Governance of Social Tipping Points and Resilience: A Stakeholder Agency Perspective

In the chapter, a theoretical link between the concepts of governance, state capacity, and resilience is presented. Adopting a state-centric view of governance and resilience, it is argued that the state remains at the forefront of addressing the impacts and adverse consequences stemming from social tipping points. What determines the success of the state in addressing social tipping points is according to our framework the state capacity, which consists of five critical subcomponents (i.e., administrative, legal, infrastructural, fiscal, and military). We then focus on the concept of resilience, which represents the flip side of the state capacity and is thus pivotal in determining the successful governance of social tipping points. Lastly, adopting a multilevel stakeholder agency perspective, we hypothesize about the role of non-state actors (transnational, private, and local) in governing social tipping points. A special emphasis is placed on the European Union as a transnational actor sui generis due to the integration of core state powers.