references according to the requirements of this journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear colleagues, the topic of your paper seems  interesting. Language is clear and several papers have been quoted in order to link your tell toexistign investigations.

Anyway I suggest to make the paper supported not only by some data: it could be useful to remind possible conclusion of various scholar, involved in more quantitative analyses related to sociological interpretation of your text. Some questions, for instance, can be described with quantitative information (statistics), just to relate some phenomena that can have a common origin, or path. Without some statistics, the paper seems to miss the quantitative dimension  of linkage between social evolution, development as regards industrial production, technologies and human works: If you consider useful the thoughts in this speech, maybe you can improve, easily your paper.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

For the last couple of decades, mining regions across the CEECs were heavily overlooked especially by their national governments. Due to the radical political change on the EU level such as the so-called Green deal and related financial mechanism (Just Transition Fund), we can observe their comeback to the political agenda. Therefore, research on this specific type of region is needed, because it can help to better understand future challenges in their sustainable transition. For this reason, this paper has merit and very high social relevance. I must admit, I was looking forward to reading this paper. However, the longer I read the paper, the bigger were my concerns about it. There are quite a lot of problems, but I would like to mention just a few of them, which are as follows. Firstly, one of the main aims of the paper is to provide, according to the authors, a broader lesson, which could be drawn for similar processes (regions) in CEECs. With all respect to the authors, it´s hard to identify these lessons, there few sentences, which are rather shallow. Further, the existing knowledge about mining regions, not only from CEECs is almost neglected, instead some literally weird citation is used such as “The mono-industrial towns of the Jiu Valley were all local instantiations of the translation of coal-based development, in other words, copycat models of the same mining town template, being each of them structured around an individual mine. They all had similar structures with no complementarity among them [55].” Maybe I´m wrong, but I don’t think, that quoted article deals either with mining towns or structurally/economically similar cities. 

Secondly, the authors analyzed the JVS (the approach to this analysis is not presented), just based on the number of occurrences of selected words, but not on the allocation for selected actions. Such an approach seems to be a little bit purposive. 

Thirdly, I really appreciate the application of ANT, but in this case, at least in my view, it doesn’t work. Additionally, I miss some own data collection. 

To sum up, the paper has merit, but the clear message and contribution are missing. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am satisfied with the Authors' responses to my comments. And the version is okay for publication