Political Futures in Climate Scenarios (PoliClim)

Political institutions are a key factor for the success of global sustainability policy, yet they are only limitedly considered quantitatively in current climate and sustainability scenarios. PoliClim contributes to cloing this gap by further developing political science models and linking them with REMIND, the influential integrated climate-economic model of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Project Lead:
Julia Leininger

Elmar Kriegler (PIK)

Project Team:
Christopher Wingens

Financing:
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

Time frame:
2026 - 2028 / ongoing

Co-operation Partner:

Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK)

Project description

Realistic long-term scenarios are necessary to effectively combat climate change. Current quantitative scenarios generated with so-called Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) focus heavily on techno-economic factors. Political factors, such as the quality of state institutions, play only a secondary role. However, institutional challenges have recently been identified as one of the greatest concerns for the feasibility of climate and sustainability scenarios, as highlighted in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

PoliClim addresses this gap. In this joint project by IDOS and PIK, political science concepts and data are systematically linked with climate modeling. The project investigates how political institutions – through factors such as the rule of law and institutional capacity – influence the transformation toward sustainability as either “enablers” or “barriers”. In doing so, PoliClim makes a decisive contribution to the scientific foundation and realism of future scenarios. It aims to contribute to a more reliable foundation for decision-making in international climate policy, as called for in the latest IPCC reports.

The project pursues three central objectives:

  • Refinement of scenario narratives: Existing climate scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, SSPs) are refined based on political science concepts of the rule of law, institutional capacity, and accountability.
  • Development of a dynamic institutional model to project future development paths of political institutions worldwide until the year 2100.
  • Model integration: Definition of interfaces to link these political projections with PIK’s IAM model REMIND and investigate their influence on transformation dynamics, such as investment conditions for renewable energy.

Publications