Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
ARTICLE
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41358-024-00375-9
Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social
dimension of the green transition
Anne Gerstenberg
Accepted: 26 May 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
Abstract Climate change and its associated mitigation policies have an impact
on people’s livelihoods. Therefore, how best to react to such impacts is currently
a prominent topic in academic and policymaking debates. The article contributes to
this new and rapidly developing academic discourse by identifying different under-
standings of the social dimension within current paradigms of the green transition
and analysing policymakers’ understandings of this dimension in Germany and the
European Union. The integration of the social dimension ultimately depends on
underlying understandings of redistribution and the state-society relationship. The
market-liberal Green Economy approach is dominant in the discourse; its narrow so-
cial dimension is mostly seeking to increase the acceptance of climate policy through
earmarking revenues of carbon trading. Green Keynesian arguments, which examine
structural policies and allow for more integrated approaches of social protection are
fighting to be heard. Ideas from the Degrowth sphere gain only fragmented access to
the policy debates, as they are often framed as unrealistic and politically unfeasible.
An interest-based understanding of the welfare state would be suited to mediate
interests within the transformation process and socially legitimise climate policy,
but current Green Economy discourses primarily aim for social policy to fulfil an
appeasing role.
Keywords Eco-social transformation · Climate change · Climate policy · Social
dimension · Social policy · Just transition
Contribution to the special issue: “Power, conflict, coordination: Mapping the politics of Germany’s
eco-social transformation” in the Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft
Anne Gerstenberg
Department of Social Sciences, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
E-Mail: anne.gerstenberg@uni-hamburg.de
K
A. Gerstenberg
Ideen im Wandel? Die Vorstellungen politischer Entscheidungsträger
von der sozialen Dimension des grünen Wandels
Zusammenfassung Der Klimawandel und die Politik zur Eindämmung des Klima-
wandels haben materielle Verteilungswirkungen. Fragen nach dem Umgang damit
sind in akademischen wie auch politischen Debatten aktuell präsent. Dieser Beitrag
entwickelt eine Konzeptualisierung unterschiedlicher Auffassungen der sozialen Di-
mension innerhalb aktueller Paradigmen eines grünen Wandels und analysiert, wie
policymaker in der Europäischen Union und Deutschland diese Dimension wahr-
nehmen. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass die Integration des Sozialen in
die grüne Transformation in hohem Maße von einem grundlegenden Verständnis
der Beziehungen zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft und von Umverteilung abhängt.
Im politischen Diskurs dominiert der marktliberale Green Economy-Ansatz, dessen
enge soziale Dimension vor allem darauf abzielt, die Akzeptanz von Klimapolitik
in der Bevölkerung durch Umverteilung aus dem Emissionshandel zu erhöhen. Ar-
gumente des grünen Keynesianismus, die sich mit Strukturpolitik und integrierteren
Ansätzen befassen, kämpfen darum, gehört zu werden. Ideen aus der Postwachs-
tumsliteratur finden nur bruchstückhaft Eingang in die politischen Debatten, sie
werden als unrealistische Träume und politisch undurchführbar beschrieben. Ein
interessenbasiertes Verständnis des Wohlfahrtsstaates wäre geeignet, um konfligie-
rende Interessen innerhalb der Transformation zu vermitteln und Klimapolitik ge-
sellschaftlich zu legitimieren, doch zielen aktuelle Green Economy Diskurse vor
allem auf eine beschwichtigende Rolle von Sozialpolitik ab.
Schlüsselwörter Ökosoziale Transformation · Klimawandel · Klimapolitik ·
Soziale Dimension · Sozialpolitik · Just Transition
1 Introduction
In the last decades, climate policy making in Europe has predominantly been in-
formed by technocracy and beliefs regarding the cost efficiency of the market.
Protests such as those of the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) in France against in-
creasing fuel taxes have shown that the green transition is not only associated
with material conflicts of redistribution but also inherently political. Decarbonis-
ing societies requires the negotiation of conflicts of interest between different policy
goals. It is vital to investigate policymakers’ ideas of the green transition and the
social dimension within that, as they shape policy design. However, analyses on
how this intersection is received and realised in the policymaking sphere remain
lacking (Bohnenberger 2022). This article provides insights into the current policy
discourses by analysing what policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension within the
green transition are.
How the ecological, social, and economic dimension can be combined, has in-
creasingly been the subject of research (Adloff and Neckel 2019; Mandelli 2022;
Nenning et al. 2023; Schulze Waltrup 2023; Zimmermann 2024). This article is
an inventory of a rapidly evolving research and policy field, synthesising academic
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
perspectives into an analytical framework of the social dimension within the green
transformation. Different approaches to climate change have been established, which
differ in terms of their problem definition of climate change and their understanding
of the human-nature relationship. This results in paradigms with different envi-
sioned degrees of transformation: ranging from system continuation and only grad-
ual changes—ecological modernization or Green Growth—right up to overthrow-
ing governance and economic structures—transformation or Degrowth (Adloff and
Neckel 2019; Schulze Waltrup 2023). Each of these paradigms has inherent con-
ceptions of the relationship between the state and society, normatively presupposing
who should receive what and why and negotiating ideas about inequality, redistribu-
tion, and well-being (Hirvilammi and Koch 2020). These different understandings of
socio-political order predefine the role that social policy can and should play within
the distributional conflict that the green transformation inherently presents. The
conceptualization discusses different interpretations of the social dimension within
Green Keynesianism and the Green Economy as varieties within Green Growth, and
considers sustainable welfare and climate justice as suggestions from the Degrowth
literature. These paradigms are categorized based on their definitions of climate
change and their relationship to growth, their understanding of the relationship be-
tween the state and market and of the welfare state, their justification for social
policy (SP) and their understanding of justice and well-being.
Policymakers’ ideas of this social dimension are analysed based on 41 expert
interviews with policymakers in Germany and at the European Union (EU) level
in relevant positions. Using critical discourse analysis, dominant, and consequently
neglected narratives are identified. The article adopts a perspective of discursive in-
stitutionalism towards policymaking, which highlights the role of ideas in explaining
change and shows how actors use such ideas to exert power and persuade others
(Saurugger 2013;Schmidt2008). Germany and the EU represent interesting case
studies because both have been making efforts to formulate ambitious climate policy,
but have come to different policy outcomes (the EU being more neoliberal and Ger-
many leaning more towards regulation), which interact in a multi-level governance
setting (Jordan et al. 2021).
