Mobilising critical international political economy for the age of climate breakdown

ABSTRACT

Globally accelerating environmental breakdown necessitates a large-scale mobilisation not only of the natural and engineering sciences, but also of insights generated from social sciences. Consequently, recent interventions in International/Global Political Economy (IPE) demand a gearing of the field towards putting climate breakdown centre stage. We respond to this call by drawing attention to the role critical IPE approaches can offer to the field to engage with climate breakdown more comprehensively and consistently. We argue that critical IPE can do so by combining problem-driven and praxis-oriented emancipatory perspectives, leading to systematic and concrete research programmes that are indispensable in the age of climate breakdown. We support our argument by documenting and systematising this potential across three core IPE themes:economic growth, state theory and global finance. In order to unlock its full potential for centring climate breakdown, we argue that critical IPE should better embrace multidisciplinarity and intersectional approaches, and produce more empirical work and methodological advances in future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate crisis
• international political economy

Introduction

While the devastating and uneven effects of climate change have long been an acute issue facing vulnerable geographies and populations across the globe, the climate crisis now appears to be inescapable even for the most privileged in global society (Sultana 2014; Heynen 2016; IPCC 2022). Contrary to even the boldest predictions of experts on when tipping points of irreversible climate change will be reached, a series of events in the last years make a climate breakdown more likely than ever. For instance, 2021 was the latest in a series of the eight hottest years in recorded history (NASA 2022); and 2021 and 2022 saw, amongst others, climate-induced famine in Madagascar (Baker 2021), crushing heat waves in Canada, India, and Pakistan (BBC News 2021; WMO 2022), burning coastlines in Greece and Turkey (Kitsantonis 2021), and devastating floods in Pakistan, Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands, shocking even clear-eyed climate scientists (Watts 2021). We are increasingly experiencing first-hand the fatally non-linear nature of anthropogenic global overheating (Schneider 2004; Franzke 2014). In short, despite taking into account the usual margins of uncertainty, we have substantial evidence and reason to assume that climate breakdown is not the future, but is presently defining our day and age.

The totality and severity of human-induced climate change affects virtually all core themes of the discipline of International/Global Political Economy (IPE).¹ This includes, for instance, how climate change threatens and reshapes capitalist (social) reproduction, class-based, gendered and racial disparities, labour relations, the role of the state, global trade, finance and geopolitical relations. Consequently, climate change and its mitigation are becoming increasingly existential for IPE discussions (Newell 2019; Colgan, Green, and Hale 2020; Paterson 2020; Buch-Hansen and Carstensen 2021). Despite this burgeoning of studies on climate change and the environment, however, Paterson (2021) maintains that climate change represents a ‘blind spot’ in IPE for two key reasons: first, it remains a relatively marginal concern across the breadth of the field. Second, the field has failed to fundamentally grapple with the depth of social transformation required to adequately address climate change. Accordingly, climate change has not been centred fulsomely across IPE, and the field has yet to adequately grasp its scale where ‘[t]ransform or collapse is now the stark choice for the future of the global political economy’ (Paterson 2021, p. 395). This assessment begs our question, building upon Paterson’s inquiry: which complementary forms of knowledge, techniques, and methods in IPE are most helpful for centring climate change in our research efforts? Furthermore, how exactly can IPE scholars best contribute to the urgent challenge of practically mitigating climate breakdown and its unequal socioeconomic consequences through real-world relevant research? The first question concerns better systematic engagement with climate change (i.e. breadth), and the second question concerns more concrete engagement (i.e. depth). Both interrogations are key to centre climate breakdown as the core challenge for IPE in the next decades.

In addressing these questions, we advocate in this paper for the benefits that critical IPE approaches offer to best understand the dynamics of transformation or collapse posed by climate change and its governance. We see critical IPE as a range of open and reflexive perspectives that collectively ‘problematize[…] socioeconomic and political structures’ (Cafruny, Martin, and Talani 2016, p. 1) to understand how these structures have developed and produce unequal outcomes. At the same time, critical IPE aims to grasp and interpret social reality in accordance with emancipatory – and thus praxis-oriented – commitments (van Apeldoorn, Bruff, and Ryner 2010). These commitments dovetail with the requirements of not only understanding climate breakdown, but also of developing practical strategies for just and effective climate mitigation and adaptation. We hence argue that critical IPE perspectives are particularly well situated to address the existential task posed by contemporary climate change due to the combination of problem-driven analytical perspectives with an emancipatory praxis-orientation that becomes indispensable in the age of climate breakdown. By unlocking this potential, critical IPE can provide insights into the power relations underpinning and driving climate change that are prerequisites for transformative action. Although we recognise that many approaches similarly seek to understand these very same dynamics, we hold that critical IPE’s commitment to emancipatory agency makes it uniquely suitable in the age of climate breakdown. Through investigating historically grown relations of power, its abilityto tease out the tensions inherent to governing global capitalism, and its capacity to understand intersectional inequalities within the global political economy, critical IPE provides a number of entry points for the practical contestation of climate change governance. In the following, we show how critical IPE perspectives can (and already do) realise this task across three core themes of IPE scholarship: economic growth, state theory, and global finance.

Despite this ability to meet the gargantuan challenge climate breakdown presents for IPE, we hold that critical IPE still needs to unlock its full potential, recalling Paterson’s (2021) claim that the topic remains marginalised and underappreciated in IPE as a whole. What strategies can support critical IPE scholarship in addressing climate breakdown in a more systematic and concrete manner? We suggest attention, emphasis and support for both, multidisciplinary and intersectional research. Through this, critical IPE can learn from other fields of academic inquiry that have historically stronger engagements with climate change drivers and outcomes. This includes economic geography, (urban) political ecology, and critical development studies, which developed epistemologies more sensitive to intersectional inequalities driving and exacerbating climate change. We highlight in Section 4 that understanding context-driven and historically grown forms of intersectional unevenness is a useful strategy for centring climate breakdown in (critical) IPE. Doing so simultaneously fosters engagement with concrete everyday processes and power relations shaping global climate breakdown; and highlights the problem-driven and praxis-oriented approach we advocate for in this paper.

We start by delineating the underappreciation of climate change within IPE so far and how critical IPE can be mobilised to rectify this (Section 2). We then show how existing engagement of critical IPE scholarship across three core themes (growth, the state and global finance) can help to centre climate change across the whole field of IPE (Section 3). Section 4 discusses two key strategies (multidisciplinarity and intersectionality) where critical IPE can learn from adjacent disciplines in how to centre climate breakdown as the core challenge of the twenty-first century. We close by offering two suggestions for a research agenda on further centring climate breakdown across the field of IPE (Section 5).

