Political dimensions of social-ecological transformations: polity, politics, policy

Abstract

Social-ecological transformations are necessarily political. That is, they are shaped by intentional interventions to steer societies and its metabolism but also by conflicts and power relations over the very strategies to do so. In borrowing from different strands in transition and transformation research, this article systematizes the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations along the lines of polity, politics, and policy. It thus combines the analysis of economic and institutional structures (polity) with a focus on conflicts and power relations (politics) that influence and shape concrete proposals for transformative change (policy). First, with regard to the polity, the article shows that the interplay of capitalism and fossil energy has created institutional structures (e.g., the modern state and liberal consumer democracies) that often constrain—rather than naturally support—transformative change. These structures shape transformation processes in that they prioritize certain political strategies over others and channel policies toward incremental change. Second, in terms of the politics, the article develops a conflict-oriented perspective that helps to better understand the power-laden process of social-ecological transformations. Finally, with respect to the policies, the article discusses characteristics of policies that are able to challenge economic and institutional structures to open up opportunities for transformative change.

Keywords:

• Phase-out policies
• power relations
• social-ecological conflicts
• socio-metabolic transitions
• sustainability transitions
• transformative policies

Introduction

The accelerating ecological crisis—and especially the climate crisis (IPCC 2022)—has strengthened transformative perspectives in interdisciplinary sustainability science and policy (Ballweg et al. 2020; Schneidewind 2019; Scoones et al. 2020; WBGU 2011). Incremental change no longer corresponds to the cumulative and multi-dimensional challenges of the ecological crisis (Nakicenovic et al. 2018; Sachs et al. 2019; Scoones et al. 2020). Unlike mere technological and managerial solutions to the crisis, transformations imply systemic and non-linear changes that alter societal characteristics with regard to economic structures, political institutions, and socio-cultural practices (Brand 2016b; Eckersley 2021; Görg et al. 2020). At the same time, transformations point toward a fundamental restructuring of the components of biophysical systems (e.g., the phase-out of fossil fuels) that accelerate the ecological crisis (Haberl et al. 2011; Schaffartzik et al. 2014). Research on (social-ecological) transformations is thus concerned with introducing the “bigger picture” of fundamental and systemic change (Brand 2016b; Feola 2020; Pichler et al. 2017).

Social-ecological transformations are necessarily political. On one hand, they are political because they are shaped by different interests, strategies, power relations, and structures of domination that create winners and losers and therefore reproduce or transform existing societal configurations and inequalities (Brand 2016a; Martin et al. 2020; Newell 2019; Pichler and Ingalls 2021; Scoones, Leach, and Newell 2015). On the other hand, they are political because transformative change requires intentional interventions to shape and steer transformation processes and thus calls for regulatory and legitimate interventions (Hausknost and Haas 2019; Koch 2020; Patterson et al. 2017; Pichler et al., “EU Industrial Policy,” 2021). Interventionist policies celebrate a comeback in many contemporary transformation perspectives (Mazzucato 2015; Rosenbloom et al. 2020) but the exact role and capacity of states to steer transformative change as well as the contested nature of such policies still lack attention and scrutiny in transformation research.

This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations. Political dimensions refer to the messy and power-laden processes of societal change that include economic and political structures (polity), power relations, interests, and conflicts (politics) that support or hinder transformative change as well as specific strategies and policy design (policy). Rather than introducing a theory of change per se where theoretical and methodological purity often feature high, the article develops an “analytic practice” (Clarke 2014, 114) that borrows from different research traditions and can be adapted and applied to different research purposes. Referring to the British sociologist Stuart Hall, Clarke (2014, 114) introduces an analytical practice as “theoretically open, borrowing and bending analytical resources from a variety of places in order to find ways of illuminating…concrete political situations.” Borrowing from different strands in transformation research, such an approach thus helps to assess the contested process of social-ecological transformations, “rather than assuming a singular crisis and one line of development” (Clarke 2014, 115).

More specifically, I systematize research findings on the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations along the well-introduced concepts of polity, politics, and policy to better understand barriers and potentials for transformative change. This somewhat eclectic approach draws on an interdisciplinary understanding of social-ecological transformations that encompasses both societal and biophysical dimensions of change (Görg et al. 2017; Kramm et al. 2017; Pichler et al. 2017). Furthermore, this method goes beyond the focus on political steering (although important) and highlights the immanence of power and conflict but also the capitalist structures and associated political institutions that shape transformation processes and help to explain the acceleration, weakening, or delay of transformative change.