This article will proceed as follows: in the next section, I provide an overview of
the different social conceptions within the green transition. Section 3 will describe
the methods used and the data gathered. Section 4 contains the findings from the
interviews and elucidates the current policy discourses surrounding the social di-
mension of the green transition. Proponents of the Green Economy narrowly argue
for the appeasement of potential social upheaval owing to climate policy, whereas
Green Keynesian representatives argue for a role for the welfare state that medi-
ates between different interests within society and enables democratic participation
through redistribution. Degrowth perspectives critically discussing Global North af-
fluence and its exploitative structures remain scarce among policy makers. The fifth
section offers a discussion and conclusion.
K
A. Gerstenberg
2 The social dimension of the green transition in the academic literature
Social and environmental policies have long been distinct fields, rarely talking to one
another. After pioneers such as Gough, Fitzpatrick, and Cahill (Cahill 2018; Cahill
and Fitzpatrick 2002; Fitzpatrick 2014; Gough 2013,2015,2022) reflected on the
ecology of social states, thereby laying the groundwork in this arena, the field of the
interrelation of social and climate policy is now evolving under the term of ‘eco-
social policy’. This article presents an overview of the current ideas circulating in
the academic sphere and offers a suggestion for an analytical framework, outlining
the overarching directions of green policies and situating the welfare state literature
within this context.1
In general, two overarching paradigms within the green transition have been iden-
tified: modernisation and transformation (Adloff and Neckel 2019).2Under the latter
approach, Adloff and Neckel (2019) subsume Degrowth or Postgrowth, whereas un-
der the former they include what is known as Eco-Modernism or Green Growth.
These paradigms differ in their problem definition of climate change, their con-
ception of the human-nature relationship, and their ideas of solutions. All of these
future scenarios contain distinct notions of well-being, redistribution, and the role
of social policy and welfare-state institutions, alongside which social and climate
policies are integrated. In principle, eco-social policies could roughly span the fol-
lowing aspects: (I) reactive policies, cushioning the distributive consequences of
climate policies and mitigating the impacts of climate change, (II) the productive
interaction with the transformation through forward-looking structural policies such
as retraining, and (III) a greening and decarbonisation of welfare-state activities and
institutions (Bohnenberger 2022; Mandelli 2022; Siderius 2023). In the following
section, I discuss which of these aspects are integrated into the paradigms.
2.1 Ecological modernisation
As the term suggests, modernist approaches are rooted in modernisation thought,
guiding policymaking and economic development in the 20th and 21st centuries. It
follows the narrative of humanity being at its developmental peak, with progress
and technological and industrial development as essential, ever-increasing patterns
(Adloff and Neckel 2019). There is a clear distinction between humans and nature,
based on enlightenment thought, which frames nature as something dangerous to be
dominated and controlled by supreme human rationality. Nature thus becomes a con-
trolled entity, providing humanity with resources that are relevant to development
(K.-W. Brand 2017; U. Brand and Wissen 2017).
1In the academic literature, numerous typologies ordering different approaches towards the social-ecolog-
ical transition have recently been released (Adloff and Neckel 2019; Mandelli 2022; Nenning et al. 2023;
Schulze Waltrup 2023; Zimmermann 2024). All of these typologies have laid important groundwork, based
on which I establish a combining framework.
2Adloff and Neckel (2019) identify a third strand, the one of “control”, which subsumes antidemocratic
arguments of an organised and authoritarian transformation; this will not be considered here.
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
Accordingly, economic growth does not stand in conflict with climate protection.
On the contrary, the two can go hand in hand to solve the latter. Well-being can
remain constant and even continue to increase depending on the ability of technology
and innovation to develop the necessary tools to increase the efficiency of existing
technologies and make alternative technologies for carbon storage and carbon-free
energy production (Newell and Paterson 2010). There are currently two approaches
within Green Growth scenarios that are fighting for dominance in policymaking.
They represent—to a certain extent—a continuation of debates within economic
thought of the 20th century and the question of how much state intervention in
the market is desirable (Hylland and Zeckhauser 1979;RauschandKarplus2014).
Both approaches include the promise of a continued increase in material wealth for
everyone, and both imply a certain transformation within institutions but no radical
transformation in regard to governance or economic system (Schulze Waltrup 2023).
The so-called Green Economy approach is based on a neoclassical understanding
and environmental economics (Schulze Waltrup 2023). It regards state intervention
as undesirable and believes that efficient markets will create the most effective and
efficient policy outcomes. Climate change is understood as a market externality
that can be solved by pricing it in. The preferred climate policy instruments in
this approach are carbon pricing, either through a quantity-based instrument such
as the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) or price-based instruments
such as carbon taxes, which are deemed politically less feasible (Harrison 2015).
Governmental intervention is thus allowed only for the limited extent of creating
a favourable environment in which markets can function (Tienhaara 2018).
Within neoclassical economist theory, the welfare state is either neglected or al-
lowed only a minimal role (Solo 1975). Accordingly, the social aspect in Green
Economy is discussed through the lens of the distributional effect that climate mit-
igation policies such as carbon trading possess (Büchs et al. 2011). Thus, SP is
understood narrowly only in its reactive function, cushioning the effects of climate
change, or climate policy, through recompensation without any preventive SP mea-
sures (Mandelli 2022). Environmental and welfare economists suggest to “revenue
recycl[e] through lump-sum dividends” (Mildenberger et al. 2022, p. 141), namely
that policymakers earmark the revenues from carbon trading schemes and redis-
tribute these as cash transfers. The primary goal in this stream of thought is to in-
crease the public support for and acceptance of climate mitigation policies through
redistributive measures. Such studies argue that lump-sum payments—where the
same amount of money is paid out to every household—are more favourable than
other designs that either directly target poorer households (Sommer et al. 2022)or
address horizonal inequality (Edenhofer et al. 2021). Social cash transfers have been
criticised in the development literature for reducing the manifold challenges that so-
cial policy and welfare states face to an apolitical “one-size-fits-all” solution that fails
to address local specificities (Béland et al. 2018). Furthermore, they have often been
found to be implemented in somewhat top-down approaches, thereby circumventing
foundational questions of state-citizen relationships and the democratic negotiation
of (re)distribution (Ouma and Adésínà 2019; Kuss and Gerstenberg 2023).