Critical IPE in the age of climate breakdown

Climate change as core challenge for IPE

Our argument for more consistent and comprehensive engagement with the climate crisis notwithstanding, IPE indeed has different traditions of incorporating environmental topics and concerns into its work.² A disciplinary pioneer, Cynthia Enloe (1975), developed a comparative IPE perspective on the problem of environmental pollution which took power and politics seriously. Whereas such early discussion focused strongly on the aspect of pollution and its (failed) mitigation (Andersson 1991), IPE studies began to put forward and analyse climate change ‘proper’ in the follow-up to the landmark Earth Summit in Rio 1992 and the signing of the Kyoto protocol in 1997. In this period, we see IPE examinations of climate change in four interconnected areas: first, the commodification of nature and market-based climate change governance strategies, including through emissions trading or corporate lobbying (Newell and Paterson 2011, p. 32; Ervine 2013); second, the environmental state debate, which gauged the possibilities and limits of state-directed climate change mitigation (MacNeil and Paterson 2012; Mol 2016); third, examinations of the global governance of climate and climate risks in a multilateral system (Newell 2008; Vlachou and Konstantinidis 2010); and fourth, the study of factors falling outside formal (climate) institutions, such as financial actors and corporate authority (Clapp and Helleiner 2012; Dauvergne and Lister 2013; Clapp 2014). More recently, further perspectives on gender and climate change (Pearse 2017), climate resilience and austerity (Felli 2016; Sharma 2021), ‘green’ finance (Gabor 2021), the politics of carbon divestment(Langley et al. 2021) or on socio-technical aspects of green transitions (Newell, Paterson, and Craig 2021), amongst others, have enriched IPE discussions on climate change and environmental governance. This shows that, as a field, IPE does have adequate tools to engage with and contest the socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-environmental nature of the climate crisis, especially outside its mainstream core (Oatley 2021).

Notwithstanding this general usefulness of different perspectives for understanding and acting upon climate breakdown, IPE as a field does not yet systematically outline concrete ways of engaging with climate breakdown. Within the broader field, climate change is often treated as one amongst many issues in the global political economy (Katz-Rosene 2019, p. 478-9). This is a problematic (non-)prioritisation considering the urgent, comprehensive and systemic nature of climate breakdown. General calls for more engagement with climate matters are important stepping stones to a more systematic research agenda (Best et al. 2021; LeBaron et al. 2021). At the same time, however, we are still left with uncertainty regarding which approaches, instruments and perspectives are best suited to tackle climate breakdown. In his thematic outline, Paterson (2021) draws our attention to the practical imperative ‘for IPE scholars […] to deploy their knowledge accordingly’ (Paterson 2021, p. 394). This characterisation of the task ahead is useful, yet abstract: while application of our knowledge for ensuring a just transition is a desirable normative goal, IPE as a field provides a myriad of pathways, research approaches, and perspectives to do so. In fact, and as we show below, critical IPE research tackling climate breakdown is not a rarity but exists in various but siloed forums. Consequently, categorising themes like climate change as ‘blind spots’ in IPE is important – but can, if not specified, even distract from productive engagement with these issues (Hall 2021, p. 396).

While we agree that it is crucial to identify climate breakdown as a core issue for IPE research, we seek to push the field to go further and actually centre the topic across its research efforts. Similar to themes such as gender or race, it is not sufficient to simply ‘incorporate’ environmental factors into existing research, but to develop perspectives and research programmes centring around climate breakdown. As Elias and Roberts (2018) argue that gender scholarship in IPE is more than simply analysing how globalisation impacts women, an IPE perspective on climate breakdown should go beyond merely analysing how the environment is affected by global political and economic processes. The benchmark for successful centring of climate breakdown into IPE consist in our view in the establishment of research programmes that are both, systematic and concrete. In the vein of systematic research programmes, we emphasise that it does not suffice for only a subset of IPE (e.g. environmental IPE) to primarily engage with climate breakdown, the field as a whole should do so, too. Concrete programmes refers to heightened engagement with climate breakdown that is not restricted to theoretical navel-gazing. Rather, our field must grapple with how climate breakdown should be confronted in a just, effective and emancipatory manner.

What are the characteristics that make research programmes both systematic and concrete? In our view, they should, first, be problem-driven in the sense of emphasising the contradictions, politics, fissures and contestations condensed in carbon capitalism. Climate breakdown cannot be thought of as a ‘neutral’ terrain of academic inquiry, but represents an existential problem that requires a systematic (and not only fragmented or ‘conjunctural’) engagement of IPE with this reality. Second, research programmes should embrace an orientation towards practical and emancipatory consequences of their analyses. Without such praxis-orientation, research programmes can hardly be concrete enough to meet the complex challenges climate breakdown represents. Both characteristics, we argue, are neither random nor trivial. We speak to each of these in turn.

Problem-driven research has the capability to excavate and problematise historically developed and contextually dependent power relations to better understand how carbon capitalism has come about and operates today. For instance, understanding how fossil fuel incumbency functions, who the beneficiaries and the losers of extractive practices are, and how these relate to other societal power relations allows for critique and contestation of these relations. A problem-driven approach does not mean to problematise climate change for the sake of problematising. Rather, a more fine-grained understanding of the contested politics and distributional mechanisms of climate adaptation and mitigation provides us with much-needed explanatory leverage. As an example, the insight that mere pledges for sustainability and the corporate strategies behind these pledges rather delayed than helped serious climate action is a fundamentally critical argument that builds on a problem-driven understanding of climate politics (Newell and Paterson 2010; Di Muzio 2015; Green et al. 2021).

Such a problem-driven approach can and should build the basis for praxis-oriented research that suggests concrete emancipatory solutions to the consequences of climate breakdown. By ‘praxis-oriented research’ we do not mean adapting an uncritical stance towards theoretical assumptions about the world, but rather a methodological gearing of insights towards ‘identifying the “next best transition steps” with the greatest transformational potential towards ecological sustainability’ (Eckersley 2021, p. 247). Such identification of the next best transition steps is fundamentally practically and emancipatory oriented. How can our (critical) knowledge about the processes and politics of climate change be employed to bring about rapid and equitable green transitions – and hence the just mitigation of climate change? Although this praxis-orientation is not a prerequisite for IPE research per se, we hold that it is a fundamental building block for tackling climate breakdown. Three core characteristics of the climate crisis make it stand out among other topics in IPE research. First, the likely breakdown of a stable world climate (if humanity continues on a plus-3°C path, see UNEP 2020) will have extreme impacts on virtually all dimensions of human life on earth. In this respect, climate change mitigation is an existential question for humanity, and the condition which determines the possibility of future change and emancipation in other realms of social life. Second, the drastic environmental changes that anthropogenic CO₂-emissions will bring are to a large degree irreversible (Solomon et al. 2009). This differentiates climate change fundamentally from other issues like gender relations, or inequality, which are malleable and transformable social relations. Finding practical and just solutions to mitigate these irreversible tendencies is without alternative. Third, the timeframe for transformation and change is extremely tight. Halving global emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050 as agreed upon in the Paris climate goals are unlikely on our current trajectory (IEA 2021). The urgency of immediate action and socio-economic transformation is drastically higher compared to other IPE interest areas.

