It's political institutionalization,not tipping points,that explain transformations

Abstract

This article discusses Hansson et al.'s argument that the metaphor of societal tipping points inadequately captures processes of social and political change. While agreeing that equating societal with climatic tipping points risks depoliticization and oversimplification, the article contends that Hansson et al. underestimate the transformative potential of political institutions. It proposes institutionalization—defined as enduring, path-shaping change in norms, rules, organizations, and implementation practices—as a more accurate framework for understanding how change unfolds. Unlike tipping-point metaphors, institutionalization can highlight power dynamics, incremental evolution, reversibility, and diverse national trajectories. The article illustrates this through the global rise of solar photovoltaics, showing how technological and economic shifts interact with varied institutional configurations in countries such as India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil. These cases demonstrate that energy transformations are politically mediated rather than cascading, single-threshold events. Institutionalization thus offers a more nuanced and hopeful perspective than the notion of tipping points.

The article by Hansson et al. (Hansson et al., 2025) convincingly summarizes the current debate on tipping points. It makes clear that the metaphor of societal tipping points differs from the original notion of cascading, irreversible effects in the climate system in essential ways. The authors are critical of conceptualizing societal tipping points as being the positive social and political answer to potentially catastrophic natural tipping points. This leads them to conclude that the two should not be “equated” for two interrelated reasons. First, climate tipping points might be “diluted and trivialized”, leading to the illusion of easy techno-fixes. Second, the notion of tipping points “fosters depoliticization” and “posits incremental change as adequate”. Hence, they claim with a critical undertone that the “suggested race between negative (ecological) and positive (societal) tipping points inspires hope in the established political institutions to deliver triumph”.

In the following, I will take issue with this second conclusion of Hansson et al. While the authors are right to point out the dangers of depoliticization, they underestimate the transformative potential of changing political institutions. A focus on institutionalization rather than tipping points provides a more accurate picture of how social and political change occurs. Analyzing institutional change also allows us to evaluate the potential positive developments that current (energy) transformations bring about, without naively denying the threats that can arise from natural tipping points. Furthermore, such a political understanding of change resolves some of the discursive tensions Hansson et al. identify in their analysis. To advance these claims, I first define what I mean by political institutionalization and how it can be operationalized. In a second step, I provide a snapshot of how political institutionalization of solar energy is happening in emerging economies of the global South. ¹

From tipping points to institutionalization

When discussing political and social tipping points, Hansson et al. follow the literature that either focuses on behavioral change at the micro-level or on political agreements at the macro-level, such as international political organizations. They argue that a societal tipping point is reached when a certain number of citizens accept the necessity of changing their lifestyles, or when an international agreement on temperature is reached. Such a convergence on the micro- or macro-level, however, is hardly ever a sufficient cause for a transformation to occur and endure. If at all, such developments—similar to technological tipping points—constitute a necessary element for a political process to start at the meso-level. This is where institutions come in, which can be defined as “a set of rules, formal or informal, that actors generally follow, whether for normative, cognitive, or material reasons” (Hall and Soskice, 2001: 9). Considering how new rules are embedded in institutions is relevant because, most of the time, neither large-scale behavioral change at the individual level nor single political agreements at the macro level lead to structural transformations that endure over time and space. Ultimately, the social world does not evolve in a cascade, and political change has to be locked in to become powerful. In short, for transformative change to occur, institutionalization must take place.

Institutionalization, then, is a dynamic, procedural outcome characterized by enduring change in formal and informal political practices, norms, and rules. Technical innovations, individual behavioral change, governance experiments, and legal agreements of all sorts can lead to such institutionalization, but should not be taken synonymously. Most of the time, institutional change is indeed relatively incremental, as Hansson et al. claim. Still, over time, such evolutionary developments can make a huge difference, as, for example, the literature on the legalization of human rights has shown (Abbott et al., 2000). But the example shows that institutionalization is not a one-way street and that backlashes are possible. Similarly, recent developments in the US demonstrate that a reversal of political and legal institutions can happen quickly and have far-reaching consequences. But then again, we do not see a complete void but rather that new practices are being institutionalized. Hence, MAGA is on its way to not only being a highly destructive social movement but also being embedded in the US governmental system.