In contrast to the Green Economy approach, in Green Keynesianism, climate
change is understood as a systemic problem, whereby the use and consumption of
K
A. Gerstenberg
fossil fuel-based products is embedded into societal practices and production, which
require wholesale transformation (Rosenbloom et al. 2020). The actor to facili-
tate this structural transformation is the state, which can assume an entrepreneurial
role, steering change through regulative elements and instruments (Schulze Waltrup
2023), such as subsidies, phase-outs, infrastructural policy and investments in re-
search and technology is required (Patt and Lilliestam 2018; Cullenward and Victor
2020).
Accordingly, social policy interventions that are aligned with Green Keynesianism
are protective as they exceed the level of pure financial redistribution. They can be
understood as being much more integrated and as spanning several sectors (e.g.,
reskilling in labour market policy, subsidising and expanding public transport, or
subsidising the renovationof houses; see Mandelli 2022). Within this line of thought,
welfare states have historically been a function of the capitalist economy, replacing
the social security systems of family and church in the wake of industrialisation
(Briggs 1961, Zimmermann 2024). In this functionalist relationship between state
and citizens, they take up a productive role—providing the economy with workers
who fulfil all health and educational requirements to work in the economy. From
this perspective, inequality cannot exceed a certain level if public upheaval is to
be avoided (Offe 1972). In line with this thinking is the “just transition” paradigm
that emerged during the 1980s in the United States among workers in the fossil-
intensive industries, demanding that the transition is made in their interest, and
thereby cushioning the social trade-offs of the transition (Newell and Mulvaney
2013).
2.2 Transformation
Transformative approaches are rooted in post-Anthropocene, decolonial, and post-
development thought (Fremaux and Barry 2019; Weart 2011). Degrowth scholars ar-
gue that the climate crisis is caused by an extractivist and exploitative ever-expanding
and accumulating capitalist system (Adloff and Neckel 2019). There is a multitude
of different approaches within the Degrowth sphere, they share the pledge to recon-
sider the relationship between humans and nature (K.-W. Brand 2017) and to change
modernist notions of well-being.3In the following, two exemplary approaches within
the Degrowth sphere shall be introduced: sustainable welfare and climate justice.4
Both approaches have in common a critical stance towards the social dimension in
Green Growth approaches: they criticise firstly the growth dependency of the welfare
state and secondly the nation-state focus of redistribution. Thus, these concepts
share the ambition to develop integrated and preventative approaches that combine
3For more in-depth introductions to the Postgrowth and Degrowth literature, see Kallis (2011); Koch
(2013); Büchs and Koch (2019); Petschow et al. (2020); Hickel (2021) and Hickel et al. (2022).
4There is a breadth of other approaches that would be viable and interesting for analysis here, includ-
ing eco-feminism (Salleh 2017; Dengler and Seebacher, 2019; Dengler et al. 2023), buen vivir (Bressa
Florentin 2018), and eco-socialist approaches (Foster 2020; Vettese and Pendergrass 2022; Saito 2023).
I have chosen to focus on sustainable welfare and climate justice as they represent perspectives for the
reformation of welfare systems in the Global North (sustainable welfare) and decolonial perspectives from
the Global South (climate justice).
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
ecological and social considerations. They criticize the welfare state’s dependence on
economic growth for funding and green modernists strict focus on labour (Cahill and
Fitzpatrick 2002). Instead, welfare states should be “seen as embedded in ecosystems
and in need of respecting the regeneration capacity of the biosphere” (Hirvilammi
and Koch 2020, p. 2). Furthermore, their idea of justice and redistribution entails
the consideration of historic debt of carbon emissions and global redistribution.
According to these approaches, redistribution within welfare states is exclusionary,
as it retains the welfare within nation-state boundaries and, thus, further perpetuates
global centre-periphery inequalities (Offe 1972). It argues that redistribution must be
extended beyond nation-state borders (Brandstedt and Emmelin 2016): “Even if the
world’s islands of prosperity, insulated from global misery, were to accept the UN
Sustainable Development Goals as a guideline for social policy intervention: Unless
they transcend the limited perspective of national welfare states, their transformative
efforts will ultimately be doomed to failure” (Lessenich and Barth 2022, p. 313).
The two concepts can be distinguished by their imagined scope of transforma-
tion of the political and economic system. Furthermore, they argue from different
perspectives: while sustainable welfare distinctively focuses on the Global North,
climate justice speaks from the perspective of the Global South. The concept of
sustainable welfare suggests that the reformation of existing institutions is pos-
sible (Büchs and Koch 2017; Gough 2022). This includes, for example, limiting
consumption to so-called consumption corridors (Huwe and Frick 2022) and defin-
ing planetary boundaries to the economy (Raworth 2017). Furthermore, claims of
recomposing consumption, especially that of the richest 10% of the world’s pop-
ulation, through taxation and regulatory instruments are popular (Schulze Waltrup
2023)—or, as Theine and Taschwer (2021, p. 119) put it: “Why we cannot afford
the rich anymore”. Further instrument proposals from this literature include reduc-
ing working hours, ensuring universal basic services and income, promoting a care-
economy, and so on (Parrique et al. 2023), all of which could be implemented
within existing economic paradigms. While acknowledging the radical institutional
changes that these ideas imply (Hickel et al. 2022; Hirvilammi and Koch 2020), they
can both “either reinforce Green Growth or indicate a transition towards Degrowth”
(Schulze Waltrup 2023, p. 9). The transformative potential of these approaches will
depend on how much they will be softened and co-opted over time and through
adoption in real-world policymaking. Furthermore, some sustainable welfare schol-
ars counterintuitively maintain narratives from the modernisation paradigm of well-
being, stating that “this does not mean that ‘development’ will cease; industrialised
societies will still be able to increase well-being: the moral, social, cultural, and
material position of their citizens” (Gough and Meadowcroft 2011, p. 6), probably
in an attempt to make the concept popular or conceivable for policymakers.
