Social Innovation Generation (SiG) at University of Waterloo has posted a range of interesting talks on complexity theory, governance and innovation. In this talk, Mathew Hoffman explores the applicability of self-organized criticality to the study of innovation in global governance. After introducing the concept of self-organized criticality, the discussion will turn to its utility for studying social systems. Matthew Hoffmann will present both an agent-based model of the evolution of social norms and empirical illustrations of innovations in global governance drawn from work on climate change and multilateral treaty-making.
Speaker Profile
Matthew Hoffman is an Assistant Professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and in the department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His research interests include global environmental governance, social constructivism, and complexity theory. His 2005 book from SUNY press “Ozone Depletion and Climate Change: Constructing a Global Response” explored a complex adaptive systems approach to global environmental governance and his current book manuscript to be published by Oxford University Press investigates the phenomenon of experimentation with multiple forms of climate governance.
Adaptiveness and Innovation in Earth System Governance 