Abstract for: Modelling Policy Feedback in Climate Politics

Climate policy is not only challenged by instrument design, but by sociopolitical feedback over time. Using German climate policy since 2015 as a motivating case, this study examines the conditions under which mitigation policy becomes politically self-reinforcing or self-undermining. It addresses the difficulty of formalizing Policy Feedback Theory for dynamic analysis. The study follows a deductive theory-to-model strategy. Core mechanisms of Policy Feedback Theory - resource effects, interpretive effects, and sociopolitical feedback - are first reconstructed conceptually, then translated into a causal loop diagram, and subsequently into a SD model simulating the endogenous interaction of mitigation policy, societal support, opposition power, and state capacity. The study shows how a verbally formulated political theory can be translated into a formal SD structure. By endogenizing political feasibility, backlash, and state capacity, it contributes to transition modelling beyond techno-economic dynamics and offers a parsimonious strategy for linking qualitative political theory with simulation-based analysis. to revise language.