4.4.2.2 Political systems can enable (or dampen) social tipping

The political system is a key cross-cutting force in driving or preventing rapid social change. Political systems and institutional settings can be drivers of rapid, nonlinear change in other subsystems (e.g. transition to renewable energy) by setting the rules and regulations that govern society but also by providing capital to different sectors, building out the capacity of relevant agencies, incentivising investment of private capital, investing in public goods such as research and development into new, risky or underprovided technologies, subsidising ‘desirable’ goods or taxing ‘undesirable’ ones, or through the discourse they promote and public education and communication efforts, which can in turn create new social norms. The state can thus play an ‘entrepreneurial’ role by facilitating technological breakthroughs and transformative innovation (Mazzucato, 2011, 2015). 

Innovation-focused public interventions can act as enablers of social tipping by fostering technological progress and workforce development, potentially altering public sentiment and increasing political will for sustainable policies, while ensuring a just transition and addressing opposition to change through compensation for those adversely affected. The impacts of such public interventions can be both direct and indirect. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, which includes $369bn in funding to tackle climate change, much of it directed at renewable energy investments, is also driving indirect change and positive feedbacks by catalysing private-sector investments, the development of new, cheaper green technologies, and policymaking in other countries. This echoes related work, which shows that the adoption of carbon pricing in one country can explain its subsequent adoption in others (Linsenmeier et al., 2023). 

Indeed, networked or polycentric forms of governance may support rapid social change by creating interdependence across locations and the potential for positive feedbacks as new innovations and policies take hold (Chapin, 2021). For example, cities involved in programmes such as ICLEI and C40 Cities have come together around the goal of sustainability, deliberately creating global city networks to foster rapid social change through policy experimentation, capacity building and the diffusion of information and innovations. (Bhowmik et al., 2020). 

Political systems can of course also dampen feedbacks, limit climate action and reinforce the status quo – as is evident in sizeable fossil fuel subsidies and tax credits, limited renewable energy infrastructure, and lack of a meaningful carbon tax across countries. This may happen in part because of the checks and balances built into democratic systems, but also because those in power serve limited terms and so focus on shorter-term outcomes in their policymaking, have an incentive to respond to present constituents rather than future generations or populations in other locations, often have vested interests in current systems, including fossil fuel-based energy systems, and face intense lobbying from the oil and gas industry, among others (Köhler et al., 2019; Besley and Persson, 2022). Further, politicians may perceive constituents to have limited desire for climate policy (Kneuer, 2012; Stokes, 2016; Willis, 2018) due to widespread misperceptions of public sentiment and large silent majorities and vocal dissenting minorities (Mildenberger and Tingley, 2019). Different institutional forms or regimes determine the distribution of power between government, businesses and publics, and incentivise different coalition-building strategies and policy-shaping efforts (Meckling and Karplus, 2023). 

Political systems can thus enable or impede rapid social change and positive social tipping in other subsystems. Ultimately, climate politics are distributive politics, resulting in political battles over who reaps the benefits and who bears the costs of climate policy (Meckling and Karplus, 2023). Strategic policy design should thus include both measures to enable desired change in key subsystems, such as the renewable energy sector, and to mitigate impeding factors, including backlash from key constituents, as enumerated below:

• Identify policies with concentrated benefits but diffuse costs. Rooftop solar panel subsidies, for example, have concentrated benefits for homeowners and solar panel manufacturers and installers, while the costs are spread across taxpayers.
• Link climate policy with popular and salient issues. The expansion of renewable energy production through wind and solar, for example, reduces the dependence on fossil fuels and Green House Gases (GHG) emissions but also increases energy independence and security.
• Combine policies that impose visible/concentrated costs with compensation mechanisms that create visible/concentrated benefits. Carbon fee and dividend schemes, for example, require companies to pay a fee based on their emissions, which is returned to the public in the form of dividends or rebates, compensating for higher prices. Another example is strategic workforce training and placement for those left structurally unemployed due to a transition away from fossil fuels.
• Ensure policy durability by building positive feedbacks and path dependencies into the policy design. Sequence when benefits or costs are introduced, such as subsidising costs until new technologies take hold, and providing benefits to key political groups. 
• Ensure state capacity and autonomy to enforce policies. To accelerate the build-out of clean energy infrastructure, the capacity of permitting agencies to efficiently and effectively assess projects could be increased through larger staff, better training and more power to advance processes (Bozuwa and Mulvaney, 2023).