In contrast, climate justice movements and literature (Agyeman 2014), and ap-
proaches with a decolonial, intersectional, post-Anthropocene background suggest
more revolutionary changes to the economic system and democratic institutions
that are aimed towards communal modes of living inspired by indigenous examples
(Kallis et al. 2022; Zuanic 2023). Such approaches posit that climate protection can
succeed only by redefining well-being and changing the extractivist consumption
lifestyle in the Global North towards notions of sufficiency (Stengel 2011). They
K
A. Gerstenberg
Tab l e 1 Conceptualisation of the Social Dimension within Different Green Transformation Scenarios
Degree of transfor-
mation
Eco-Modernism
Green Growth
Transformation
Degrowth
Specific approach Green Economy Green Keynesianism—Just Transi-
tion
Sustainable welfare Climate justice
Perception of cli-
mate change
Market externality Systemic problem Climate change caused by an extractivist and exploitative ever-expanding
and accumulating capitalist system
Relationship to
growth
Economic growth can continue and constitutes a vital factor to enable
transformation and wellbeing
Imagining an economy that re-
mains within environmental
boundaries while meeting human
needs
Rethinking human-nature rela-
tionship, organisation of gover-
nance and economy
State-market rela-
tionship
As little intervention by the
state as possible!low insti-
tutional reformation
Government steering transition
towards low-carbon economy!
institutional reformation
Government steering transition
towards well-being economy!
radical institutional reformation
Change of economic system and
the state!dissolution of existing
institutions, revolution
Role of the welfare
state and justifica-
tion for SP
Narrow, generate acceptance
for climate policies
Functionalist Justice-driven, welfare state can be
institution of redistribution
Inherent part of capitalist growth
paradigm, must be radically
rethought as institution
Well-being Materialist, GDP growth as reliable indicator, no change of well-
being in the Global North necessary
Needs-based Sufficiency, significant change of
well-being in the Global North
necessary
Redistribution Undesirable National National Global
Necessary instru-
ments
Redistribution revenues from
carbon taxation
Active labour market policies,
insuring vulnerable households
against climate-related risks
Universal basic income and ser-
vices, reducing working hours,
consumption corridors
Communal living in accordance
with nature
Source: Created by the author
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
emphasise the global scope of climate change by highlighting the injustices between
the Global North and Global South in terms of accepting responsibility for climate
change and bearing the burden—while the Global North bears the historical res-
ponsibility for climate change, the Global South is most adversely affected by it
(Backhouse and Tittor 2019). Furthermore, they emphasise the reproduction of neo-
colonial structures through Green Growth policies, exploiting nature and people in
the periphery, creating unequal access to resources and green energy and destroying
indigenous living spaces through carbon offsetting (Sultana 2022). Generally, these
movements are characterised more by ideas and broad visions than by concrete
policy proposals (Hankammer et al. 2023).
Table 1summarises the different narratives and ideas that are currently present in
the academic literature. The remainder of the article will outline the extent to which
these have found their way into the policymaking arena and how policymakers in
Germany and the EU perceive the social dimension within the green transformation.
This represents first insights into a rapidly developing policy field. It is important to
study the matter, because policymakers’ core beliefs on matters such as redistribution
and state-citizen relationships influence how they design policies (Sabatier 1988;
Linder and Peters 1989;Weible2018). Ultimately, the design of flanking social
policy instruments will have a significant influence on the legitimation and success
of ambitious climate policy within the cases’ electorates.
3 Method and design
The analysis in this study is based on 41 semi-structured interviews with EU and
German policymakers, conducted within two research projects “The social dimen-
sion of the European Green Deal” and “Perceptions of Climate Policy Instruments”.5
The questionnaires in both projects were similarly designed, purposefully including
similar questions to create synergies. In the interviews, questions were asked about
the policymakers’ perceptions of the green transition, what they wanted to achieve
with their own work in the field and how they wanted to achieve it. Furthermore,
their conception of “justice” within a just transition as well as the role that social
policy could or should play within that transition were interrogated. The intervie-
wees were part of either the environmental or social committees of the European
and German Parliament (14 interviews) and the ministries and directorate generals
for social and climate policy in the European Commission and German bureaucracy
(10 interviews). Furthermore, as interest representations, interviews were conducted
with environmental organisations (five interviews) and industry representatives in
the climate field (four interviews) and with welfare organisations and trade unions
in the social policy field (eight interviews). Interview partners were selected fol-
lowing in-depth research and snowball sampling based on recommendations from
interviewed persons. Interviews were conducted between April 2022 and April 2023,
5For further information about the project “Policymakers’ perceptions of climate policy instruments”
and for a detailed account of the research design, data collection and method of analysis, please refer to
Gerstenberg et al. (2024).
K
A. Gerstenberg
which was a politically significant time with the rise of inflation, the post-Covid-19
recession, the Ukraine war, and rising energy prices, which informed the content of
the interviews. Most interviews were conducted through video calls, while the rest
were conducted in person, and all interviews had an average duration of one hour.
After receiving written consent from interviewees, the interviews were recorded,
transcribed, and anonymised. The interviews were conducted in both German and
English, and quotations from the German interviews were translated into English
for the findings section.
The EU and Germany were chosen as case studies because they simultaneously
developed ambitious climate policies and strong debates about the social dimen-
sion, but came to different policy outcomes. They illustrate the role of different
institutional, historic, and cultural contexts leading to different policy outcomes and
interactions between these outcomes in a context of multilevel governance.The EU’s
Green Deal represents a Green Economy approach to climate policy, with carbon
trading as its cornerstone (Ossewaarde and Ossewaarde-Lowtoo 2020), which has
manifest distributive consequences for European citizens (Schumacher et al. 2022).
These distributive consequences are met with social policies that are somewhat re-
active and investment-based in terms of funding, such as the Social Climate Fund
and the Just Transition Mechanism (Mandelli et al. 2023). Germany, in contrast,
has a more regulative tradition and is categorised as a welfare regime with high
welfare-state intervention (Zimmermann and Graziano 2020). Climate policy mea-
sures are equally state-interventionist (e.g. state subsidies for renewable energies or
a mandatory coal phase-out). The coal phase-out included structural policy funding
(e.g. reskilling of workers), which interacts with the Just Transition Mechanism. The
most prominent eco-social instrument currently under discussion is the “Klimageld”
(climate money), an unconditional cash transfer, the targeting and size of which
were debated at the time of the interviews (Örtl 2022; Sommer et al. 2022). Beyond
that, eco-social concerns are being mainstreamed into other policy fields such as
energy, construction, and transport.
