4.4.2 Political systems

Sara M. Constantino, Viktoria Spaiser, Avit Bhowmik, Gianluca Grimalda, Steven R. Smith

Sara M. Constantino, Viktoria Spaiser, Avit Bhowmik, Gianluca Grimalda, Steven R. Smith

Key Messages

  • Political systems often reinforce existing social orders, but political action is crucial for significant and sustained progress towards sustainability.
  • Political interventions – such as policy and public investments – can support early change, create positive feedback loops and enable positive tipping in key subsystems. 
  • Political systems, despite being resistant to change, can also be tipped.
  • Civil society and social movements can build broad coalitions and mobilise the public, facilitating new policies and the tipping of incumbent political systems.

Recommendations

  • Pursue policies to facilitate positive social tipping through increasing returns, compensating losses, and building the autonomy and capacity of agents for change. 
  • Build international climate clubs to facilitate climate leadership and unlock deeper and broader global climate cooperation that can be amplified by international organisations.

Summary

In this subchapter we discuss the role of the political domain, both as an enabler of positive tipping within social systems and as a system that can itself be tipped. Political systems can enable change through new policies, investments and discourses. These measures can amplify positive feedbacks and enable new system trajectories, solidifying transformations and making them difficult to reverse. Political systems can also be tipped, either via internal, self-reinforcing dynamics or as a result of acute events (e.g. crises that change the priorities of the electorate). Tipping dynamics within the political system include abrupt changes in politics (e.g. change of leaders), policies (e.g. new laws and regulations), or polity (e.g. introduction of new political institutions). Social movements, civil society and strong interest groups can entrench the status quo or be an instigator of change in political systems.

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