The article proceeds as follows. The next section introduces three different strands in transition and transformation research that the analytic practice borrows from and carves out their contributions with regard to the political dimensions of change. The third section forms the main part of the analytic practice where I develop a systematic understanding of the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations, following the lines of polity, politics, and policy. The article concludes with an elaboration of some of the broader research questions that follow from such a systematization.

Contributions from transition and transformation research

Research on transitions and transformations has mounted over the recent decade and has emerged from different research strands and communities. While certain terms are often used interchangeably, in this article I draw distinctions with regard to the scope and depth of change. According to Eckersley (2021, 247), the concept of transition “is rooted in the notion of a passage, ‘going across’ from one state to another.” In contrast, transformation refers to “change in form or shape,” encompassing radical reconfigurations of economic structures, political processes, cultural certainties, and technological innovations. Although I tend to follow this distinction, my intention here is not to draw a clear line between the terms transition and transformation or to introduce a clear-cut definition of one or the other. In the following, I rather introduce three research strands that helped me to develop a systematic understanding of the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations in that they highlight different dimensions of political change and provide analytical resources for this endeavor. These strands comprise a) research on social-ecological transformations that carves out structural features of political change and puts emphasis on conflicts and power relations in transformation processes, b) research on socio-metabolic transitions that elaborates how the biophysical structures of societies (and especially the decisive role of fossil energy) shape the structures and institutions in which political conflicts take place, and c) research on socio-technical transitions that provides insights with regard to intentional political steering, policy design, and concrete policy instruments.

Contributions on transformations have intensified in recent years. These range from Great (Eckersley 2021; Polanyi 2001; Schneidewind 2019) and social-ecological (Brand 2016a; Görg et al. 2017; Novy 2022) to green (Scoones, Leach, and Newell 2015) and sustainability transformations (Göpel 2016; Olsson, Galaz, and Boonstra 2014). Transformations encompass fundamental restructurings of political, socioeconomic, technical, and cultural systems in the course of a changing societal metabolism. Hence, shifting material-exchange relations between social systems and nature (e.g., from fossil energy to renewable energy) also imply deep, systemic, and non-linear societal transformations (Feola 2015; Görg et al. 2017; Scoones et al. 2020).

Many contributions highlight the importance of an interplay of different dimensions, sectors/areas, and actors to deal with the challenges of such fundamental societal change (Nakicenovic et al. 2018; Sachs et al. 2019). For example, Schneidewind (2019) develops a heuristic transformation model that encompasses four dimensions (technological, economic, political-institutional, and cultural), an interplay of seven spheres (consumption, energy, resources, mobility, food, urban, and industrial transition), and a range of actors (civil society, companies, governance, science, pioneers of change). From a different angle, O’Brien (2018) differentiates between practical, political, and personal spheres of transformation. With regard to political dimensions, the German-speaking debate on social-ecological transformations has pioneered a critical social theory perspective for understanding barriers and potentials for transformations, including power relations inherent in consumption norms, the capitalist profit and growth imperative, political-economic structures and processes (e.g., the power of vested interests), and the specific form of the state (Brand 2016a; Brand and Wissen 2020; Görg et al. 2017). These contributions provide important insights into different transformation trajectories and their interlinkages with (global and uneven) capitalist development and power relations. Unlike mere agency-based typologies of power in sustainability transition studies (see below), this strand of transformation research conceptualizes power relations as structural features of domination, differentiation, and hierarchy inherent in capitalist class relations that unfold in complex ways in economic structures and political institutions (Haas 2019; Pichler and Ingalls 2021). Such a perspective goes beyond a narrow understanding of politics as mainly comprising elections, established institutions, and formal policy cycles to better understand the economic and institutional structures that shape transformation processes and channel strategies and policies into specific trajectories of, for example, ecological modernization or green growth.

Socio-metabolic transitions provide an important contribution with regard to the biophysical structures of societies but also with respect to the long-term historical perspective on transformative social-ecological change. Rooted in social ecology, socio-metabolic transitions are framed as shifts in societal metabolism—and especially the energy system a society depends upon (Fischer-Kowalski 2011; Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 2007; Krausmann et al. 2008). Societal metabolism describes the material-exchange relations between social systems and nature that reproduce the basic structures and functioning of these systems at different scales (e.g., a city or nation state). It encompasses biophysical stocks (e.g., infrastructure, housing, machinery) and flows (e.g., fossil energy, metals, biomass) (Fischer-Kowalski and Erb 2016) but also the mechanisms regulating these stocks and flows (Görg et al. 2020; Plank et al. 2021; Schaffartzik et al. 2021).

