Beyond the Frontiers of Political Science: Is Good Governance Possible in Cataclysmic Times?

Book excerpt: Over the last 10 years, political science has produced a vast amount of research on the impact of climate change and related existential disasters on existing political institutions. Hundreds of articles and books have been written on the environmental state, the green state, environmental governance, sustainable institutions and so on. However, no research in this field can prosper without a strong input from other disciplinary areas, particularly the natural sciences. Climate change is a complex and challenging set of interlinked events, phenomena and resulting problems and so it defies the usual disciplinary boundaries. The only way to progress and tackle these is by harnessing the entire apparatus of human knowledge and going beyond the frontiers of what we already know, while envisioning new scenarios and institutional forms.