Both, a problem-driven perspective as well as an emancipatory praxis-orientation are the two key ingredients for systematic and concrete research programmes that tackle the issue of climate catastrophe from an IPE perspective. In the following, we argue why critical IPE is especially suited for such an endeavour; and we sketch its main characteristics as a relevant research avenue in the age of climate breakdown (section 3).

Mobilising critical approaches for an IPE of climate breakdown

Contemporary critical IPE draws on a variety of intellectual sources which can be grouped into four legacy strands: a historically dominant Marxist/Neo-Gramscian strand (Cox 1981; Gill 1995; Cox and Sinclair 1996; Overbeek 2004); a feminist strand (Bakker and Gill 2003; Marchand and Runyan 2011; Enloe 2014; Peterson 2003); a post-colonial-turned-racial capitalism strand (Robinson 2000; Shilliam 2018; Bhambra 2021; Tilley and Shilliam 2021); and a poststructuralist strand (de Goede 2006; Peterson 2006; Guizzo 2021). In practice, these streams overlap and are often being combined to generate insights within IPE as a broad field. What is more, a common denominator of these traditions is their adoption of ‘critical’ rather than ‘problem-solving’ perspectives in their work (Cox 1981; 1983). By problematising status quo structures, critical IPE perspectives take a unique position: they allow researchers to stand ‘next’ to established orders of power and knowledge and scrutinise ‘how that order came about’ (Cox 1981, p. 129). A stylised version of this argument would certainly fail to appreciate the blurry boundaries, overlaps, and fruitful encounters between ‘positive’ and ‘critical’ theory. It is however useful to think of the general critical impetus as an important asset of critical IPE that allows research to question and scrutinise what otherwise remains taken for granted.

We hold that a critical IPE perspective is especially useful for our purposes because it incorporates both aspects of problematisation and praxis-orientation necessary for a systematic and concrete research programme. On the one hand, critical IPE work demonstrates its strengths by excavating the historical conditions of the emergence of carbon capitalism (Newell and Paterson 2010); problematising existing conceptions of so-called ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ states (Hatzisavvidou 2020); or critiquing the appropriateness of existing interpretive models of energy transitions (Christophers 2022). These approaches interrogate and analyse what scholars, institutions, and other actors often assume to be unproblematic and uncontested ideas within their analytical frameworks. From a critical IPE perspective, the contradictions and power asymmetries baked into carbon capitalism are not side phenomena, but key drivers of the climate breakdown we see unfolding today (Newell 2021b). These asymmetries largely determine how likely fundamental change is, who the winners and losers of these possible (non-)transformations will be, and how powerful social forces attempt to tilt the outcomes of transformative projects like large-scale decarbonisation to their favour (Di Muzio 2015). Consequently, critical IPE is a particularly strong tool to better understand and problematise the conditions upon which carbon capitalism and its possible demise rest.

On the other hand, critical IPE also possesses strong praxis-oriented aspects that are vital in the age of climate breakdown. A long history of more ‘conjunctural’ interventions by critical scholars exemplifies this for other themes, including, for example, E. O. Wright’s analysis of different political emancipatory strategies (Wright 2010) or Fred Block’s suggestions of how to democratise finance (Block 2014).³ Specifically in the field of critical IPE, interventions such as Newell’s (2021b) describe a set of concrete policies to mobilise green transitions, such as redirecting financial flows, co-producing energy governance, or building just transitions (Newell 2021b, Chapter 6). Furthermore, Roberts et al. (2018) describe a theoretically informed ‘politics of accelerating low-carbon transitions’ that build on insights from critical IPE such as the role of fossil incumbency coalitions and how to strengthen the opposition to those. Pearse (2020) demonstrates how critical IPE can and should engage in the interrogation of ‘the current historical conjecture and the potential for political-material forces that might spark emancipatory change’ (Pearse 2020, p. 10). In a similar vein, Eckersley (2021) describes ‘critical problem-solving’ as a practice that not only critically interrogates existing fossil power relations, but also suggests ways of overcoming these barriers to a green transformation. Eckersley suggests this critical problem-solving strategy as building on a preceding conjunctural analysis of ‘structural injustices, hierarchies of knowledge, and dominant discourses but also on tensions, cracks, contradictions in these arrangements’ (Eckersley 2021, p. 255). By advocating for a praxis-oriented approach following such critical analysis, Eckersley argues that the original Coxian distinction between critical and problem-solving theories should not imply ‘that the latter is something critical theorists should avoid’ (Eckersley 2021, p. 255). Following these arguments, critical IPE approaches have the potential to provide orientation towards emancipatory solutions by embracing the ‘practical’ and real-world-oriented aspects of their work that builds on a problem-driven understanding of the political realities of carbon capitalism.

We argue that this unique combination of problem-driven and praxis-oriented emancipatory perspectives puts critical IPE in a strong position for taking on a lead role in providing the intellectual tools for combating climate catastrophe. It has the potential to bridge the problematic mismatch between the nature of climate change as the existential problematique of the twenty-first century and its treatment within the discipline as one among many topics or ‘emerging issues’ (Katz-Rosene 2019). To provide such a platform, critical IPE needs to establish systematic and concrete research programmes based on the above-discussed combination of problem-driven and praxis-oriented insights. In the following, we sketch such an emerging landscape across three key themes from the existing and emerging literature: the state, questions of (de)growth, and global finance. Afterwards, we qualify this programme by introducing and explaining two shortcomings of current critical IPE perspectives, which the field should tackle to unlock its full potential for IPE as a whole.

Mobilising critical IPE across three themes: growth, the state and global finance

In the following, we selected three distinct themes that are firmly based in the critical IPE tradition and that are well-suited to illustrate the potential of critical IPE for centring climate breakdown. All three are core topics within IPE itself – and hence speak to the broader field instead of ‘only’ to one perspective. We will first outline each topic and discuss existing work on it, before delineating suggestions for a more embracing engagement of critical IPE with other fields and their insights on climate change, its drivers and (unequal) intersectional outcomes.

