This abstract describes the main pillars of a doctoral project aiming at the development of indicators for new forms of societal organisation that potentially evolve from the challenging of cultural patterns in industrialised countries in the process of dealing with anthropogenic climate change.

Outlining a structural limitation of the effectivity of national and international climate policy (a.o. by use of game theory) it is explored how a defined local level as for example municipalities, enterprises and individuals gets involved and is changing common patterns of action pushed by the new complexity of the problem. Small groups as represented by local actors are well covered by sociological research. They may have a lot of advantages concerning managing and policy-making abilities: The influence of an individual on this level is said to be stronger; according to the probability law opposition and deviating behaviour are less frequent. The successful realisation of measures against climate change for example is more likely because of the greater control and manageability possibilities of small entities. Furthermore, information and communication technologies today facilitate and cheapen communication processes of these actors characterised by a scarce set of resources and enable a global networking.

Theory of the „Policy Network Analysis" builds the framework for delineation of the formation of locally organised „climate issue networks". By linking this theory to the model of self-organisation relating to autonomous and self-governing networks, a set of indicators shall be specified that allow locating changing cultural patterns between top-down and bottom-up, between control and cooperation.