Theory Building Archives - Page 3 of 4

Why the World Feels so Unstable Right Now

Tim Palmer discusses the challenges of predicting events in nonlinear systems that, by nature, experience intermittent instabilities, as in the famous “butterfly effect”. Today, continued emissions are increasing the instabilities and uncertainties of climate change, while the economy and global health exhibit similar non-linearities. To deal with such uncertainties, he advocates ensemble prediction systems that […]

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On the ‘Polycrisis’ Part I: Issues in Abstract Conceptual Circumference

Bo Harvey examines origins and recent popularity of the polycrisis concept, then rebuts critiques of the concept by Noah Smith and Guney Isikara. In response to the latter, Harvey problematizes the reduction of all the world’s problems to “capitalism” by noting the wide breadth of that term. “In other words, I want to argue that

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Assessing Climate Change’s Contribution to Global Catastrophic Risk

The authors seek to build an analytical framework to help explore climate change’s contribution to Global Catastrophic Risk, including the role of its indirect and systemic impacts.

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The New Systems Reader

Solutions to single problems are never enough when crises stem from flaws in their hosts systems. The New Systems Reader brings together thinkers and activists to propose strategies for systemic change. “The starting point for this book is the inability of the traditional politics and policy to address fundamental challenges. Our goal is not to

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Cascading Regime Shifts Within and Across Scales

Where regime shifts (also known as critical transitions) are generally studied within a single ecosystem, the authors explore cascading regimes shifts across multiple ecosystems. Drawing on the Regime Shifts Database of over thirty well-documented regime shifts, they identify three causal pathways by which a regime shift in one ecosystem relates causally to a regime shift

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Classifying Global Catastrophic Risks

The authors introduce a classification framework for severe global catastrophic risk scenarios focusing on three dimensions: the critical systems affected, global spread mechanisms, and prevention and mitigation failures.

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Things are Different Today: The Challenge of Global Systemic Risks

The authors clarify the systemic risk concept using the Global Financial Crisis as an example. They explain how global systems involve micro and macro-dynamics interacting with each other and their environment, leading to stable periods and multiple possible future scenarios. Some of these scenarios may pose catastrophic risks, so that agents must confront systemic risk.

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Further Explication of the Mega-Crisis Concept and Feasible Responses

The article analyzes the concept of mega-crisis in comparison with crisis. It defines the mega-crisis as a “set of interacting crises that is severe in impact, complex in nature and global in fallout, with no distinct start and end points.” The authors conclude that stakeholder engagement, design-oriented planning, symbolic communications, and case study research are

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The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration

The authors update the ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs of socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750 to 2010, differentiating between wealthy, emerging, and other countries. Earth system indicators continue their long-term rise, with notable acceleration in the mid-20th century driven by human activities. The year 1950 therefore represents the most convincing start date for the Great

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Globally Networked Risks and How to Respond

Dirk Helbing demonstrates that “Systemic failures and extreme events are consequences of the highly interconnected systems and networked risks humans have created. When networks are interdependent this makes them even more vulnerable to abrupt failures.” He surveys key concepts in complexity and network science, draws upon examples of financial meltdowns and crowd disasters, and ultimately

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