Capitalist growth and transformation

One of the major historical roots of critical IPE approaches is the analysis of the determinants and reverberations of capitalist growth. Different strands and corners of critical IPE did so under headers such as ‘modes of production’, ‘accumulation regimes’ or ‘regulation regimes’ (Cox 1981; Boyer and Charney 1990; van Apeldoorn, de Graaff, and Overbeek 2012). From a green critical IPE perspective, growth represents a hard problem since it erodes the conditions for its own reproduction (O’Connor 1994; Newell 2021a). This tendency of capitalist growth to be non-sustainable links it to questions of transition and transformation. If carbon-fuelled growth is in the long term unsustainable, how can we imagine and propel just and effective transformations? This involves fundamentally two distinct aspects, where critical IPE approaches have made influential contributions to the debate. The first aspect concerns the goal of green transformations, whereby broadly two competing ecopolitical visions are scrutinised, namely green growth and degrowth (Buch-Hansen and Carstensen 2021). The benefit that a critical IPE perspective brings to these discussions is a self-reflexive interrogation of the conditions upon which these ecopolitical projects rest. Critical IPE perspectives, for example, scrutinise the normative justifications behind either paradigm (Sandberg et al. 2019), or analyse the material and political prerequisites for a possible paradigm shift (Buch-Hansen 2018). Buch-Hansen and Nesterova (2021) even lay out the cornerstones for degrowth scholarship to become a ‘science of deep transformation’, and hence a praxis-oriented discipline for the age of climate breakdown.

The second aspect of green transformations where critical IPE delivered major insights concerns decarbonisation and energy transitions. Both are not only technical topics as they are often depicted to be (Newell et al. 2021). The end of carbon capitalism will not be brought about by a magic ‘Swiss army knife’-like tool that solves the various societal, ethical, and economic issues arising from fundamental transformation. Critical accounts early recognised this political nature of transitions and suggested to frame the question not around technicalities alone, but around competing ‘interests’, ‘institutions’, and ‘ideas’’ (Meadowcroft 2011, p. 73). Consequently, critical IPE engaged in exposing potential and existing injustices in concrete cases, for example for fossil fuel divestment strategies (Healy and Barry 2017). These efforts involved a specific focus on marginalised and subaltern groups, without which transformation efforts would end up reproducing the very same patterns of injustice and inequity as carbon capitalism (Newell and Mulvaney 2013, p. 5). Critical IPE hence provides a rich and growing body of literature and insights that help us in understanding what is possible and what is at stake in the struggles to transition to a low-carbon economy (Pearse 2020).

Both discussed aspects pave the way for more praxis-oriented work, which is especially pertinent given that the critical window for a deep transformation is rapidly closing (Newell and Simms 2020; Schmitz 2015; Sovacool 2016). The closer humanity gets to critical CO₂-levels and risks of runaway climate change, the more pressing a praxis-oriented approach becomes. Existing critical IPE research hence delivers insights for rapid and just transformations beyond carbon capitalism’s one-dimensional growth imperative. We identify two domains where this praxis-orientation is visible. The first is about addressing ‘roadblocks’ to green transitions. This builds on insights generated from critical IPE studies that existing socio-economic structures of carbon capitalism (like the growth ‘imperative’) are not simply ‘there’ but are being defended by vested interests and ‘carbon coalitions’ (Meckling 2011) or incumbency regimes interested in slowing down and exploiting change (Abramsky 2010; Di Muzio 2015; Mitchell 2013; Newell 2021a; Newell and Paterson 2010). In theory, these roadblocks are not unalterable facts, but malleable realities.⁴ This is true for the political influence of the fossil-reliant car industry in economies like Germany as well as for the dependence of fossil-exporting states on global commodity prices. Newell and Johnstone (2018), for example, scrutinise the role of incumbency and how it can be effectively addressed. Using the example of fossil fuel subsidies, they show how the incumbency of the fossil industry is deeply entrenched in the global economy, and how addressing these deep-rooted ‘regimes’ is difficult. At the same time, they draw our attention to studies that excavate those complex regimes and provide ways of thinking ‘deeply’ about incumbency in order to develop a better understanding and political strategies of propelling change (Newell and Johnstone 2018, pp. 75–7). Building on this argument, Ford and Newell (2021) outline a Gramscian framework for analysing the strategies of incumbents that resist transformation. Their analysis directly addresses actors and the structures they uphold. The authors emphasise a relational understanding of incumbency that seeks to explain the concrete power relations that fuel regime resistance and accommodation (Ford and Newell 2021, p. 2). This is an important corrective to accounts that acknowledge power struggles as central to regime incumbency and change, but do not translate this acknowledgment into practical consequences. Accordingly, Roberts et al. (2018, p. 304) argue that calls for an accelerated transition need to go beyond ‘routine appeals for more “political will,”’ but need to propose concrete praxis-oriented steps. They foreground the need to concretely address (incumbent) actor coalitions, feedback effects, their socio-economic contexts and the power relations these factors are embedded in for an accelerated transition. The analysis of power and incumbency as major transition roadblocks are not only theoretical advancements but provide us with the concrete knowledge of where and how to push for just and rapid solutions.

The second domain relevant for critical IPE is about addressing paths towards a post-growth future. This theme is less concerned with existing roadblocks, but more with specific policy proposals informed by critical IPE analysis. The praxis-orientation of this theme is particularly strong as it asks critical scholars to concretely point out alternatives to existing fossilised structures of the global political economy. In a study on climate policy performance of the 24 largest CO₂-emitting nations, Lachapelle and Paterson (2013) find that existing distinctions between developed and developing economies are becoming less useful for understanding mitigation policies. They argue that studying the actual drivers of national climate policies (such as institutional varieties) allows for a better assessment of how to set up international climate mitigation policies and thus speed up transition efforts. This is important knowledge regarding the practical design of effective (and just) mitigation policies. Based on surveying relevant studies and models, Hickel and Kallis (2020) argue that ‘green growth’ is not a viable alternative to carbon capitalism. They suggest instead to move away from growth as a policy-target and meet climate change through concrete measures like ‘[l]egislative limits, green taxes, shifts in public investment and working hour-reductions or new social security institutions’ (Hickel and Kallis 2020, p. 483). Their study suggests degrowth as a viable scenario of where a (rapid) transition should be headed (see also Hickel et al. 2021). Focusing on more cultural aspects of such green transformations, Hammond (2020) emphasises the need for a ‘general propensity for structural transformation’ (Hammond 2020, p. 173) of state and society. She explicitly links these cultural transformations to strategic considerations of how to break the often-cited ‘glass ceiling’ of the environmental state (Hammond 2020, p. 174; see also Hausknost 2020). By suggesting forms of deliberative democracy as an instrument for such cultural shifts, Hammond outlines a perspective for moving beyond the existing roadblocks of environmental state transformation. Finally, Cohen et al. (2022) take a (critical) political economy approach to the question of green investment in the United States and suggest five concrete recommendations to federal policymakers to overcome environmental racism and boost a green transformation. Their recommendations encompass specific actions such as the nationalisation of offshore wind or ‘green home improvements’ (Cohen et al. 2022, p. 1) directed towards low-income communities. The authors thereby fuse insights from environmental justice and the political economy of decarbonisation with a highly concrete and emancipatory policy program aimed at subaltern social groups.