Historically, social ecology distinguishes three socio-metabolic regimes that emerged through disruptive transformations. The Neolithic Revolution marked the socio-metabolic transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agrarian regime and the Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of the transition to an industrial regime (Krausmann, Weisz, and Eisenmenger 2016). The three regimes are characterized by specific socio-metabolic profiles, especially with regard to the use of energy and materials. For example, agrarian societies are characterized by the use of solar energy. The active use and colonization of terrestrial ecosystems through farming and animal husbandry have enabled agrarian societies to use more energy per unit of land than hunter gatherers and therefore allow for an increase in both population density and societal differentiation. The transition toward an industrial regime is fueled by a fundamental shift in the socio-metabolic profile of societies: the use of fossil energy. The enormous energy density of fossil energy allows for an unprecedented concentration and upscaling of social systems in the form of industrialization and urbanization that, at the same time, comes with unprecedented sustainability challenges (Krausmann, Weisz, and Eisenmenger 2016). From a socio-metabolic perspective, a transition from an industrial to a post-industrial regime, based on renewable energy, requires changes in the order of magnitude that have characterized the transition from agrarian to industrial societies (Haberl et al. 2011). Both the geographical (global interconnectedness) and historical (long-term) scope of socio-metabolic transition research give priority to structural and systemic explanations at the expense of analyzing actors and their deliberate efforts in advancing or hindering change (Hausknost et al. 2016). Hence, the research strand highlights the biophysical structures of transformative change but requires more emphasis on the systematic integration of (capitalist) regulation, conflicts, and agency in explaining shifts between different energy systems.

Sustainability transition studies constitute an influential paradigm in capturing intentional change in interdisciplinary sustainability studies. Rooted in innovation studies, the research strand is concerned with transitions in socio-technical systems (e.g., energy, transport, housing, agri-food systems) that provide societal functions or services. The multi-level perspective—as one of the most comprehensive frameworks in this research strand—characterizes transitions through a complex interaction of change at three analytical levels: niches (the locus for radical innovations), socio-technical regimes (the locus of established practices and rules, including institutional processes), and a socio-technical landscape (that represents somewhat exogenous contexts or megatrends) (Geels 2019, 2012).

In describing drivers of change, sustainability transition studies prioritize innovations at the niche level that eventually diffuse and accelerate change at wider and more systemic levels. These regime and landscape levels are characterized by lock-ins and path dependencies (Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009; Geels 2012). Despite this focus on niche innovations, questions of governance and policy for more systematically steering and accelerating transitions at the regime level feature prominently in sustainability transition studies (Köhler et al. 2019; Rosenbloom et al. 2020). The contributions focus, for example, on policy design to challenge regime rules or on the role of new governance instruments to bring forward transformative change (Foray 2019; Kivimaa and Kern 2016; Weber and Rohracher 2012). In the recent decade, questions of power and politics have also gained momentum although these dimensions have long been neglected (Avelino 2017; Avelino et al. 2016; Geels 2014). Avelino (2017, 508), for example, differentiates between reinforcive, innovative, and transformative power to analyze “the nature of power exercise in relation to stability and change.” While these reflections on governance, power, and politics introduce important insights for analyzing barriers and potentials for transformative change, they are mainly confined to the analytical level of regimes. Broader and more structural and economic aspects of power are widely neglected or outsourced to the exogenous landscape level. Such an understanding tends to overemphasize the steering capacity of political systems and therefore to depoliticize the capitalist structuring of these systems (Feola 2020).

Approaching political dimensions of social-ecological transformations

This section systematizes the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations to better understand the barriers and potentials for transformative change. The analytic practice borrows resources from the transition and transformation literature presented above and combines them with other relevant literature (e.g., from political ecology, critical state theory or degrowth scholarship). I then systematize these resources—and relevant research findings—along the lines of polity, politics, and policy. The debate on social-ecological transformations introduces important contributions pertaining to the capitalist structuring of society-nature relations and the power relations associated with these structuring principles. Socio-metabolic transitions research in turn accounts for the equally important biophysical foundations of social systems and helps to assess the scope and depth of transformation trajectories, especially with regard to resource and energy use. In combining these economic, institutional, and biophysical structures of social-ecological transformations (polity) with an analysis of the processes of transformative change, the analytic practice aims to grasp the dialectics of structure and (political) agency for concrete empirical research endeavors. Conflicts play an essential role for conceptualizing these dialectics but have so far been largely neglected in transition and transformation research. Borrowing from political theory, critical state theory, and political ecology, I conceptualize conflicts as drivers of societal change that help to grasp the contested nature (politics) of social-ecological transformations and provide entry points for analyzing power relations that support, hinder, or weaken transformation processes. Besides these structural and procedural dimensions, the political dimensions also reflect on policies to bring about transformative change. Sustainability transition studies provide important insights with regard to the concrete design of policy and governance instruments to intentionally steer transformation processes (policy). At the same time, these approaches externalize the biophysical foundations of social systems and more structural drivers of change associated with the capitalist mode of production and living. Critical state theory provides important insights into the challenges of transforming institutional structures as well as the opportunities and limitations of states to bring about transformative change. Additionally, I borrow from environmental justice and degrowth scholarship to introduce the connection of environmental and social policies as an important characteristic of transformative policies.

