Greening the State for a Sustainable Political Economy^*

* This special section emerged from discussions held at a workshop jointly hosted by the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute and the Sheffield Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, entitled ‘Towards an Ecological Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism’.

ABSTRACT

The intensifying global ecological crisis is, by any measure, among the defining political economy issues of our epoch. Questions concerning the state have recently returned to prominence in the field of environmental politics, offering a productive meeting point for research addressing environmental politics and that addressing the political economy of state transformation. The papers in this section all approach the question of the state and its relationship to ecological crisis from a political-economic perspective, foregrounding its relationship to the broader political-economic model in which it is situated. This short article introduces the four contributions to the special section and situates them amidst the broader contemporary research literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental state
• ecostate
• green state
• capitalist state
• ecological crisis
• green growth
• critical political economy
• green political economy
• state transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Martin P. A. Craig is a Research Associate at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute.

Notes

* This special section emerged from discussions held at a workshop jointly hosted by the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute and the Sheffield Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, entitled ‘Towards an Ecological Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism’.