The hard problem of confronting the growth imperative of carbon capitalism and implementing a rapid green transition as transformation is hence well-reflected and scrutinised in critical IPE work. The practical question of how to organise transitions, what possible pitfalls are, and where potentials for acceleration lie are part and parcel of existing critical IPE debates and will only increase in their urgency in the coming years. The next section focuses on the main arena for developing such strategies and overcoming roadblocks, which is the capitalist state and state power.

State power(s) in the age of climate breakdown

State theory and state power are the central, if not the core, founding research topics of critical IPE (see Bieler and Morton 2013; Cerny 1990; Jessop 2002; Poulantzas 1968). Critical IPE research on the state also provides a prime example of how the critical demand for problematisation can generate insights that go a long way beyond ‘only’ critique. Critical state theory brought many innovations to the table, among which is the crucial insight that the state is not a unitary ‘block’, but a contested social field, consisting of various actors and factions and their changing power relations (Jessop 2007; Miliband 1969; Poulantzas 1969). These insights found a broad application beyond critical IPE in areas such as Sociology, Geography, Political Science, and International Relations (Alami 2018; Block 1987; Hameiri and Jones 2016; Skocpol 1980; Weiss 2003). State theory is hence one of the most successful exports of critical IPE to other fields.

In environmental and climate change studies, scholars including Robyn Eckersley (Barry and Eckersley 2005; Eckersley 2004) or Peter Newell (Newell 2021a) have theorised the state from a critical IPE standpoint; and demonstrated the benefits of a problem-driven perspective. Eckersley describes her methodological choice of critical political ecology as ‘one that builds on the broad tradition of critical theory, giving it a distinctly green inflection’ (Eckersley 2004, p. 8). She provides a compelling critique of mainstream approaches to climate like neoliberal pragmatism, demonstrates the limits of the liberal democratic state for ecological modernisation, or criticises the unequal distribution of global ecological risk (Eckersley 2000). Taking a critical IPE perspective, Newell (2021b) applies Gramscian insights to conceptualise the historical significance of climate change, to identify the social forces hampering green transformations, and to sharpen our understanding of the role of the state in these processes. Similarly, Johnstone and Newell (2018) argue that transition scholars need to better grasp the varying dimensions of state power. Drawing on insights from critical IPE scholarship, they emphasise the social embeddedness and the relational character of the modern state, and thereby reject mainstream ‘zero-sum and static notions of power that are often ascribed to the state’ (Johnstone and Newell 2018, p. 73). Craig (2020) also employs a political economy perspective to problematise how states, as complex social structures, can be both a force for good as well as hampering environmental progress.

One major reference point, where the impact of (critical) discussions can be exemplified is the ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ state debate (Mol 2016). Scholars have analysed how far governments are incorporating ecological imperatives that have the potential to transform the modern nation state in similar ways as previous state transformations (for example the welfare state) (Dryzek 2003). The environmental state is one that takes control of green transitions, and steers both society and capital to achieve environmental goals in various regulatory roles (Duit et al. 2016). Studies in this vein have assessed in how far different nation states approach this ideal-type of an environmental state (see e.g. Duit 2016; Sommerer and Lim 2016). Critical IPE approaches contributed to this discussion in meaningful ways: Paterson (2016) disentangled the various debates surrounding ‘green’ and ‘environmental’ state ideas and challenged the notion that states can simply be ‘greened’. Rather, he argues, a real transition to a sustainable way of living will require alternative forms of political authority and organisation. Koch (2020) developed a critique of the environmental state discussion from a historical materialist and post-growth perspective, arguing that existing environmental state ideas suffer from a ‘growth-related glass ceiling’ (Koch 2020, p. 116) frustrating meaningful change. This glass ceiling argument is also discussed by Hausknost (2020), who deconstructs the idea of the environmental state to demonstrate its inner contradictions. In this reading, the empirically existing environmental state mostly ‘succeeded to shield their citizens from environmental harm, but have had much less success in minimising their negative impact on the earth system’ (Hausknost and Hammond 2020, p. 3).

In sum, existing critical IPE work on state power in general, and the environmental state, has brought major insights to the field. In particular, this scholarship has problematised taken-for-granted assumptions, carved out the conceptual contradictions of ‘green’ states, and critically scrutinised the reality of environmental states in empirical work. But what about emancipatory praxis-oriented insights which are as crucial as problematisation? We emphasise two areas where critical IPE work meets this demand. First, critical IPE scholars formulated the practical insight that the fusion between state power and carbon capitalism might make it impossible to move beyond the latter without fundamentally transforming the former (see Paterson 2016). How can we imagine such a transformation or even decoupling between both? Newell’s (2021b) Gramscian analysis of the role of the state and other actors in governing energy transitions entails a whole chapter dedicated to mobilising for change. Recognising the problematic role the modern state plays in buttressing carbon capitalism, he makes concrete suggestions for an energy transition from redirecting financial flows to co-producing energy governance by civil society actors or building just transitions (Newell 2021b, pp. 170). As another example, Bailey (2020) proposes strategies to deal with fiscal constraints in the transition to a green state by drawing on insights from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and recent literature on the contingency of debt (Bailey 2020, p. 11). Both examples demonstrate how the recognition that fossil fuel capitalism and state power are inextricably linked does not preclude developing concrete policy-suggestions beyond the problematisation of this fact.

Second, critical IPE studies have emphasised that states should not be understood as unitary actors, but rather as condensations of societal power relations embodied in different, sometimes conflicting, state apparatuses. Proposing how to transition to a low-carbon economy then involves also making concrete suggestions for how to decarbonise specific state apparatuses. Koch (2020) argues that such a focus should be a major task generated from a historical materialist perspective. In his analysis, ‘existing state apparatuses can play a constructive part in an ecological and societal transformation’ (Koch 2020, p. 129), which paves a way for transformation beyond the boundaries of carbon capitalism. This recognition is an important step towards being able to formulate concrete suggestions of where and how to decarbonise the state, despite the structural constraints carbon capitalism poses. Analysing the German sustainability transition, Haas (2021) employs such a more sectoral perspective and argues that state power to push for transformation is considerably lower in the mobility sector compared to other domains such as energy generation. Building on these insights, he shows how considerable greening potential is being stalled by a strong state-capital nexus between the German car industry and the German state. In another example, Hildingsson et al. (2019) explore the role and potentials of the Swedish state to govern decarbonisation efforts of energy-intensive industries. Based on their analysis, they develop a perspective of a more activist state, and suggest a practice-oriented ‘rethinking of the state’s involvement in industrial governance in general and the strategies for industrial decarbonisation in particular’ (Hildingsson et al. 2019, p. 911). Such insights can be employed for targeted and sectorally fine-tuned decarbonisation strategies, also beyond the German or Swedish cases.