Polity: capitalist structures, the state, and liberal democracy

Analyzing the structural drivers of unsustainability represents an important foundation to avoid simplistic transformation perspectives and to better assess and evaluate the depth and direction of change. From a political economy perspective, drivers of unsustainability relate to both the capitalist structuring and the associated political institutions in which social-ecological transformation processes are embedded (Feola 2020; Haas 2021; Newell 2019; Pirgmaier and Steinberger 2019). Such an understanding challenges the dominant idea that “humanity” (as an aggregate and undifferentiated entity) is responsible for the accelerating ecological crises that have given rise to the Anthropocene (Pichler et al. 2017). Whereas societies have always used and reshaped their environments, the accelerating use of fossil energy and other natural resources has converged with the Industrial Revolution and the global expansion of capitalism (Altvater 2005; Malm 2016; Pirgmaier 2020). More specifically, the continuous accumulation of capital requires private actors to perpetually appropriate natural resources through enclosure and commodification and thus provide an important structural driver for the ecological crises (Barca 2020; Harvey 2005; Moore 2015).

Along with the capitalist structuring of society-nature relations, the drivers of unsustainability are also associated with the political institutions that have emerged with the capitalist appropriation of nature. Critical state theory has provided important contributions for scrutinizing the role of the state in transformation processes. For example, the state’s reliance on tax revenues tends to benefit strong but environmentally destructive (fossil-fuel capital) interests that resist transformative change (Hausknost 2020; Offe 2018) and channel policies into incremental trajectories (e.g., in the form of green growth) that guarantee these revenues (Haberl et al. 2020).

Apart from these structural challenges of the state, the structuring role of contemporary liberal democracies in supporting or weakening transformative change has been neglected so far. While transition and transformation research in general—either implicitly or explicitly—affirm existing democratic institutions, these contributions often lack an analytical understanding of the interplay between democracy, capitalism, and the social-ecological crisis. Blühdorn (2013, 30), for example, analyzes this dialectic between democracy and (un)sustainability in the “governance of unsustainability,” stating that “in contemporary consumer societies democratic norms are being mobilised for the defence of value-preferences and lifestyle choices which are quite visibly socially exclusive and ecologically ruinous.” Consumer democracies thus channel the democratic principle of freedom into the individual freedom of consumer choice (see also, Hausknost and Haas 2019) that relies on the appropriation of resources and labor elsewhere (Brand and Wissen 2020). From a different conceptual angle, Mitchell (2011) links the introduction of fossil energy in the course of the Industrial Revolution (first coal, then oil) to the emergence of contemporary forms of democracy. The use of coal and iron and the invention of the steam engine enabled not only urbanization, industrialization, and the accumulation of capital but also specific forms of political structures and institutions. Especially the large-scale introduction of cheap oil after World War II has come along with democracies that are directed toward economic growth and material welfare. The seemingly infinite availability of energy and resources has thus supported the evolution of specific forms of representative consumer democracies that depend on an ever-increasing economy for their legitimacy (see also, Hausknost 2020). At the same time, this democratic freedom in Western countries has come with authoritarian politics in many of the producer countries of fossil fuels (Daggett 2018; Mitchell 2011). Building on these ideas and referring to both the capitalist structuring and the fossil-energy foundations of contemporary democracies, Pichler, Brand, and Görg (2020) introduce the concept of a “double materiality of democracy.” Double materiality points to both the social materiality (i.e., the structural limits and exclusionary effects of liberal democracies that largely exclude the economic sphere from democratic deliberation) and the biophysical materiality (i.e., the co-evolution of liberal democracies with cheap fossil fuels) to highlight the challenges of contemporary political institutions for supporting transformative change.

