Motivation

Strong and inclusive political institutions are not only a goal enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but also an enabler for the transformation to sustainability. It is thus key to capture institutional settings quantitatively to map out comprehensive pathways towards a sustainable future that cover the full SDG space. For such an interdisciplinary modelling effort (Soergel et al., 2021), we projected future trajectories of rule of law-developments as a proxy for institutional quality along a Sustainable Development Pathway (SDP) and contrasting Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), while drawing on V-Dem’s Equality before the law and individual liberty index (Coppedge et al., 2022; Pemstein et al., 2022).

Interesting patterns and trends

Our projections of institutional quality levels show future trajectories that are consistent with different scenario quantifications, as our projections rely on the economic and demographic trajectories of existing scenarios and historical patterns. Especially the positive development trends under a SSP1 scenario correspond to substantial – potentially unrealistic – improvements in the level of institutional quality in all world regions, while the global institutional quality trajectory along the SSP3 scenario settles at the highest value of the last years. The trajectory along the SSP2 scenario depicts a more moderate development of global institutional quality compared to SSP1 that would still imply profound changes in several world regions. These results point to possible underestimated political barriers to climate action in scenarios.

Future research agenda and implications for next generation of scenarios

Generally, the results of this modelling approach and of similar efforts can be seen as a first step towards a deeper integration of political developments into scenario modelling. However, for further exploration of the role of political development in long-term climate scenarios, research has to concentrate on the further development of modelling approaches of political factors, on joint modelling exercises of different modelling teams, and on connections of political with socioeconomic, technical, and environmental developments more in general (Leininger et al. forthcoming).

Figure 1: Global rule of law levels along SSP1, SSP2, and SSP3.

Note: The dotted-red line marks the change from historical to projected rule of law values. The index ranges from 0 to 1, with high values indicating a higher level of rule of law.

References