In sum, critical IPE perspectives on the state in the green transfromation should, and are already beginning to, fuse their problematisation work with concrete praxis-oriented suggestions in two areas: the question of how to transform carbon capitalism considering its (inextricable) links to state and political power; and the question of how to decarbonise specific state apparatuses, sectors and domains. Future work in this vein can build on these insights and scrutinise, where and how efforts for decarbonisation can be effectively employed to deliver a just transition with or against state power. The next theme deals with another key locus of power in global green transformations, namely global finance.

Finance and contesting financial authority in climate change governance

We complete our topical engagement with the role of finance and financial authority in the global political economy. Despite being a core topic of investigation in IPE, there remains a need for a more robust engagement with the relationship between financial instruments, financial discourses and logics, and financial authority in relation to global environmental governance (see also Paterson 2021, p. 399). We point to areas of engagement with the contemporary relationship between climate and global finance that we anticipate can broaden the field in a productive manner.

Critical examinations of finance are a central occupation of IPE scholarship in the post-Bretton Woods era (Helleiner 1994; Best 2004). Studies ranging from financial regulation within and between nations (Bonefeld and Holloway 1995; Germain 1997; Soederberg 2004; Seabrooke 2007), to the power relations embedded in the governance of financial accumulation (Gill 1995; Konings 2007; Soederberg 2014), and the everyday IPE of financialisation (Martin 2002; Federici 2014) examine how global capitalism has increasingly been dominated by the power of financial actors, discourses, and technologies (Strange 1997; Porter 2005; Young et al. 2011). The post-2008 global financial crisis (GFC) regulatory landscape has reaffirmed the status of finance in critical IPE research agendas. Fruitful debates have arisen in areas including (but not limited to): financialisation (Montgomerie 2008; Christophers 2015), housing and the urban scale as a site of finance-led accumulation (Desai and Loftus 2012; Haila 2015; Soederberg 2021), financial inclusion (Roy 2010; Taylor 2012; Bernards 2021a), financial risk and development in the Global South (Marois 2012; Grabel 2013; Schindler et al. 2022), or the geopolitics of contemporary financial technologies (Campbell-Verduyn et al. 2017; de Goede 2021).

Critical IPE scholars also connected questions of global finance to climate change. They have done so, for example, by problematising the drivers and effects of climate change in the realms of financialised agrarian and food systems (Clapp and Isakson 2018; Clapp 2021; Bernards 2021a), urban climate policy (Kuzemko 2019; Sharma 2022), or financial risk management in the global South (Bernards 2021b). Furthermore, IPE scholars critically observed and assessed the initiation and reverberations of carbon commodification following the Kyoto Protocol (Bumpus and Liverman 2009; Newell 2012; Paterson 2013; Ervine 2013). Critical IPE studies have also problematised the fervour and scale of commitment of multilateral and private actors towards managing the risks of climate change through financial investments (Roberts et al. 2021). Climate or ‘green’ finance promises to couple economic development opportunities with sustainable projects to promote resilient and low-carbon growth with simultaneous environmental, social, and political benefits (WRI 2018). Critical IPE scholars such as Bridge et al. (2020) chart the various investment forms and services of carbon finance and problematise the privileged nature of finance in global environmental governance, specifically the continued commodification of carbon (Christophers 2022).

The above studies problematise the nexus between finance and the environment and thereby generated two main insights. First, vital goods and environments – e.g., agricultural commodities and urban spaces – continue to be abstracted into sites of financial accumulation with negative and uneven economic and environmental outcomes benefitting economic elites (see also Castree 2008; Felli 2014). Second, the governance of climate change through financial tools demonstrates unequal global power relations in which the negative ecological outcomes from carbon consumption are obfuscated through market regimes, failing to adequately tackle greenhouse gas emissions. These insights demonstrate how the power of financial actors and structures shapes and often obstructs emancipatory alternatives to environmental destruction. The belief of many policymakers that ‘green’ investment is the silver bullet for financing astronomic global decarbonisation costs is also grounded in the framing of finance as ‘critical enabler of low-GHG and just transitions’ by authoritative fora like the IPCC (IPCC 2022, p. 62). By problematising the role of (green) finance, its profiteers and the unequal power relations it engenders, critical IPE contributes important insights for better understanding a cornerstone of global decarbonisation efforts.

Beyond problematisation, critical IPE engagement with green finance has also already produced relevant praxis-oriented insights, of which we highlight two. One is the proposing of alternatives to green finance. The critique of all (including ‘green’) forms of financialised social relations sparked an interest in new forms of enabling green transitions, from the green new deal to new forms of industrial and social policy. Johnson (2022) asks how the magnitude of the decarbonisation challenge might usher in new forms of social and economic relations that are less extractive and financialised. Focusing on decarbonisation of UK housing stock, she examines two cases where social engagement and the ‘value produced through decarbonisation’ (Johnson 2022, p. 131) could be redefined away from financial instruments producing indebtedness and precarity. By suggesting concrete ways of overcoming the financialisation of everything, including the environment, Johnson shows how critical engagement can inform emancipatory practices on the ground. On a more general level, Van Asselt and Newell (2022) argue that market-driven and national attempts to phase out fossil production are at best piecework; and that serious efforts to wind down fossil production need international coordination. This task of ‘[s]teering finance away from fossil fuels’ (Van Asselt and Newell 2022, p. 3) is an effort that will not be realised exclusively on a national scale. Based on a critique of leaving this task to market forces and the structural inequalities these propel (see p. 2), the authors develop two concrete models of international coordination on phasing out fossil fuels. They discuss both models with regards to their feasibility, equity and emancipatory potential, and give a concrete assessment of when and how particular models are likely to emerge in the future. Their study suggests practical ways of effectively extracting financial investment from the fossil fuel industry without necessarily having to promote (indirect) forms of green finance.

The second modus in which critical IPE is dealing with green finance is to propose ways of exploiting its transformation potential. Scholars working on this issue seek to mobilise the unprecedented investment volumes needed for a green transition. In this vein, Smoleńska and van ‘t Klooster (2022) discuss how the EU system could tackle the challenge of decarbonising its banking system. As a key locus of global financial power, the EU banking system is notoriously difficult to regulate towards sustainability, given a strict microprudential framework governing its day-to-day operations. Next to assessing the problems associated with such a fundamental re-orientation of financial regulation, the authors also scrutinise possible ways forward into a more sustainable future for European banks. They advocate for a pathway of a ‘guided transition’, whereby ‘regulators provide fine-grained guidance on the future that banks should anticipate’ (Smoleńska and van ‘t Klooster 2022, p. 51). Despite the difficulties riddling the current framework governing European (green) finance, Smoleńska and van ‘t Klooster provide a constructive praxis-oriented pathway to greening finance beyond critique only. In another study on the role of the ‘big three’ asset managers (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street), Baines and Hager (2022) point out the extraordinary potential of these financial giants to be ‘environmental stewards’ in the many firms they are invested in. This acknowledges the massive impact a repurposing of a financialised shareholder-value-oriented praxis towards sustainable corporate governance could have. At the same time, the authors find evidence that the big three are far away from taking on this role: the voting behaviour of their ESG-funds is almost identical to that of their non-ESG vehicles. This leads Baines and Hager to question the efficacy of the big three in mobilising green finance; and to suggest more state-led transition pathways as the better strategy to unlock the transformative potential green finance holds (Baines and Hager 2022, p. 19). Recently, Blackrock indirectly supported this conclusion by cutting its support for ESG proposals in half in 2022, citing immediate causes like Russia’s Ukraine aggression as the reason and hence reinforcing the doubt over the environmental leadership of large asset managers (Masters 2022).