Analyzing the economic and institutional structures—and their co-evolution with fossil energy—carves out deep-rooted systemic challenges for social-ecological transformations, especially when it comes to political agency. Hence, a systemic perspective on social-ecological transformations emphasizes the “structural relationship between actors as (potentially) willful units and the systems within which they operate and that constrain them” (Hausknost et al. 2016, 141). To better understand these dialectics of structure and agency, Jessop (1999) introduced the concept of “strategic selectivity” to show

how a given structure may privilege some actors, some identities, some strategies, some spatial and temporal horizons, some actions over others; and the ways, if any, in which actors (individual and/or collective) take account of this differential privileging through “strategic-context” analysis when choosing a course of action. (Jessop 1990, 51)

Strategic selectivities are then associated with the structural and relational mechanisms that privilege certain strategies and policies over others (Pichler 2015; Schoppek and Krams 2021), and the concrete political processes (i.e., the politics) in which these power relations materialize.

Politics: conflicts, crises, and power relations

From a political perspective, conflicts and crises provide a starting point for analyzing these concrete political processes. Conflicts serve “as a prime form and expression of politics” (Le Billon 2015, 602), that is, they reveal contradictory interests and underlying power relations that can catalyze change (Bärnthaler, Novy, and Stadelmann 2023; Pichler 2016; Schaffartzik et al. 2021; Swyngedouw 2010). The French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1999, 28), for example, locates conflicts at the center of politics which he distinguishes from police. The logic of police encompasses the existing order of things, that is, “the organization of powers, the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution.” The logic of politics, in contrast, is associated with the disruption of this existing order and the struggle of those people and places that claim a share in the order of things. In such an understanding, social-ecological conflicts challenge the existing order of things—that is, the unequal distribution and position of people and resources—and point to alternative social-ecological futures (Pichler 2016; see also Temper, Walter, et al. 2018).

Not all inequalities and power asymmetries manifest in conflicts, and not all conflicts drive (transformative) change. Conflicts can, for example, be distinguished between latent and manifest conflicts (Brand 2010). Latent conflicts arise from general contradictions in contemporary capitalist societies (e.g., the exclusion of a majority of people from the means of production and from natural resources through private property or the exclusion of people along racist or gendered lines) but these do not necessarily become manifest. Manifest conflicts evolve “where actors are able to articulate against existing conditions and try to change them—and where other actors defend these existing conditions or want to change them in another direction” (Brand 2010, 141, own translation). Social-ecological conflicts are manifold and scattered and may range from resistance against the extraction of fossil fuels or the occupation of construction sites to institutional conflicts about (environmental) policies or contested imaginaries (Haas 2019; Pichler 2015; Scheidel et al. 2020; Temper, Demaria, et al. 2018). When these diverse conflicts mount and begin to refer to each other, they may accumulate into a crisis (Hall and Massey 2010). Similar to the idea of “multiple crises” (Brand 2016a; Brand and Wissen 2012), the concept of a “conjunctural crisis” marks a moment of condensation and discontinuity when “‘relatively autonomous’ sites—which have different origins, are driven by different contradictions, and develop according to their own temporalities—are nevertheless ‘convened’ or condensed in the same moment” (Clarke 2010, 339; see also, Hall 2011, 705). A conjunctural crisis thus marks a crisis of a social order rather than a crisis in a social order. Due to the accumulation and depth, a conjunctural crisis reveals possibilities for systemic reconfigurations and transformative change (Brand 2010; Eckersley 2021; Pichler 2016).

Analytically, such an approach requires one to analyze the specific historical context in which different economic and political strategies unfold. For example, investigating transformation potentials in the mobility sector, Pichler et al. “Beyond the Jobs-versus-Environment Dilemma?” (2021) found contested imaginaries and crisis construals by workers and their representatives in the automotive industry in Austria: a predominant improvement imaginary (that adheres to the combustion-engine technology), a diversification imaginary (that mainly builds on the transition to e-mobility), and a transformation imaginary (that questions automobility and envisions a more comprehensive mobility transformation). These imaginaries interact with the economic structures and political institutions of the automotive industry that is, among others, a growth and job engine for the Austrian economy, heavily dependent on the combustion-engine technology, and has a high influence on state policies and institutions through tax revenues (Pichler et al., “Beyond the Jobs-versus-Environment Dilemma?,” 2021). As a result, a majority of workers and their representatives frames the challenges ahead as a crisis in the automotive industry (that can be overcome through an incremental ecological modernization of the industry) while only a minority links this situation to a crisis of the automotive industry that requires—and can be mobilized for—more transformative change.

