Understanding normative change to address the climate emergency (Renewal)

The scale and pace of transformation required to mitigate climate change is a huge challenge. Addressing this challenge requires social change – a change in social norms, behavioural change, a change in shared future visions, and a change in political decision-making. For climate mitigation missions to be successful – such as achieving net zero by 2050 – societies need to rally behind necessary but, often in the short-term at least, unpopular policies. This challenge is exacerbated by increasing polarisation and declining trust in politics across countries. This fellowship extension will build on insights gained during the first phase of the research which demonstrated the transformational potential that climate movements can have in affecting social and political change and the potential of moral norms for accelerating climate action. But the research also showed how climate change threat can lead to dysfunctional responses that block solutions and increase a sense of division and paralysis. This fellowship extension will focus on increasing understanding of how the competing dynamics of accelerating climate action on the one hand and dysfunctional responses on the other can interact, and what conditions could lead to increasing the prevalence of climate action in society. For this purpose, the most recent methodological advances in social science research will be utilised, namely using generative-AI to create realistic models of social change dynamics. Data collected during the first phase of the fellowship, complemented with new follow-up and survey data to be collected during the extension phase, will help to fine-tune these models and increase their validity. Moreover, the research will take a deeper look into political institutions and how changes in norms that can drive wider social change can take hold in these institutions thereby triggering processes of political change. Here the focus will be on the European Parliament, making use of open data available...