Negotiating the Descriptive–Normative Frontier of Complexity Research in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This mini-review article offers a commentary on a singular analytical problem faced by legal scholars who use complexity theory and methods in legal research on climate change and the “Anthropocene”. It positions such research as a subset of complexity scholarship in law, which is generally faced with the methodological and analytical challenge of negotiating and reconciling empirical description with normative prescription. It argues that this challenge is particularly acute for legal scholars writing on climate change and the Anthropocene. Using examples from scholars writing about “Earth systems law,” it demonstrates how a heavy reliance on complexity-based empirical data as a source material for normative claim-making can distract scholars from important but difficult questions about normative legitimacy and how legal change happens at multiple levels. The special epistemological challenges posed by climate change and the Anthropocene should demand that scholars writing in this domain be especially mindful and explicit on how they link complexity descriptions to the normative claims they make, both for the sake of scientific credibility as well as for the legitimacy and viability of their propositions.

Interactions within climate policyscapes: a network analysis of the electricity generation space in the United Kingdom, 1956–2022

“…As such, they should be studied as part of a mix or policyscape rather than as single entities (Gunningham and Sinclair, 1999;del Río and Cerdá, 2017;Kern et al, 2019;Rosenbloom et al, 2020a). Researching systems of policies requires understanding the interplay amongst policies, which echoes network theories from complexity sciences (Pattberg and Widerberg, 2019;Leach, 2021). Importantly, the assessment of mixes or policyscapes is not the equivalent of merging the assessments of the policies comprising the system (Orsini et al, 2013;Capano and Howlett, 2020).…”

“…There is burgeoning work that employs network theories to analyse Earth system governance by conceptualising socio-institutional structures as systems (Duit et al, 2010;Kim, 2013;Morin et al, 2017;Schlüter et al, 2023). It builds upon the argument that the architecture governing climate change mitigation is a complex (Macintosh and Wilkinson, 2016;Biermann and Kim, 2020;Kim, 2020;Leach, 2021). Within a complex system, institutions are autonomous elements that interact with each other, contributing to emergent behaviours with non-linear impacts on climate change mitigation (Ebbesson, 2010;Leach, 2021;Estrada, 2023).…”

“…Applying this theory, Earth system governance 2 scholars argue for the importance of painting the macro-picture of institutions impacting climate action. This step is crucial to understand how the components of a socio-institutional system (such as policy systems) co-exist together (Young, 2010;Macintosh and Wilkinson, 2016;Pattberg and Widerberg, 2019;Biermann and Kim, 2020;Hickmann et al, 2020;Leach, 2021). Focusing solely on policies explicitly intended as "climate policies" by policymakers offers a skewed picture, limiting our knowledge of how jurisdictions comprehensively address climate change mitigation with a broader set of policies (Capano and Howlett, 2020).…”

“…Applying network analysis to climate change governance is a promising avenue to explore the policy architecture at multiple governance scales. A growing number of studies employ this method (Kim, 2013;Pattberg and Widerberg, 2015;Milhorance et al, 2020a;Leach, 2021). There are calls to pursue such research also at other governance scales (Pattberg and Widerberg, 2019).…”

“…As such, rather than siloing policies supporting or limiting mitigation, we respond to these calls by applying ecological epistemology to the study of institutions. So, we analysed both policies as a single policy system populated as a large-N study (Leach, 2021). We consider the overlap-interactions between policies and conceptualise the policy landscape as a heterogeneous space with a diverse policy population.…”