The analytical strategy was based on an epistemic approach of constructivism,
or, more concretely, the constructivist public policy theory of discursive institu-
tionalism (DI) (Hay 2011;Schmidt2008,2010). DI emphasises the power of ideas
within the policymaking process. Policy change in the eyes of DI scholars is effected
through the ability of actors to frame and promote certain ideas and strategically
build ideational coalitions (Saurugger 2013). The data analysis consisted of qualita-
tive content analysis and interpretive analysis. Qualitative content analysis (Mayring
2021) allows one to draw patterns from the data that can later be interpreted. The
data were coded in a two-step procedure: first, general patterns were deductively
generated from the theoretical framework and research question, and second, dif-
ferent perspectives were inductively detected within these categories. Based on this,
a coding scheme was developed and tested, after which all interviews were recoded
based on the final coding scheme. The interpretive analysis of the coded interviews
was based on critical discourse analysis, which allows to identify power dynamics
within discourses, to outline which discourses dominate and which perspectives are
consequently neglected (Van Dijk 1993).
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
Fig. 1 Paradigmatic Position by Case and Actor Group. aEU, bGermany. Source: Created by the author.
The figure displays the code-cooccurrences (meaning the appearance per document) of the three overarch-
ing paradigms of Degrowth, Green Keynesianism and Green Economy by the actor group. As the data is
not a representative sample in a quantitative sense, this quantification is not representative for a statistical
population. For the EU, the party cases of Liberals and Left party remain empty because to interviews for
these cases could be conducted
4 Findings
Policymakers in Germany and the EU have slowly started integrating the social
dimension into climate policymaking. The following section will discuss in which
way they have done so, which ideas are dominant, and which ideas are conse-
quently neglected. This will be done alongside the aforementioned concepts: the
visions of transition of the different actors and how the social aspects within it
are framed—concerns of inequality, justice, and justifications for SP. It finds that,
overarchingly, the conception of Green Economy is the most dominant narrative
K
A. Gerstenberg
on the European level and also highly acclaimed by liberals in Germany.6For the
other actors in Germany, Green Keynesianism is more prominent, with increasing
knowledge around more integrated approaches that involve regulative instruments in
structural policy sectors. Questions on how the welfare state itself could decarbonise
or become less growth-dependent are present to only a limited extent in those de-
bates. This is visualized in Fig. 1. Most policymakers spoke in closed frames without
contradicting themselves much.
4.1 The social dimension within the Green Economy and Green Keynesianism
Green Economy Within the interviews, especially among the EU policymakers
in the European Commission, as well as liberal actors and think tanks, the Green
Economy perspective was dominant. The interviewees in favour of this perspective
of transformation emphasised the necessity and possibility of solving climate change
with carbon pricing and technical innovation. In addition to “the primary objective
... the reduction in CO2-emissions” (Interview 30, Liberal, 2022), the main objectives
of the transformation are “social acceptability ... maintaining jobs and a competitive
economy” (Interview 41, European Commission, 2023). From this perspective, social
welfare is produced through economic growth and full employment.
Thus, the role of SP within this context is the “sociopolitical compensation for
climate protection measures to secure acceptance” (Interview 11, Ministry for Eco-
nomic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). To meet this goal, Green Economy ad-
vocates suggest accompanying climate mitigation policy, namely carbon pricing,
by recycling the revenues from it: “That’s a really important advantage of carbon
pricing [that it generates revenues] and those revenues can then be used, to invest in
the green transition, but also to address social impacts of all climate policies” (Inter-
view 39, European Commission, 2023). Interestingly, throughout the whole range
of actors and ideological positions, the interviewees were strongly in favour of these
cash transfers, the “Klimageld” (climate money) in Germany and the EU funding
policies (e.g., the Social Climate Fund and the Just Transition Fund), disagreeing
only slightly on their concrete design. Within the European Commission, the pri-
mary focus of the interviewees was to “mainstream and address these challenges [of
climate change and SP] together within the various funds” (Interview 15, 2023).
Indeed, the main justification for SP within this paradigm was acceptability: “Well,
it’s important because of the acceptance and that people are taken along. And the fact
that the costs incurred and climate protection are usually not free of charge, and for
these losses for these higher costs, I can and must compensate them politically” (In-
terview 30, Liberal, 2022). Accordingly, the justification for certain measures was
not necessarily social justice or fighting poverty but rather an appeasement mecha-
nism in the sense of ‘bread and games for the people’—as long as the populations’
initial needs are satisfied, they will not rebel.
6For a more differentiated analysis of the differences between the German and EU approaches, please
see Zimmermann et al. in this issue. The paper by Cremer (2024) in this issue provides further insight in
stakeholders’ positions.
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
While these actors repeated the goals of a “fair” and “just” transition where
people needed to be “taken along”, they were criticised by other actors for using
these expressions as empty catchphrases: “The fact that the transition has to be
just is always recognised in speeches, it’s always written that nobody should be left
behind, that transition will have to be just and fair ... Though, there’s a discrepancy
there between the declared intention [and how] climate policies and social policies
are done” (Interview 5, Trade Union, 2022). Yet, the terms “fair” and “just” are
anything but clear and uncontested in the European policy discourse, and different
actors assign different meanings to them. Thus, what can be observed here, as
Gengnagel and Zimmermann (2022) state, is a “discursive domestication” of just
transition narratives by politically opposed actors.
Green Keynesianism In contrast to the Green Economy approach, Green Key-
nesian perspectives were highly sceptical of the idea that emissions trading alone
would suffice to drive the transformation: “Climate policy entails a deep transforma-
tion in certain industries and I would argue that it is always important to flank that
with structural policy form the state. Strict market liberals might see that differently.
However, in my view, we will be better off if we try to cushion such ruptures as the
state” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). In addition, the goal was defined differently
among those actors but included some sort of justice perception: “‘Zero emissions’
is no quality statement about a society. You can of course live in a CO2neutral so-
ciety in 2045, having reached all the climate goals, without life having become more
lifeworthy in the slightest” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Cli-
mate Action, 2023). Rather than carbon pricing, they pledged regulation: “No bus
is driving more often because the CO2-price is rising. This only happens if I prop-
erly finance public transport and invest in structural reforms and if I take care of the
redistribution question” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). These standpoints were
mostly propagated by the trade unions, social democrats, and left-leaning politicians.
Those Green Keynesians displayed a more justice-driven perspective of social
policy and a more integrated vision of measures accompanying climate policies.