Whether conflicts and crises drive transformative change is contingent upon multiple factors, including the power relations that shape transformation processes. Such an analysis allows to “reveal the conflicts, trade-offs and compromises implicit in a fundamental re- structuring of an economy and the relations of power that will determine which pathways are pursued” (Newell 2019, 27). Depending on the research question and purpose at hand, the concepts and approaches to power (relations) differ. With regard to land-based resources and conflicts “on the ground,” notions of power in the field of political ecology are particularly useful. In a landmark contribution, Bryant and Bailey (1997, 39) conceptualize power as the “ability of an actor to control their own interaction with the environment and the interaction of other actors with the environment.” In a similarly actor-oriented definition, Ribot and Peluso (2009, 155) define power as “the capacity of some actors to affect the practices and ideas of others” (see also Pichler, Schmid, and Gingrich 2022).

Conceptions from critical state theory help to better grasp power relations and power resources in more institutionalized (state) policy making. Such analyses investigate the ability of certain social forces and actors to inscribe their visions of change into policies and (state) institutions. In this process, actors are equipped with unequal power resources, ranging from, for example, institutional and systemic to discursive power resources. Institutional resources comprise technical, administrative, and financial capacities as well as military or other authoritative means. With more explicit regard to accumulation strategies, systemic resources refer to the capacity of actors to provide or remove capital, finance, or labor, including the ability to invest in (or divest from) services and infrastructures and to provide material benefits. Discursive power resources, in turn, are mobilized when actors integrate their interests and strategies with dominant and broadly accepted discourses of prosperity and welfare that legitimize certain (in)actions (Brand et al. 2022; Buckel et al. 2014; Pichler and Ingalls 2021). Analyzing the politics of social-ecological transformations with such an emphasis on power relations thus helps to better understand why certain strategies for change succeed over others and at the same time find entry points for more transformative policies.

Policy: state interventions and transformative policies

While the former political dimensions provide categories and reflections for analyzing the polity and politics of transformation processes, this part is concerned with the role of concrete state interventions for accelerating or hindering social-ecological transformations. From a systemic perspective, social-ecological transformations result in novel, emergent system properties and a reconfiguration of society-nature relations. This reveals transformation processes as uncertain phenomena and blueprints as impossible (Scoones and Stirling 2020). Nevertheless, state policies can accelerate or hinder transformative change (Meadowcroft 2011; Patterson et al. 2017). State interventions thus play an important role in both securing dominant unsustainability and intentionally steering change (Blühdorn 2013; Brand 2016a; Eckersley 2021; Mazzucato 2018). On one hand, structural barriers (e.g., the reliance on tax revenues through private capital accumulation) tend to benefit strong but environmentally destructive (economic) interests and secure unsustainability (Hausknost 2020; Offe 2018). These functional imperatives often channel policies into path-dependent trajectories (e.g., green growth) and inhibit more transformative policies (Koch 2020, 119; Pichler et al., “EU Industrial Policy,” 2021). On the other hand, the state has also been a crucial institution for intentionally steering transformation processes (Mazzucato 2018). As Eckersley (2021, 261) argues,

states are better placed than any other actor or organization to facilitate socio-ecological transformation given their powers to regulate, tax, spend, redistribute, and procure and to perform these tasks in ways that are more or less responsive and accountable to citizens.

Critical state theory captures this dialectic role as it frames the state neither as a natural driver of unsustainability nor as a neutral regulator that is “naturally” willing and able to steer sustainability transformations. Rather it conceptualizes the state as a social relation and strategically selective terrain where social actors struggle to gain influence and legitimacy by pursuing strategies that serve their interests and agenda (Brand 2016a; Jessop 1990; Koch 2020; Pichler and Ingalls 2021). Hence, depending on their power resources and relative strength, companies, environmental movements, labor unions, or other civil society initiatives try to gain public legitimacy and influence state institutions and policies.

