Oran Young’s book asks an ambitious question: What governance tools are needed to solve the problems of the Anthropocene? The book is a useful first cut at the tricky business of governing complex systems, but falls short of its ambition to outline a concrete research agenda. Young offers innovative thinking about how to promote and prevent what he terms “transformative changes” (p. 81) in socioecological systems (which could be positive or negative). Yet many concepts and arguments remain underdeveloped, leaving the reader with questions about the trajectory of scholarship about complexity. In short, the book contributes an agenda-setting exploration to an emerging research program, but offers little advice about how others might pursue it.

Governing Complex Systems is divided into three sections, which can roughly be labeled as the past, present, and future of environmental governance. The first section provides a useful review and synthesis of the lessons from the last three decades of scholarly research on environmental governance. Chapter 1 offers 10 general observations about environmental governance; Chapter 2 presents lessons about institutional effectiveness. These provide a helpful picture from 30,000 feet, but most are too broad to generate testable propositions. As such, these two chapters will be most useful to graduate students and young scholars who seek to understand the contours of the field.

Chapter 3, “On Thresholds and Trigger Mechanisms,” is the theoretical heart of the book, offering some of its most innovative thinking. In it, Young makes a compelling argument for more rigorous analysis about the nature of triggers and tipping points in order to understand how changes occur in complex systems. To this end, he provides a typology of triggers. Using examples from social science, he demonstrates persuasively that three different types of triggers—explosions, cascades, and inflections—have differing impacts on system behavior.

Young is explicit about wanting to outline a research agenda about triggers, asking: “Under what conditions can governance systems anticipate and even regulate the occurrence of thresholds?” (p. 68). Yet, ultimately, this is not the guiding question of the chapter. The dependent variable is not triggers, as the previous question suggests but, rather, transformational change.

Without explicitly saying so, Young offers a hypothesis about the conditions under which we should expect complex systems to be susceptible to transformative change—thus shifting the dependent variable. This (not insignificant) confusion aside, he suggests two independent variables to explain transformative change: the intensity of the trigger (i.e., whether it is an explosion, cascade, or inflection) and the fragility of the system.

The hypothesis and accompanying discussion certainly provide food for thought, but again, much of it occurs at high altitude. Although one can pick through the text to interpolate, Young offers no definition of transformative change. Nor do we know what constitutes the boundaries of a given system. He gives examples of ecological and social systems that shift to a new equilibrium: the eutrophication of water bodies, the collapse of a state. Yet he offers little in the way of instruction to the researcher about strategies for identifying the dependent variable. The examples offer clear-cut cases. But what about the creation of a new international agreement? Does the Paris Agreement, which effectively supersedes the Kyoto Protocol, constitute a change in equilibrium? How can we identify criteria for making such a determination that move beyond an ex post justification? The book is silent on this important question.

The independent variables are similarly murky. The typology of triggers provides a preliminary conceptualization of the intensity variable. However, any precision about either intensity or fragility remains elusive. Young only notes that “the best we can hope for . . . is the development of some ordinal scales that allow us to say that some situations are more fragile than others and that some trigger events are more intense than others” (p. 77). The lack of operational clarity also permeates the prescriptive discussion about how to prevent or encourage triggers as a means to prevent or foment change. For example, he notes that with regard to explosive triggers, “the most effective strategy will involve efforts to reduce or increase the fragility of the relevant system” (p. 89). Since we have no sense of how to operationalize or measure fragility, this recommendation rings hollow. Of course, one can only do so much in a single work, and Young is to be commended for the theory he develops; nonetheless, some preliminary indications of next steps would go a long way toward moving the research agenda forward.

Chapters 4 through 7 explore a variety of new governance approaches to deal with complex socioecological systems. Young rightly contends that we cannot use policy tools that assume linear or gradual change. Here, he builds upon his earlier works on “institutional fit,” which argue that institutions should be designed to fit the biophysical and socioeconomic systems they seek to govern.

The remainder of the book explains the types of institutional designs that would satisfy the author’s call for “institutional fit.” According to Young, these approaches acknowledge the nonlinear nature of complex systems. Goal setting (Chapter 5) is an approach distinct from rulemaking, which includes setting priorities, identifying targets, and devising metrics to evaluate success. In contrast to rulemaking, goal setting is flexible and short term. Principled governance (Chapter 6) uses existing principles of international environmental law (such as the polluter pays principle, or the precautionary principle) as guidance for governing complex systems. Good governance (Chapter 7) examines the extent to which practices of participation, transparency, and accountability promote effective solutions to problems of the Anthropocene.

These chapters are an important reminder that governance comes in many flavors. Unconventional problems, such as those presented by the Anthropocene, will require different governance approaches. Young is right to emphasize this. That said, the analysis suffers from two problems. First, only the discussion of goal setting explicitly takes on the challenge of “institutional fit.” Here, he argues persuasively that short-term goal setting is well suited to the complex nature of socioecological systems. He acknowledges that agreeing on and measuring goals may be a challenge, but does not offer concrete strategies for overcoming them. The other two chapters are meandering in their focus. It is unclear how these approaches satisfy the institutional fit criterion.

Second, Young emphatically states in the introduction that “solving the problems of the Anthropocene will require the creation and operation of innovative steering mechanisms that differ in important respects from those familiar to us from past experience” (p. 3, emphasis in original). Yet it is by no means clear how these approaches are new. The author himself notes that goal setting was successfully used in the Millennium Development Goals. And indeed, this is far from the only case: Campaigns to end infectious diseases like smallpox, or to eradicate the debt of the poorest nations have been around for decades, as has the idea of “good governance.” For instance, the World Bank has been compiling data on governance practices for over two decades. And the 2001 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters codifies good governance as a right for all European citizens. It is not clear how these approaches meet Young’s own criteria of differing from past practices.

Finally, and most importantly, there is an absence of politics throughout the book. While Young cites the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an example of goal setting as an innovation in governance, they have been roundly criticized as an intractable laundry list of largely unquantifiable wishes. The institutional design may promote “fit,” but the political reality does not. The SDGs are the product of extensive political bargaining among states and many stakeholders, which, at least at this early stage, appear to hinder the likelihood of effectiveness. Other IR scholarship on complexity notes that complex governance further empowers powerful actors. Young’s analysis makes passing references to “actors” but is surprisingly silent on the distribution of interests and the conflicts among them.

To its credit, Governing Complex Systems, and indeed, Young’s larger body of scholarship, is dedicated to a very important problem-oriented question: how to create institutions that actually fix environmental problems. But in this instance, the exclusion of politics is likely detrimental to his ultimate goal: to help heal the planet.