Their envisioned SP measures for supporting the transformation were more in the
mould of preventative rather than reactive policy: “I think it is important to look at
things proactively instead of making emergency care afterwards ... The best social
policy is the social policy that can be prevented through an intelligent and forward-
looking labour policy” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). They pledge “active struc-
tural [and labour] policy” (Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023). This could be
reached, as they argued, through a more integrated policymaking approach: “Cli-
mate policy should always be designed while having the social question in mind:
... which distributional effects this measure might have and if there is another mea-
sure with less or no distributional effects that might have the same climate effect?”
(Interview 3, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022). In addition to protecting
people in high carbon industries from the effects of the transition, the focus was
also placed on workers’ rights in emerging industries such as renewable energies:
“There we have principally a situation like in early capitalism, where a working rela-
tionship is slowly developed that is in accordance with workers’ rights, with welfare
state policy, with workers’ rights to strike, tariff payments and so on and so forth”
K
A. Gerstenberg
(Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). They also welcomed the Klimageld; however,
they did so because of its redistributive potential.
In addition to acceptance, poverty reduction is a main goal for Green Keynesians:
“I would even say that acceptance is a secondary goal here, that primarily we have
a real social political responsibility here. The increase in the energy prices last win-
ter has shown that in the transition we really have to make sure we fight poverty”
(Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023). Moreover,
the interviewees highlighted the necessity of enabling real participation: “The ‘just’
in Just Transition is not necessarily an economic one, rather I think it in a sense of
enabling participation” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate
Action, 2023). This real participation was to be enabled through two pillars. On
the one hand, there is an emphasis on increasing democratic fora and citizen par-
ticipation in the social dialogue, “there is a lot of things that can be done but I’m
quite sure that the question is more about bringing people in the deliberation and in
the decision to know collectively where we want to go” (Interview 5, Trade Union,
2022). On the other hand, enabling households to adapt financially is promoted:
“social acceptability means more than just some financial cushioning... we need to
enable the people to adapt accordingly” (Interview 7, Think Tank, 2022).
Labour unions and social democrats find themselves in a conflicting role con-
cerning the just transition. For one thing, trade unions have been the main channel
for the just transition claims of workers’ fights since the beginning. However, they
often find themselves defending fossil-fuel-intensive industries, as this Member of
the European Parliament (MEP) pointed out:
“Last year ... the parliamentary consultations on the new ETS ... had great signif-
icance for... the steel industry in Germany. The question was: which benchmarks
should apply?... And here, together with IG Metall, with workers councils from
the steel industry, I mobilised properly:we made sure that the social democratic
members of parliament... were put under pressure. And in the end... in this very
specific vote when it came to the benchmarks, contrary to previous figures,
a majority of the S&D MEPs fell over here.” (Interview 13, Social Democrat,
2023)
Thus, they are serving discourses of climate delay (Busch et al. 2023;Lambetal.
2020) and being perceived as hindering climate policy: “We are understood as being
very defensive as unions” (Interview 9, Trade Union, 2023). Actors from the climate
policy sphere expressed frustration about this industry-friendly focus: “[We need
to make] sure that industry is also playing their role. They have been receiving free
money for more than 10 years [through free allocation of certificates], they could
also play a role in making sure that the energy transition and so on is not only being
paid by the most vulnerable population” (Interview 27, Think Tank, 2022).
4.2 Blind spots from a degrowth perspective
Degrowth perspectives were quite rare in the interviews. There is a clear distinction
between policymakers in parliaments and ministries and those from interest repre-
sentations: The policymakers within real policymaking capacities had less awareness
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
of problems and less progressive views, with the exception of a few green and left-
ist members of parliament (MPs) and MEPs. The majority opinion deemed talks
on sufficiency unpopular and politically unfeasible, as one interview partner from
a German ministry put it:
“I personally think that these problems cannot be solved successfully if we
don’t manage to connect climate protection with well-being, convenience and
things like that... so if you want to lose political majorities, then of course,
you can stand up for things like sufficiency (laughs). But I don’t think that
you’ll serve the matter with that. If you turn the wheel to far then with the
next election, you’ll have people voted into majorities that do not make climate
policy AT ALL.” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate
Action, 2023)
However, some interview partners were vocal about Degrowth and critical about
the Green Growth strategy of the EU; for example, one leftist MP stated: “If we do
not succeed in putting nature, the environment, biodiversity, climate protection and
social aspects above the rights of investors in the EU and worldwide, then we have
no chance. Point. Then we will lose, sooner or later ... Greening the industry buys us
time. But on a finite planet Earth, infinite growth is not possible. ” (Interview 22, The
Left, 2022). One interview partner stated that Degrowth was inevitable because:
“We know for sure that if climate change continues like it does at the moment, we
will have losses in economic growth anyways” (Interview 2, Ministry for Labour and
Social Policy, 2022).
Sustainable welfare: decarbonising the welfare state Attempts to bring the eco-
logical into the social and decarbonise the welfare state are very much in their
infancy. Not much knowledge has yet spilled over from the academic literature,
especially the points from sustainable welfare scholars on growth dependency of
welfare state finance were neither mentioned nor known if asked. Specifically, pro-
gressive instruments such as universal basic income or universal basic services were
not mentioned at all. In Germany, some processes of reflection have started about the
investment of pension funds and the ecological footstep of state-provided welfare
institutions:
“At the moment, social security doesn’t have to fulfil sustainability criteria and
that is a problem. We started that process in the social democratic party and
I will be part of defining what sustainability in welfare state activity actually
means... I want, that everywhere, where the welfare state is involved, let it be
in pension funds or constructing safehouses for women, does these things un-
der the consideration of climate measures—that not the cheapest is the best
option anymore but sustainable... we as a state have to be role models for the
industry: we have to showcase how to invest sustainably.” (Interview 10, Social
Democrat, 2023)
K
A. Gerstenberg
Furthermore, some institutions are working towards making the institution itself
more sustainable owing to the engagement of a few agents of change, for example
one employee from the German Ministry for Labour and Social Policy stated: “We
ensured that there are vegetarian options in the ministries’ canteen” (Interview 3,
Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022).