Coming to the policy field of (energy) transformation, research emphasizes the importance of new institutional arrangements and of the necessity of institutionalization (Dubash, 2021; Marquardt et al., 2023). But how can such a process be operationalized? Political institutionalization occurs through four dimensions: (1) discursive change; (2) policy change; (3) organizational change; and (4) implementation practices. These can be compared over time, and the resulting process unfolds along a continuum, ranging from no or minimal change at one end to significant, radical, or even transformative change at the other. Whether such changes occur depends on the “normative, cognitive, or material reasons” that Hall and Soskice highlighted in their definition above. In other words, questions of power are part of what gets institutionalized, how fast, when, how, and to whose benefit. Institutions thus indeed lock in a hegemonic practice for a while and resemble a depoliticized technofix. However, disruptions of various sorts and new experiments will challenge such constellations, and institutionalization is, per se, and rightly so, a highly politicized process, which never ends. ² This seems to be a more fruitful way to conceptualize social and political processes than the notion of tipping point, and the case of solar photovoltaics (PV) can serve as an illustrative example.

Institutionalizing transformations – solar politics in the global south

The massive build-up of solar PV is mentioned as tipping points by Hansson et al., and indeed, the changes we have witnessed over the last years are awe-inspiring. Solar PV capacity grew by almost 600 GW in 2024 and will exceed that amount in 2025. Hence, about 80 percent of the increase in renewable electricity capacity comes from solar PV installations alone (IEA, 2025: 11). This implies that currently, more than 8.8 percent of global electricity generation comes from solar PV—up from 1 percent in 2015 (Ember, 2025). Although current US policies have slowed momentum, the International Energy Agency still expects more than 3500 GW of solar to be added annually until 2030. We are thus on a trajectory to fulfill the promise made at COP 28 to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. Hence, solar energy will dominate the electricity market by 2030 and will potentially become the “largest source not just of electricity but of all energy” by the 2040s (The Economist, 2024). This massive increase does not imply that the age of fossil fuels has come to an end. Instead, we witness another layer of energy use and production on top of the one from coal, gas, and oil. Nevertheless, the tides have turned, and solar is by now the cheapest way to produce electrical energy almost anywhere in the world.

What are the reasons behind this transformation? Two important and interrelated aspects are technological developments and price decreases, as solar panels have not only become more efficient but also extremely cheap. The latter is particularly due to a massive rise in production capacity in China, which dominates the global solar PV supply chain and floods the market with cheap panels, accounting for about 80 percent of global supply. Describing this development as a technological and economic tipping point captures part of what is going on. However, there is more to the story as we see a highly uneven uptake of solar PV within and across states. Take India, which by now has installed the third largest solar PV capacity in the world, often through large-scale solar fields. These installations are not evenly distributed across the Indian continent but are concentrated in some states. This fact can be explained by analyzing the country's institutional setup, which allowed Modi's BJP party to align with major industrial players to advance the country's solar mission in a state capitalist manner (Busby and Shidore, 2021; Marquardt et al., 2024). Indonesia has similar potential for solar PV, but has done little to realize it. The reason for the slow uptake is neither technological nor related to solar PV being too expensive. It instead concerns the dominance of coal interests in Indonesian politics, which act as veto players, obstructing the institutionalization of solar PV (Fünfgeld, 2022; Marquardt and Nasiritousi, 2022). Another example is South Africa, which has only very recently joined the solar PV party and is now heavily investing, despite the state-owned monopoly, Eskom, having long opposed renewable energy. This change of mind is due to the realization that solar PV could offer a way out of the massive energy crisis the country faces, as well as to strong international donor support in the context of the Just Energy Transition Programs. Similarly, in Brazil, solar PV is now growing massively, but much more in a bottom-up fashion, relying on civil society actors, municipalities, etc.

The lesson that the above examples provide is that, first of all, there is no such thing as a single tipping point that sets an irreversible trend in motion. Otherwise, we would see much stronger solar PV uptake in Indonesia and no slowdown in the US. Second, institutionalization plays a role: discourses have to change, organizations have to be established, policies have to be embedded, and implementation measures have to be put in place so that transformative change eventually happens. Transformations do not cascade; they result from political processes. Third, and academically most important, there is no single pathway to successful institutionalization; instead, we witness various combinations of how specific factors or conditions interact. The metaphor of a tipping point can hardly capture such equifinality. Hansson et al. are thus right in questioning the notion of societal tipping points. However, they underestimate the transformative potential that sometimes manifests as institutional change, leading to a solar revolution and offering us a glimpse of hope.