In sum, studies drawing on insights from critical IPE show how problematising (green) finance can propel a fruitful engagement with the practical implications of either abandoning or mobilising this type of finance for the global green transition. They show that to understand the transformative possibilities of climate action, critical IPE studies can highlight socio-economic and socio-environmental unevenness in policies and regulatory forms. With this, they can advocate for more equitable and just forms of climate governance. The following section expands our analysis towards two major aspects we deem important to help critical IPE in further centring climate breakdown.

Discussion: How to centre climate breakdown in and through critical IPE?

We return to the point of departure of our contribution: how can IPE as a field centre climate breakdown in systematic and concrete research programmes? We maintained that the combination of critical problematisation of current climate change governance and an emancipatory praxis innate to critical IPE are key ingredients for such an undertaking. Our survey and systematisation of existing work in critical IPE across three major themes demonstrated this potential. Critical IPE can, when geared towards real-world problems and their emancipatory treatment, serve as the intellectual vanguard for bringing climate breakdown centre stage in IPE discussions. Table 1 summarises our analysis.

Table 1. Summary of problem-driven and praxis-oriented insights of critical IPE regarding climate breakdown.

Theme	Problem-driven insights	Praxis-oriented work	Examples
Capitalist Growth	Growth erodes the conditions for capitalist reproduction. Green growth and degrowth are contradictory, competing transformation goals. The green transformation is a political process, not only a technical one.	Addressing ‘roadblocks’ to green transformations (e.g. vested interests and incumbency regimes). Proposing paths towards post-growth futures (e.g. climate policies or deliberative democracy).	Buch-Hansen and Carstensen 2021; Pearse 2020; Newell 2021a
State power(s)	The (neo-)liberal state is limited in addressing climate breakdown. States consist of (warring) factions propelling or hampering green transformations.	State power can be utilised to push transformations (e.g. redirecting financial flows). Specific state apparatuses can also decarbonise in a targeted manner (e.g. through industrial policies).	Eckersley 2004; Koch 2020; Haas 2021
Finance	Identifying financialization and commodification of nature as driving and exploiting climate breakdown. Excavating marketisation as obstacle to meaningful climate action.	Proposing alternatives to ‘green’ finance (e.g. international treaties). Exploiting the transformation potential of finance (e.g. through regulatory steering).	Clapp 2021; Christophers 2022; Baines and Hager 2022

At the same time, we still see considerable work to be done to further centre climate in the research efforts of critical IPE and the field of IPE as a whole. For one, we hold that critical IPE needs to build a productive dialogue with cognate fields that offer theoretical and methodological approaches to centring climate change. This does not entail reinventing the wheel. Rather, it encourages drawing upon and building conversations with interdisciplinary fields with similar critical research commitments. We highlight economic and human geography (Peet and Watts 1993; Pulido 2016), (urban) political ecology (Pelling 1999; Swyngedouw, & Heynen 2003; Sultana 2014; Moore 2015; Ranganathan 2015; Heynen 2016; Malm 2016), and critical development studies (Pelling 2011; Taylor 2014) as cognate fields where compelling research theorises the multi-scalar nature of climate change and connects it to (contestation) practices. Such research problematises the wide-ranging uneven impacts occurring at the local scale where environmental crises seep into daily lives and livelihoods to the global, shaping systemic outcomes. Such a viewpoint allows this scholarship to identify concrete layers and levels of practical and emancipatory contestation of existing climate governance. This is an important lens from which an IPE of climate breakdown can learn to focus analyses, pick cases, and connect practices ‘on the ground’ with structural changes and ramifications. Our analysis of the existing literature shows that critical IPE is good at connecting some of its core themes to climate change. However, truly centring climate breakdown in IPE requires the broadening of the field’s classical strengths towards multidisciplinary engagement. Through such outreach, critical insights into how to combine problematisation with a more concrete praxis-orientation will help, in our opinion, to further centring climate breakdown in IPE as a field.

Another main hurdle for such centring is that a host of different ‘themes’ competes for attention in IPE and many thus rank climate breakdown as one among those many themes (Katz-Rosene 2019; Paterson 2021). To take climate breakdown seriously as the existential category for the possibility of even engaging in IPE, the field needs to more forcefully single out its intersectional character. Varying axes of inequality both structure and are being structured by power relations in the global political economy, such as race, class and gender (Bakker and Gill 2003; Peterson 2003). This intersectional unevenness of causes and impacts of climate change broadens the relevance of the topic beyond simply being one among many themes in IPE. Pertinently, classed, gendered, and racial inequalities are not only exacerbated by climate change – they themselves influence the governance of climate change mitigation and adaptation. In fact, these dimensions largely determine the success chances of any green transition that is of a global nature. Critical IPE is already well-equipped to deal with intersectionality, also through recent interdisciplinary engagement with race, gender and development studies (see, e.g. Bhambra 2021; Prügl 2021; Shilliam 2018; Singh 2021). Even with regards to climate change, some critical IPE research has outlined the way gendered and racial dynamics influence the prospects of successful transitions (MacArthur et al. 2020; Newell 2021b). Pushing this envelope further can gain (critical) IPE a broader audience and scholarly community to engage with, and help to better integrate the aspect of multidisciplinarity discussed above.

Beyond helping to centre climate breakdown in IPE discussions, intersectional research also helps to strengthen critical IPE’s original commitment to problematising and emancipatory work. Existing research shows how this can be done. Early on, Agarwal and Narain (2019 – reprint from 1991) already formulated a strong critique of the globally unequal distribution of emissions and the political obfuscation of this by powerful states and international organisations. This speaks to the broader point that countries in the Global South and subaltern groups are being affected disproportionately by climate change and its politics given that they bear the ‘negative externalities’ of overconsumption and unsustainable lifestyles elsewhere (see also Nagel 2012; Eckersley 2000). Similarly, Newell (2005) has focused on the mediating role of class and race in environmental politics and argues that they can help us explain ‘causation (the distribution of benefit from environmental destruction), process (which social groups make these key decisions and through what decision-making structures) and distribution (of hazard and harm)’ (Newell 2005, p. 71). Kaijser and Kronsell (2014) also integrate such insights into an intersectionality framework to analyse the social multidimensionality of climate change. Looking at how power relations impact experiences and outcomes of climate change, they call for more interdisciplinary analysis to capture such complexity (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014, p. 424). These and further studies illustrate the usefulness of an intersectional lens in understanding and acting upon the uneven impacts of climate breakdown on global populations.