The incorporation of polity and politics developed above enables a more nuanced understanding of the power-laden nature of intentional steering and the challenges for state interventions in transformation processes. It does, however, say less about the concrete content and design of policies and the challenges of transformative—instead of more incremental—policies. Recent advances in sustainability transition studies, as well as degrowth scholarship, provide important insights in this regard. Against the logics of market-based instruments, Rosenbloom et al. (2020), for example, characterize “sustainability transition policy” as prioritizing effectiveness over efficiency, transformative change over incremental change, and adaptation to local and sectoral contexts over “one size fits all” approaches. Rather than having a choice through market-based instruments, transformative policies are about political decisions that provide strong directionality and destabilize existing unsustainable regimes (Hausknost and Haas 2019). For example, Kivimaa and Kern (2016) differentiate between “control policies” to manage the environmental impacts of the existing regime, “structural reforms” that target regime rules beyond environmental impacts and “new governance networks” to break up incumbent actor-network structures as important instruments. With special focus on the climate crisis and the energy transition, researchers increasingly propose policies that explicitly phase out the production and consumption of fossil fuels (Green 2018; Heyen, Hermwille, and Wehnert 2017; Köhler et al. 2019; Pichler et al., “EU Industrial Policy,” 2021; Rosenbloom and Rinscheid 2020). Complementing innovation policies, phase-out policies are regulatory interventions that explicitly terminate environmentally harmful technologies, substances, infrastructures, or practices (Rinscheid et al. 2021; Trencher et al. 2022). Examples for phase-out policies include technology bans (e.g., for internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, fossil fuel-heating systems), or phase-out plans for specific energy sources (e.g., coal phase-out) (Burch and Gilchrist 2018; Diluiso et al. 2021; Kerr and Winskel 2022; van Oers et al. 2021).

Such policies are strongly linked to political questions of justice, that is, “who wins and who loses” in transformation processes (Agarwal 2021; Bennett et al. 2019; Martin et al. 2020; Oswald, Owen, and Steinberger 2020; Schaffartzik, Duro, and Krausmann 2019). In the context of existing power relations, effective environmental policies run the risk of reinforcing inequalities through settling conflicts “in ways that disproportionately impact already marginalized or vulnerable groups” (Martin et al. 2020, 23). For example, the phase-out of fossil fuel-heating systems may increase apartment rents if public policies fail to provide additional subsidies and prevent landlords from shifting additional costs to urban poor (Kerr and Winskel 2022). Political orientations of justice are therefore important to assess the direct effects and indirect side effects of transformation processes on those groups and actors that are most vulnerable and already typically bear the bulk of the impacts and costs of the ecological crisis (Levenda, Behrsin, and Disano 2021; Pichler, Bhan, and Gingrich 2021).

To do so, scholars point to the interlinkages of transformative environmental policies with economic and social policies. Especially “meso-level policies” (e.g., industrial policy, trade policy, labor policy) critically interact with environmental policies (Pichler et al., “EU Industrial Policy,” 2021). Such meso-level policies constitute important instruments for transformative change as they form links between micro-level behavioral choices and macro-level structural transformation trajectories and thus provide entry points for transformative change. At the same time, they are also important to increase the legitimacy and acceptance of transformative change, especially when the latter challenges unsustainable industries that provide jobs for millions of people and guarantee their income and livelihoods (Pichler et al., “Beyond the Jobs-versus-Environment Dilemma?,” 2021). The integration of environmental with economic and social policies may therefore help to overcome the historical conflict between environmental and labor politics—expressed, for example, in the so-called “jobs-versus-environment dilemma”—that still shapes contemporary politics of social-ecological transformations (Kreinin 2020; Mijin Cha et al. 2022; Pichler et al., “Beyond the Jobs-versus-Environment Dilemma?,” 2021; Räthzel and Uzzell 2011). For example, active industrial policy can be a strategic lever to redirect public investments toward sustainable products, infrastructures, and services and therefore steer transformative change (Busch, Foxon, and Taylor 2018; Giordano 2015; Meckling and Nahm 2019; Pianta and Lucchese 2020; Pichler et al., “EU Industrial Policy,” 2021). Likewise, social policies can decouple social security and well-being from employment (e.g., through the expansion of universal basic services) (Büchs, Ivanova, and Schnepf 2021; Koch 2018) or provide retraining and skills development to facilitate the phase-out of fossil-fuel industries and therefore increase the feasibility of and legitimacy for transformative policies.

Analyzing political dimensions of social-ecological transformations

Figure 1 summarizes the above findings on the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations and exemplifies (broad) research questions for analyzing them. These questions can be specified and adapted for different research topics and case studies.

Figure 1. Political dimensions of social-ecological transformations.

