When forging toward tipping points in the navigation phase, however, the
function of a paradigm also changes: it needs to reduce frictions and uncertainties
by enabling single pioneers and followers to see and understand their common will
and to highlight which regime changes align with the paradigm, thus helping the
pioneers scale or multiply to become the new normal.
The mainstream economic paradigm serves as a great example here. As long as it
remains a legitimate reference framework for development, conventional growth
solutions remain difficult to defeat. The science and models it informs, as the next
chapter will discuss, allow only for analyses and predictions that subjugate sustainable outcomes under the old economic growth development path. Or they
justify a continuation of this path in the short term because they predict that
changing course in the future will be less costly and thus a fairer allocation of costs
and benefits. It is only since the big financial crisis in 2008 that the credibility of
this paradigm and its linear extrapolations from historic trends have been severely
challenged, even in the corridors of power. Yet, until now no new paradigm has
found enough support to fill its place.
Kuhn stated that a new paradigm can only establish itself if it overcomes
stubborn adherences to intellectual vested interests. Political economists point out
that one should also be aware of practical vested interests when assessing why a
theoretical framework or the worldview it informs persist. In periods prior to tipping points, those individuals and groups benefiting most from a system’s development path have mainstream scientific evidence, canonized knowledge and public
discourse readily available to rationalize and justify the logic and merit of their path
over others.
The next 10–15 years will be very decisive for the outcome of this navigation
phase: stabilization around a new, consolidating paradigm, relapse into the old
dynamics with technological fixes and financialization, or even collapse because
this model has exhausted its adaptive capacities. Human history-making is an
emergent process of co-creation and political struggle, compromise and domination.
Yet, only if the stabilization phase is oriented around a shifted paradigm will the
new development dynamic of the system be radically different—or transformed. Put
differently: transformation means changing the default. Ideas and solutions that
have to justify their appropriateness and argue their legitimacy today will become
the new normal.
This chapter gave an overview of what different strands of transformation science offer in response to the question of how to strategically work toward the
transformative quality that the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda foresees.
This summary started fleshing out the way in which the different starting points of
STS, SES, and political economy research designs can be combined into very
insightful transformative science frameworks: concepts and heuristics for the
design and conduct of transformation processes. My own filter in selecting and
combining insights has been one that places human inspiration and will to act at the
origin of understanding and explaining SETS’s. By embedding humans into systemic models like the MLP and multi-phase concept we can see that even when we
are talking about global transformations, the source of intentional change is human
50
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research
function of a paradigm also changes: it needs to reduce frictions and uncertainties
by enabling single pioneers and followers to see and understand their common will
and to highlight which regime changes align with the paradigm, thus helping the
pioneers scale or multiply to become the new normal.
The mainstream economic paradigm serves as a great example here. As long as it
remains a legitimate reference framework for development, conventional growth
solutions remain difficult to defeat. The science and models it informs, as the next
chapter will discuss, allow only for analyses and predictions that subjugate sustainable outcomes under the old economic growth development path. Or they
justify a continuation of this path in the short term because they predict that
changing course in the future will be less costly and thus a fairer allocation of costs
and benefits. It is only since the big financial crisis in 2008 that the credibility of
this paradigm and its linear extrapolations from historic trends have been severely
challenged, even in the corridors of power. Yet, until now no new paradigm has
found enough support to fill its place.
Kuhn stated that a new paradigm can only establish itself if it overcomes
stubborn adherences to intellectual vested interests. Political economists point out
that one should also be aware of practical vested interests when assessing why a
theoretical framework or the worldview it informs persist. In periods prior to tipping points, those individuals and groups benefiting most from a system’s development path have mainstream scientific evidence, canonized knowledge and public
discourse readily available to rationalize and justify the logic and merit of their path
over others.
The next 10–15 years will be very decisive for the outcome of this navigation
phase: stabilization around a new, consolidating paradigm, relapse into the old
dynamics with technological fixes and financialization, or even collapse because
this model has exhausted its adaptive capacities. Human history-making is an
emergent process of co-creation and political struggle, compromise and domination.
Yet, only if the stabilization phase is oriented around a shifted paradigm will the
new development dynamic of the system be radically different—or transformed. Put
differently: transformation means changing the default. Ideas and solutions that
have to justify their appropriateness and argue their legitimacy today will become
the new normal.
This chapter gave an overview of what different strands of transformation science offer in response to the question of how to strategically work toward the
transformative quality that the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda foresees.
This summary started fleshing out the way in which the different starting points of
STS, SES, and political economy research designs can be combined into very
insightful transformative science frameworks: concepts and heuristics for the
design and conduct of transformation processes. My own filter in selecting and
combining insights has been one that places human inspiration and will to act at the
origin of understanding and explaining SETS’s. By embedding humans into systemic models like the MLP and multi-phase concept we can see that even when we
are talking about global transformations, the source of intentional change is human
50
2 What Political Economy Adds to Transformation Research