Leuphana University will host the Leverage Points 2019 international conference on sustainability research and transformation, 6-8 February 2019.

One conference theme will be on Re-structuring institutions for sustainability transformation.

Institutional arrangements are deeply rooted structures that shape the rules of a system and, thus, have the power to advance systems change. Social structures, embedded in formal institutions (rules, regulations, and policies) enable, constrain, and guide human action, and thus shape sustainability transformations.

In this theme, we will explore the potentials of systemic, institutional change as a leverage point for sustainability transformation. Existing research often lacks a systems-oriented view, and pays only scare attention to processes of institutional failure and decline, and even less to potentially productive functions of such phenomena.

In particular, we invite contributions that address this gap and that (1) employ a perspective that goes beyond single institutions but take a complex-systems oriented lens; and (2) that pay close attention to phenomena of failure and decline of institutions and the extent to which these can serve as leverage points for sustainability.

This includes, but may not be limited to, issues and topics, such as

• The role of institutions for sustainability transformations from various theoretical perspectives;
• Crises as triggers for adaptation towards sustainability;
• Deliberate dismantling of unsustainable institutions;
• The active management of declining institutions;
• The identification and unlocking of path-dependency and system traps;
• Analysis of institutional coherence, redundancies, and lacunae;
• Perspectives on the interplay and integration between different institutions;
• Democratic implications of transformation processes;
• Methodological challenges in analyzing and understanding institutional change.

Abstracts with a maximum of 300 words should be submitted by 30 June 2018 via the conference website: http://leveragepoints2019.leuphana.de/call-for-abstracts/.