ABSTRACT
Transitions towards sustainability will require major changes in today’s socioeconomic systems. Such changes cannot be brought about by con-ventional policy measures. We advocate a new approach of a polycentric understanding of policy making that invokes instances of social learning at different levels of societal organization. The notion of polycentric involves the integration of different levels of human choice and geographical domains. The spatial component involves the sequence local – regional – national – global. It involves the combination of different types of human choice at different levels of societal organization (e.g., legal regulations, taxes, sub-sidies, local initiatives). Trying to understand what is the impact of dealing with diverse “global change phenomena” at diverse levels of organization will require new approaches to deal with human agency. Agent based modeling and its application in participatory settings is a novel promising approach to deal with such choice problems [1].