Sufficiency: recomposing consumption Very few interviewees mentioned suffi-
ciency, and, if they did, it was only as an unrealistic idea. One interviewee from
the Green Party stated: “If we are free styling here, then of course... (laughs) you’d
have to reduce the level of affluence that people in the Northern hemisphere have”
(Interview 34, Green Party, 2022). One ministerial official stated, “We need a change
of consciousness on the individual level. People need to understand that they cannot
continue to live like we did before. We need to get away from that ‘always more and
more’ attitude” (Interview 3, Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, 2022), urging for
greater inclusion of sustainability in education systems and raising awareness among
the younger generations. Another interviewee raised awareness of the fact that, in
addition to past events, the design of current trade policies is further perpetuating the
climate crisis, as resources for the green transition are mined under poor working
and environmental conditions and subsequently imported to the Global North instead
of leaving them to the Global South to facilitate their transition: “[W]e really have
to make sure that we finally make sufficiency work, meaning that we stop consuming
so much in order to have to import less” (Interview 6, Welfare Organization, 2022),
he stated.
Most of these claims were combined with a notion of radical redistribution and
the richest 1% in society taking responsibility: “I think if the social perspective
has to be considered, it’s a lot more important to look at redistribution ... the rich
part of the society, which has a higher carbon footprint. This part of society can,
and I think should at least bear a reasonable responsibility for the pollution and
the environmental damage they cause in the longer run .... I mean, this sounds a bit
slogan-esque but: tax the rich and then redistribute it” (Interview 26, Environmental
Organization, 2022). However, as a Social Democrat interviewee pointed out: “The
societal discourse for this is missing completely unfortunately” (Interview 10, Social
Democrat, 2023).
Climate justice Any notions of “justice” expressed in the interviews were pre-
dominantly centred around the Global North. The “just” in just transition refers to
justice for European citizens, an electorate in European countries, European low-
income households, and white male workers employed in unionised industries. One
trade unionist stated, “The transition will not succeed if it’s about saying to peo-
ple that their living conditions will be worse than today” (Interview 5, Trade Union,
2022). When asked about which role justice towards the Global South played in their
work, one German ministry official responded: “absolutely none. We make national
policies” (Interview 11, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, 2023).
Ambiguities between different regions are, if at all, perceived between the European
east and west, and some interviewees claimed the need for solidarity between them.
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
Only a few interviewees exhibited a more global understanding of justice and
redistribution, as for example, this Green Party interviewee: “Icometoitfromper-
spective of climate justice, which has as a basis that you can only do real, progressive
climate legislation in a just way ... you’d have to reduce the level of affluence and eq-
uity that people in the Northern hemisphere have and funnel lots of that money into
the Global South” (Interview 34, Green Party, 2022). Those who were in favour of
climate justice mentioned the historic debt of emissions in the Global North and the
higher affectedness of climate change in the Global South: “We have a historic res-
ponsibility as industrial countries. That can’t be discussed away ... the countries in
the Global South are affected most by the adverse effects of climate policy, while it is
them who basically live climate neutral” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023). Further-
more, there was an understanding of the problem of the exploitative structures of
the European green transition:
“In my honest opinion, we are not doing enough for this ... if one were com-
pletely honest we would simply need recompensation measures towards the
Global South ... It is a massive problem how resources for our green transition
are being exploited in Africa by our partners.” (Interview 10, Social Democrat,
2023)
However, this interviewee expressed rather incoherent views throughoutthe inter-
view, seamlessly switching between statements such as these to more green-economy
narratives. He repeatedly emphasised the importance of investment in electric cars,
which happens to be a significant part of industry in his electoral area. Thus, such
statements in the interviews seem to reflect high morals that are not followed by any
concrete action.
5Conclusion
Climate policy (in)action, in whichever form, has material redistributive conse-
quences. This article has analysed the ideas of EU and German policymakers on
the social dimension within the green transition. Overarchingly, the matter is slowly
being adopted into the institutional architecture of the responsible institutions, but
an integrated approach of eco-social thinking has not been fully established. Knowl-
edge around integrated approaches of eco-social policies and progressive measures
have not yet fully spilled over to the relevant institutions.
The findings suggest that the most dominant paradigm at the EU level, is the
Green Economy approach, which views climate policy as a narrow task focused on
CO2emissions as a market externality that can be priced in by market-based mitiga-
tion policies. The role of SP within this approach is understood in an equally narrow
manner, buying the population’s acceptance of climate policies through recompen-
sation and reactive measures. In contrast, Green Keynesian approaches advocate for
integrated and progressive social policies that span multiple policy fields such as
energy policy, construction, and transport, as well as progressive labour policies.
However, both approaches remain within the boundaries of Green Growth, whereby
the well-being of society is generally believed to come directly from the well-being
K
A. Gerstenberg
of industry. The article indicates an absence around Degrowth discourses. Only very
few actors have acknowledged Degrowth, highlighting the need to reconsider well-
being, consumption, and societal living standards, and thus expressing the need for
radical redistribution. However, these actors believe that these can remain only ideas
in an institutional and discursive context of narratives beyond Green Growth and
are thus politically unrealistic. Ideas of justice and redistribution remain focused on
the Global North. Some ideas of climate justice and international redistribution are
present but they are not voiced by actors with decision-making power.
All of these green transformation approaches have inherent ideas about the justi-
fication, scope, and instrumentation of SP. What lies at the heart of these and was
a golden thread throughout all interviews are different understandings of socio-polit-
ical order, namely, the kind of relationship the state and its population should have.
This is fundamental to the role and scope of social policy. Climate policy has long
been dominated by a technocratic understanding and technological neutrality (Azar
and Sandén 2011; Paterson et al. 2022). Among all interviewees, there is a certain
awareness that this is no longer the way to go: “If we force something onto people,
we need their support for that. And this society policy element is missing everywhere”
(Interview 10, Social Democrat, 2023).
The idea of people needing to be “taken along” within transformation, and that
legitimacy for climate policy can be achieved through SP, leads to different con-
clusions of which two narratives were most prominent: ‘bread and games for the
people’ versus ‘true participation’. Green economists used the former narrative, jus-
tifying social policy mostly with arguments around acceptance. Owing to fears of
social unrest (e.g., the yellow vests protest movement in France), there is a certain
recognition, even among market liberals, that some sort of recompensation is neces-
sary. This argument was often made under the umbrella of “social peace so that your
society sticks together, that it doesn’t break apart” (Interview 19, Thinktank, 2022).