Capitalist society-nature relations and institutional structures like contemporary forms of the liberal state and democracy shape excessive resource and energy use. These structural features (polity) create powerful exclusions and shape political processes (politics) and the outcome of policies. Hence, they are based on strategic selectivities that prioritize some strategies and imaginaries over others, depending on structural, institutional, or discursive power resources. In other words, these structures and institutions tend to confine the option space for change toward incremental strategies that are compatible with these dominant economic structures and political institutions (e.g., economic growth, individual consumer choice). Whether broader political strategies and concrete policies create transformative potential depends on power resources that materialize in contested transformation processes. Conflicts are essential for transformative change but, as outlined above, not all conflicts drive transformative change. It is thus important to understand how—and what kind of—conflicts advance or hinder transformative change, that is, under what circumstances they have the potential to challenge and transform the economic, institutional, and biophysical structures of unsustainability. Transformative policies target these very structures and open up possibilities for effectively reducing resource use and emissions. The analytic practice developed in this article therefore goes beyond the oftentimes unproductive distinction between so-called “critical” and “problem-solving” approaches to transformation through carving out the contested and power-laden processes in which social-ecological transformations unfold. Whereas critical approaches “render visible and problematize social structures of domination,” problem-solving approaches refer to “policies that seek to ameliorate problems in ways that work with the grain of such social structures” (Eckersley 2021, 246).

The contribution at hand aims to better understand the economic, institutional, and biophysical structures as well as the conflicts and power relations that shape transformation processes but at the same time identify entry points for “next best transition steps” (Eckersley 2021, 247) that develop opportunities for more transformative change (see also Görg 2018). In doing so, it provides a systematic perspective on the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations that combines the quest for and design of new policy instruments with a thorough analysis of the structures and processes that advance or hinder that such transformative policies are formulated, implemented, and take effect. Such a systematic understanding is important because economic and institutional structures, as well as powerful vested interests, tend to hinder, weaken, or delay transformative change (e.g., the phase-out of fossil fuels or the reduction of individual transport). At the same time, however, transformative policies intervene into complex economic and institutional structures with far-reaching consequences for economic growth, trade relations, or social security that need careful attention and scrutiny. The contemporary inflation and energy crises in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine exemplifies the unpredictable and multi-dimensional effects that transformative change may create.

Conclusion

Along the lines of polity, politics, and policy, this article has systematized the political dimensions of social-ecological transformations, combining the analysis of economic and institutional structures (polity) with an analysis of conflicts and power relations (politics) that influence and shape concrete proposals for transformative change (policy). With regard to the polity, I have shown that the interplay of capitalism and fossil energy created political institutions (e.g., the modern state or liberal consumer democracies) that often constrain—rather than naturally support—transformative change. Hence, economic and institutional structures create strategic selectivities that shape transformation processes, prioritize certain political strategies over others, and channel policies toward incremental change. With respect to the politics of social-ecological transformations, the article has developed a conflict-oriented perspective that helps to better understand the power-laden processes of societal change. This involves an understanding of (institutional) actors, their interests, strategies, and power resources to accelerate or hinder social-ecological transformations. Such a perspective expands the analysis of power and politics from narrow political institutions (e.g., parliament or elections) to incorporate economic drivers (e.g., accumulation and growth imperatives) and diverse actors (e.g., companies, social and environmental movements). With regard to the policies for social-ecological transformations, the article has discussed characteristics of transformative policies that are able to address the very economic and institutional structures of the social-ecological crisis and effectively reduce resource use, emissions, and equalities. Such policies have to effectively phase out fossil fuels and align with economic and social policies to increase transformative potential and legitimacy.

Rather than presenting a blueprint for social-ecological transformations, the article thus contributes to better understand the political potentials and barriers for such transformation processes. The systematization along the lines of polity, politics, and policy also provides indications on entry points for how transformative change can happen. With regard to policies, innovation and efficiency policies have to be complemented with exnovation and phase-out policies to gain transformative effects. While progressive governments play an important role here, the actual formulation and implementation of such policies depend on societal pressure and mobilizations that go beyond elections and representative forms of democracy. At the level of politics, conflicts thus present a necessary entry point toward transformative change rather than a situation to be avoided. Social movements, protests, and resistance—but also more institutional conflicts—thus constitute a cornerstone of social-ecological transformations as they put pressure on governments and vested interests to adopt and implement more transformative policies or give up resistance to do so. The integration of environmental policies with social justice is essential to reach broad coalitions for such mobilizations. With regard to polity, the article furthermore shows that social-ecological transformations require more than just better policies but a fundamental restructuring of economic and political institutions. While some aspects (e.g., the challenge of the growth imperative or more inclusive forms of democracy) may be part of intentional transformative policies, much of this restructuring is likely to emerge in a non-linear and rather uncoordinated way through the very conflicts and crisis tendencies in which social-ecological transformations unfold.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Ulrich Brand, Christoph Görg, Daniel Fuchs, and Martin Schmid as well as two anonymous reviewers for highly constructive and valuable feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The author received support for publishing the article through the research project “Challenges for Social-Ecological Transformations” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: P32839).