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Systems can experience different types of transitions. The existing literature on transitions distinguishes socio-technological, social-ecological and institutional transitions that each focus on different aspects of real-life systems. For every one of these types of transitions we have identified a common set of forces that co-shape and drive the transition. Building on previous work and based on an in-depth empirical analysis, we investigate the complex dynamics of transitions in terms of how changes in different societal subsystems may unravel and trigger each other. We start with a conceptual scheme that captures the main characteristics of socio-technological, social-ecological and institutional transitions as discussed in the respective literatures. We then employ a case study on the emergence of a transition in the environmental protection regime in Greece (for the period of 1986 until early 2000s) in the face of a river …