In sum, drawing from and engaging with the theoretical and methodological approaches from cognate fields of research offers critical IPE scholars the opportunity to grow and centre the field and its approaches to climate change. A similar benefit for the field can come from a better engagement with investigating intersectional, historically developed and contextually derived forms of power and inequality that shape the reality of climate breakdown for global populations. In turn, the power of critical IPE outlooks on global processes and power relations and how they connect to multi-scalar governance outcomes can contribute to discussions in cognate fields. We hope to see more of this cross-fertilisation in the future to further strengthen the relevance and urgency of dealing with climate breakdown, in and beyond IPE.

Conclusion

Amidst climate catastrophe and worsening prospects of rapid and fair green transitions, why should we spend time thinking and writing about how social scientific (sub-)fields should deal with this existential shift? After all, the magnitude of the climate challenge also invites all sorts of distractions, from academic navel-gazing to ‘scholarly bullshit’ (Kirchherr 2022) burgeoning in recent years. We nevertheless deem the discussions about how IPE as a field can ‘mainstream’ or centre climate change, as formulated by Matthew Paterson and others, as an important step towards a better, real-world-relevant research practice. As a social scientific field of research, IPE can draw attention to the political nature of proposed climate solutions – including the injustices, structural asymmetries, problematic assumptions or obfuscated ramifications these solutions often entail. This ability is central to overcoming the yawning gap between the availability of technical solutions on the one hand and the failing political reality of runaway global warming on the other hand. Leading climate scientists express a strong pessimism towards global politics to act on climate breakdown (Tollefson 2021). Such political despair is one of the clearest signs that putting climate breakdown centre stage in social scientific practice is of utmost importance. It is necessary to develop practices that realistically aim for changing the political mismatch hampering mitigation efforts. We argued in this paper that (critical) IPE can do so by problematising failing assumptions and solutions to the climate crisis to the same extent as incorporating an emancipatory praxis-orientation into our research. By taking the failing politics of curbing climate change seriously and mainstreaming it into research practice, IPE can deliver an important contribution to such real-world change. For this, as we have argued, critical IPE has the right ingredients to begin with. We also pointed out that there is still a long way to go until such centring of climate catastrophe is realised across the field. Time is of the essence, and the urgency of unfolding climate breakdown does not make things easier. Our assessment is, however, still hopeful: diverse scholars show an increased engagement and commitment to making climate change central to their research; and much of the emerging studies have a clear praxis-oriented character beyond pure critique. The systematic and concrete research programmes we call for might be already in the making.

To strengthen such endeavours, we see two research items for the immediate future: One is to start cultivating a research practice that demonstrates how problem-driven and praxis-oriented scholarship work together in real life. While we emphasise that critical IPE should embrace this combination stronger, we are also aware that this can best be done by showing the strength of such an approach in concrete cases and studies. One way of doing so would be to pick specific sectors that need to decarbonise quickly; different instances of resistance against and contestation of incumbent fossil regimes; or studies that problematise and engage with ‘green’ developmental trajectories in the age of climate breakdown. Such work can, e.g., be done in comparative case studies, which can help to build theoretical and conceptual knowledge that fosters the centring of climate change within IPE as a whole. Related to this, we see it as a second important item to promote a culture of methodological innovation in dealing with climate breakdown as a field. By this we mean to develop and communicate an apparatus of methodological tools and approaches that allows researchers, practitioners, and others to speak to each other and that facilitates especially the praxis-orientation of critical climate research. Such a set of methodological approaches and procedures would help enormously to build bridges and enhance comprehension between not only IPE scholars, but also with the public which is the ultimate target of praxis-oriented research. Both items, we believe, would help to strengthen the relevance of climate research within IPE, and the role of IPE in tackling the most existential crisis global populations are facing in the twenty-first century.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 European Research Council [grant number 758430].

Notes on contributors

Milan Babic

Milan Babić is Assistant Professor of Global Political Economy at Roskilde University and is affiliated with the SWFsEUROPE project at Maastricht University and the CORPNET research group at the University of Amsterdam. His work deals with foreign state investment and the transformations of the global political economy in the transition from a neoliberal toward a post-neoliberal global order. His book The Rise of State Capital (Agenda) will be published in 2023.

Sarah E. Sharma

Sarah E. Sharma is an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. Her research considers the global political economy of environmental governance and she is particularly concerned with the interconnections between global processes and daily livelihoods across and within the global North and global South.

Notes

1 There are long and complex discussions about the usage of ‘IPE’ and ‘GPE’ in different contexts. For the sake of parsimony, we will use ‘IPE’ as an umbrella term referring to scholarship engaged in understanding phenomena within the global political economy.

2 We recognize that there is a lineage of critical political ecology scholarship across the fields of geography, sociology, and development studies that has well established the centrality of socio-ecological relations in global capitalism. Critical political ecology also scrutinised the uneven outcomes these relations produce according to geographical location, class, colonial relations of power, and social markers of identity such as gender, race and sexuality that render certain groups precarious and marginalized (Smith, 1984; Blaikie, Brookfield, and Allen 1987; Luke 1987; O’Connor 1989; Peet and Watts, 1993; Foster et al. 2010). This scholarship continues to inform and shape conversations on climate change and the environment in IPE (e.g. see Moore, 2015). While we acknowledge that boundaries across fields are diffuse, we also emphasize that this literature has never been mainstreamed in IPE engagements with climate change and the environment. The very history and ongoing significance of critical political ecology scholarship speak to our point: IPE has historically not centred or comprehensively engaged with climate breakdown and the environment, leaving this area of study to other fields. As we argue in this paper, (critical) IPE should therefore engage in multidisciplinary conversations to enrich its approaches and breadth of scholarship in the age of climate breakdown. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to us.

3 We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to us.

4 We acknowledge that much critical and eco-Marxist thinking would be skeptical about this idea of malleability, emphasising the symbiosis of ‘carbon’ and ‘capitalism’ and hence their inextricable linkage (see e.g., Altvater 1989; Dawson 2016; Böhm et al. 2012). We still believe that most eco-Marxist thinkers would deem even this type of linkage theoreticallymalleable, i.e. by overcoming capitalism. We hence mean ‘In theory’ as literally as possible and thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this issue out to us.