Prospects of modelling societal transitions: Position paper of an emerging community

TLDR

Societal transitions involve multiple actors, changes in institutions, values and technologies, and interactions across multiple sectors and scales. The paper argues that the societal transitions field would benefit from broader uptake of modelling approaches and demonstrates how modelling can enhance understanding and support stakeholders in steering transitions. The authors discuss the benefits of modelling large societal systems, illustrate two model applications, and outline limitations and an agenda for future work, including better cooperation, stronger interaction with scholars and stakeholders, and exploration of additional modelling approaches.

Abstract

Societal transitions involve multiple actors, changes in institutions, values and technologies, and interactions across multiple sectors and scales. Given this complexity, this paper takes on the view that the societal transitions research field would benefit from the further maturation and broader uptake of modelling approaches. This paper shows how modelling can enhance the understanding of and support stakeholders to steer societal transitions. It discusses the benefits modelling provides for studying large societal systems and elaborates on different ways models can be used for transitions studies. Two model applications are presented in some detail to illustrate the benefits. Then, limitations of modelling societal transitions are discussed, which leads to an agenda for future activities: (1) better cooperation in the development of dynamic models, (2) stronger interaction with other transition scholars and stakeholders, and (3) use of additional modelling approaches that we think are relevant to and largely unexplored in transitions studies.