| Much has been written in the last years about the notion of a transition to a sustainable development. Lacking, however, is a clear theoretical micro perspective on what causes transitions, what prevents them from occurring, or what prevents them from going in a particular, desired direction. Most suggested frameworks are sketchy and purely conceptual in nature. The proposed study tries to offer insight into the specific microlevel mechanisms of transitions by taking evolutionary economics as a starting point for the analysis. This is motivated by the fact that evolutionary economics is capable of explaining and modelling structural changes (van den Bergh et al., 2005). It is therefore able to shed light on the framing of management and policy rules aimed at fostering environmental innovations and transitions. The approach will result in one or more formal evolutionary models of transitions and their management, using multi-agent modelling techniques. Central notions coming from evolutionary theory that will be included in the analysis are diversity, selection, innovation, recombination, imitation, isolation, diffusion and bounded rationality. Particular attention will be given to lock-in, path-dependence, co-evolution and group selection. Especially the latter two elements have received hardly any attention so far in formal modelling. Possibly, also the notion of power will be studied. |
