The tipping point concept, widely recognized within the natural sciences, is experiencing a resurgence in social studies. The emerging field sees growing insights about characteristics and mechanisms of social system tipping; however, much disagreement remains. This includes whether social tipping points can be anticipated – determining its political relevance, as anticipation is essential for actions to intentionally trigger tipping. We address this disagreement and propose a framework which operationalises socio-technical tipping across subsystems and elements to anticipate tipping points, illustrated in two case comparisons. We show that whereas the transition to electric cars in Germany has started but is not about to tip, especially not regarding normative and regulatory regime factors, the same transition in Norway is about to tip, but still requires international car markets to tip before the sectoral transition is tipped and complete. Similarly, we show that the transition to a PV-based renewable power system in Germany has progressed strongly, both regarding technology and regime factors, but the system has not yet tipped: further efforts reforming infrastructure and regulation are essential. Hence, our findings emphasise the notion that while technological progress holds significance, it represents only one facet among several that must align for a system to undergo a tipping point.

中文翻译：

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预测社会技术临界点


自然科学领域广泛认可的引爆点概念正在社会研究中重新兴起。这个新兴领域对社会系统倾斜的特征和机制的认识不断加深；然而，仍然存在许多分歧。这包括是否可以预测社会引爆点——确定其政治相关性，因为预期对于有意触发引爆的行动至关重要。我们解决了这一分歧，并提出了一个框架，该框架可操作跨子系统和元素的社会技术倾倒，以预测倾倒点，并通过两个案例比较进行说明。我们表明，虽然德国向电动汽车的转型已经开始，但尚未发生倾斜，特别是在规范和监管制度因素方面，但挪威的相同转型即将发生，但仍需要国际汽车市场在部门调整之前发生倾斜。过渡已倾斜并完成。同样，我们表明，德国向基于光伏的可再生能源系统的过渡在技术和制度因素方面都取得了强劲进展，但该系统尚未倾斜：进一步努力改革基础设施和监管至关重要。因此，我们的研究结果强调了这样一个观念：虽然技术进步具有重要意义，但它仅代表系统要经历转折点必须协调的多个方面中的一个方面。