Barriers to adopting wellbeing-economy narratives: comparing the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Wellbeing Economy Governments

Abstract

The reliance of current economic systems on economic growth is increasingly being questioned by academics and environmental organizations in the context of the climate emergency and rising social inequalities and conflicts. While political backing for post-growth initiatives has been limited to date, advocacy work by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) aims to shift narratives around the purpose of the economy away from a focus on economic growth. WEAll also facilitated the formation of the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGos). Early research in the field indicates that while WEGos have made some steps toward adopting wellbeing economy narratives, limitations to full adoption remain. What these barriers consist of remains poorly understood by researchers. With the aim to contribute to research on understanding (barriers to) social transformation, this article compares the wellbeing economy narratives that WEAll and WEGos have adopted and then examines reasons for differences between them. We find that disparities in narratives exist: while WEAll promotes the deprioritization of economic growth as a policy objective and criticizes capitalism, WEGos remains more narrowly focused on complementing GDP as a measure of performance with other indicators. The dominance of neoclassical economics training within policymaking institutions, siloed and short-termist approaches to policymaking, and the role of vested interests emerged as the main barriers to the adoption of more radical wellbeing economy narratives among WEGos.

Keywords:

• Post-growth
• wellbeing economy
• Wellbeing Economy Alliance
• Wellbeing Economy Governments
• narratives
• economic growth

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all interviewees who have given their time generously to participate in this study. Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Leeds, Faculties of Business, Environment and Social Sciences Ethics Committee, covering full informed consent from interview participants and anonymization of interview data in any outputs. We would also like to thank Anders Hayden, Gerry McCartney, Amanda Janoo, Katherine Trebeck and the anonymous reviewersfor useful comments on previous versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

Milena Büchs is a (non-paid) member of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance network.