The policymaker’s complexity toolkit

Price, James; Haynes, Philip; Darking, Mary; Stroud, Julia; Warren-Adamson, Christopher; Ricaurte, Carla

doi:10.4337/9781782549529.00013

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The field of complexity studies is represented by nascent theoretical and applied work spread both wide and thin across the academy (for example Cairney & Geyer, 2015;Chettiparamb, 2014;Kurtz & Snowden, 2003;Morin, 2006;Price et al, 2015;Walby, 2007;Wells, 2013). There is no 'unifying' theory of complexity (Chu, Strand, & Fjelland, 2003); it is better understood as a series of perspectives and interpretations drawing from a developing set of concepts and principles.…”

Section: Applying Complexity Studies To the Khanyisa Casementioning

confidence: 99%

A complex systems view of climate and development issues in South African coal power expansion

Tyler

Cohen

2021

J. energy South. Afr.

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The implementation of climate change policy in South Africa inevitably requires decision-makers to navigate issues of development. This paper explores some of the implications of this requirement by examining the case of a proposed new independent coal-fired power producing plant, Khanyisa, in the province of Mpumalanga from the perspective of complexity studies, an emerging transdisciplinary field. Complexity thinking re-casts the Khanyisa project in a whole-system view, encouraging an active consideration of scale, perspectives, different knowledges, and cumulative impacts. In so doing, tensions both between and within dimensions of climate mitigation and development are quickly revealed, a complexity which is theorised in complexity studies as the raw material for systemic transformation. This whole-system conceptualisation also undermines incremental and relative arguments that Khanyisa mitigates greenhouse gas emissions. Further, the complex systemic property of non-linearity suggests that the Khanyisa decision is more significant than its power generation capacity indicates. Attention to the conceptual simplification inherent in ‘development’ highlights what is lost through such simplification, as well as what is gained, and by whom. Finally, complexity thinking foregrounds the multiple scales at which the systemic climate mitigation and development implications of Khanyisa play out. Currently there is very little policy-making capacity nationally, regionally or in eMalahleni to look at alternatives, or ‘spaces of possibility’ through the complexity lens for both development and climate mitigation. This case argues that new policy processes are needed, which go far beyond policy and regulatory processes steeped in path dependencies and incrementalism. Highlights• The case reveals the complex entanglement of climate and development issues as raw material for systemic transformation. • A whole system and scalar conceptualisation, paying attention to non-linearities, and the exercise of power through simplifications suggest productive areas of focus for policymakers• New policy processes are needed, which go far beyond policy and regulatory processes steeped in path dependencies and incrementalism.

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Section: Applying Complexity Studies To the Khanyisa Casementioning

confidence: 99%

A complex systems view of climate and development issues in South African coal power expansion

Tyler

Cohen

2021

J. energy South. Afr.

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“…Systems theories have seen a resurgence since Barton introduced the Health Map, with new proposed applications in urban planning and public policy (Cairney 2012, Price et al 2015, Chettiparamb 2019. Early urban systems modelling approaches were largely dismissed by planners, and Barton noted these limitations (e.g.…”

Section: The Current Landscape Of Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards healthy urbanism: inclusive, equitable and sustainable (THRIVES) – an urban design and planning framework from theory to praxis

Pineo

2020

Cities & Health

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The globally distributed health impacts of environmental degradation and widening population inequalities require a fundamental shift in understandings of healthy urbanismincluding policies and decisions that shape neighbourhood and building design. The built environment tends to disadvantage or exclude women, children, the elderly, disabled, poor and other groups, starting from design and planning stages through to occupation, and this results in avoidable health impacts. Although these concepts are not new, they are rapidly emerging as built environment research and practice priorities without clear understanding of the interconnected aims of healthy environments that are sustainable, equitable and inclusive. This article promotes a new framework -Towards Healthy uRbanism: InclusiVe Equitable Sustainable (THRIVES)that extends previous conceptualisations and reorients focus towards the existential threat of environmental breakdown and the social injustice created through inequitable and exclusive urban governance and design processes and outcomes. The Framework was developed through synthesising knowledge from research and practice, and by testing this new conceptualisation in a participatory workshop. Ongoing research is exploring implementation of the Framework in practice. If widely adopted, this Framework may contribute towards achieving the goals of sustainable development through a focus on increasing human health and wellbeing in urban development.

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“…See for example Durlauf (1997); Hayden (2006); Salzano and Colander (2007); OECD (2009); Geyer and Rihani (2010); Room (2011); Dolphin and Nash (2012); Durlauf (2012); Fontana (2012); Morçöl (2012); Wilson and Gowdy (2013); Colander and Kupers (2014); Fontana and Terna (2015); Geyer and Cairney (2015) and Price et al (2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Policy and state in complexity economics

Elsner¹

2019

A Modern Guide to State Intervention

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Mainstream policy conceptions and prescriptions appear to be normative postulations for a permanent 'state planning for more market', mainly organizing 'de-regulation cum privatization', rather than deliberate sets of conditional recommendations based on pondering alternative potentialities and paths. Such crude normativity has dominated the world since the late 1970s. Furthermore, it is usually put forth tacitly, due to the attitude of T-in a ('There-is-no-alternative!'). The economic conception behind such crypto-normativity is the idea of some unique (and optimal) equilibrium benchmark (point or path) related to a 'perfect market' that is derived from a rather simplistic model. The latter is custom-made to allow for analytically tractable solutions, with its 'representative agents', 'optimal' information and decisions, suitable functional forms, and equilibrating mechanisms, allowing a predetermined equilibrium, and thus a teleological attitude, which Veblen had already criticized (Veblen 1898; Foster 2006; also Fontana 2010; van den Berg 2016). Stochastic versions, such as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, presume random stochastic processes (the notorious 'Brownian motion'). Related statistical distributions of values and event sizes are thus always considered normal distributions. And rational expectations of clear-cut (and existing!) mean values (and comfortable variances as calculable 'risk') can then be used as justifications (Kirman 2016). This, however, is only warranted either in simple (as indicated above) or in non-organized complex systems (Weaver 1948), the latter having great numbers of identical particles, whose properties and motions can be assumed to average each other out, as in early 19th-century physics for the prototypical gas in a container under static conditions. This presumption has also been used in stochastic neoclassical models, and related financial-sector models pre-2008 (the Nobel-laureated models of Black, Scholes and Merton). Economies, including the financial sector, however,

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The policymaker’s complexity toolkit

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

A complex systems view of climate and development issues in South African coal power expansion

A complex systems view of climate and development issues in South African coal power expansion

Towards healthy urbanism: inclusive, equitable and sustainable (THRIVES) – an urban design and planning framework from theory to praxis

Policy and state in complexity economics

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