What Do Experts Mean by Polycrisis?
In Prep
“Polycrisis” has gone from academic margins to the World Economic Forum in under two years, yet experts still disagree on what it means. We surveyed 92 crisis professionals before the field’s major definitions were published, capturing a rare pre-convergence snapshot. The finding: experts overwhelmingly agree that polycrisis means crises that interact — but the features that published definitions emphasize most (global scale, extended timeframe) are almost never mentioned spontaneously. And when asked how crises combine, experts split sharply, with those most committed to interaction rejecting “additive” as too weak. The concept has a stable core, an unsettled mechanism, and a periphery that theorists may have mistaken for the center.
Concept: Polycrisis
Methods: Survey, Delphi method
Data: 92 expert survey responses
Figure: (a) Experts who specify interaction as a defining feature are most likely to reject additive combination. (b) Ward’s clustering on MCA coordinates reveals four distinct expert profiles, independent of familiarity and role.