However, these solely recompensating measures (e.g. cash transfers) are caught in
contradiction—while they are sold as attempts to take the people along, they aim to
buy social peace by silencing the democratic deliberation surrounding the transition.
In contrast, civil society organisations, leftist politicians, and trade unions argued
for ‘true participation’ (Sabato et al. 2023), where people need to be enabled to
participate in a democratic deliberation around the transition:
“I find democratic processes very important in that context: to organise trans-
formation processes in a way that people can participate. So, to involve the
people in decision making processes, let it be in paid labour or through citi-
zen participation. That can be done financially, but that also needs to be done
ideationally. People need to be involved in planning processes and need to be
able to voice their criticism before it is implemented and too late. That is very
important in my opinion.” (Interview 8, Trade Union, 2023)
This represents an interest-based understanding of the role of the welfare
state—namely as a negotiator that must find the balance between different
classes—as it can “[mitigate and legitimize] unequal affectedness of transition
processes” (Zimmermann 2024, p. 64). The interest-based approach to the welfare
state, which negotiates and balances different interests within society, is better
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
suited to meet the deeply political nature of climate policy and play a critical role
in democratic deliberation around the essential question of redistribution (Nonhoff
2008). These considerations of social legitimacy lead into the realm of democracy
theory, which is beyond the scope of this article but pose fruitful ground for future
research.
Supplementary Information The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41358-024-
00375-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank the editors of this special issue: Katharina Bohnenberger, Jasper
Finkeldey, Torben Fischer and Hendrik Theine, as well as the other authors in the special issue, for their
constructive feedback and support. I would also like to sincerely thank the reviewers for their helpful
comments and suggestions, which have enabled me to improve the paper. A special thank you is reserved
for Katharina Zimmermann, I am very grateful for her incessant support and guidance. Furthermore, I thank
the student research assistants involved in the data collection and proofreading: Katrin von der Lancken,
Sarah Fenske and Sarah Tews. Moreover, I would like to thank Julia Cremer and Jana Brandl for their
support and helpful thoughts and comments.
Funding This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foun-
dation) under Germany‘s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2037 ‘CLICCS—Climate, Climatic Change, and So-
ciety’—Project Number: 390683824, contribution to the Center for Earth System Research and Sustain-
ability (CEN) of Universität Hamburg.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
0/.
References
Adloff, Frank, and Sighard Neckel. 2019. Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation,
and control: a conceptual framework. Sustainability Science 14:1015–1025. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11625-019-00671-2.
Agyeman, Julian. 2014. Global environmental justice or Le droit au monde? Geoforum 54:236–238. https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.12.021.
Azar, Christian, and Björn A. Sandén. 2011. The elusive quest for technology-neutral policies. Environ-
mental Innovation and Societal Transitions 1:135–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2011.03.003.
Backhouse, Maria, and Anne Tittor. 2019. Für eine intersektionale Perspektive auf globale sozial-ökolo-
gische Ungleichheiten. In Große Transformation? Zur Zukunft moderner Gesellschaften Sonderband
des Berliner Journals für Soziologie., ed. Klaus Dörre, Hartmut Rosa, Katharina Becker, Sophie Bose,
and Benjamin Seyd, 297–312. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Béland, Daniel, Rosina Foli, Michael M.Ramesh Howlett, and Jun Jie Woo. 2018. Instrument constituen-
cies and transnational policy diffusion: the case of conditional cash transfers. Review of International
Political Economy 25(4):463–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2018.1470548.
Bohnenberger, Katharina. 2022. Klimasozialpolitik: Ein Forschungsstandbericht zur Verbindung von
Klimapolitik und Sozialpolitik. Deutsches Institut für Interdisziplinäre Sozialpolitikforschung.DI-
FIS-Studie, 2022/3.
Brand, Karl-Werner. 2017. Die sozial-ökologische Transformation der Welt: Ein Handbuch. Frankfurt,
New York: Campus.
K
A. Gerstenberg
Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. 2017. Imperiale Lebensweise: Zur Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur
im globalen Kapitalismus. München: Oekom.
Brandstedt, Eric, and Maria Emmelin. 2016. The concept of sustainable welfare. In Sustainability and the
political economy of welfare, ed. Eric Brandtstedt, Maria Emmelin, 15–18. London: Routledge.
Bressa Florentin, Daniela. 2018. Between policies and life: the political process of Buen Vivir in Ecuador.
In The politics of wellbeing: theory, policy and practice, ed. Ian Bache, Karen Scott, 121–142. Cham:
Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58394- 5_6.
Briggs, Asa. 1961. The welfare state in historical perspective. European Journal of Sociology 2:221–258.
Büchs, Milena, and Max Koch. 2017. Postgrowth and wellbeing: challenges to sustainable welfare.Wies-
baden: Springer.
Büchs, Milena, and Max Koch. 2019. Challenges for the Degrowth transition: the debate about wellbeing.
Futures 105:155–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2018.09.002.
Büchs, Milena, Nicholas Bardsley, and Sebastian Duwe. 2011. Who bears the brunt? Distributional effects
of climate change mitigation policies. Critical Social Policy 31:285–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0261018310396036.
Busch, Henner, Vasna Ramasar, Sofia Avila, Brototi Roy, Tara van Ryneveld, Ana Mandinic, and Eric
Brandstedt. 2023. Mining coal while digging for justice: Investigating justice claims against a coal-
phase out in five countries. The Extractive Industries and Society 15:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
exis.2023.101275.
Cahill, Michael. 2018. The environment and social policy. London: Routledge.
Cahill, Michael, and Tony Fitzpatrick. 2002. Environmental issues and social welfare. Hoboken: Blackwell
Publishing.
Cremer, Julia C. 2024. Collective actors and potential alliances for eco-social policies in Germany.
Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft.https://doi.org/10.1007/s41358-024- 00374-w.
Cullenward, Danny, and David G. Victor. 2020. Making climate policy work. Hoboken: John Wiley.
Dengler, Corinna, and Lisa M. Seebacher. 2019. What about the global south? Towards a feminist de-
colonial degrowth approach. Ecological Economics 157:246–252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.
2018.11.019.
Dengler, Corinna, Nadine Gerner, Taís Sonetti-Gonzales, Lina Hansen, Sourayan Mookerjea, Susan Paul-
son, Anna Saave, and FaDA Writing Collective. 2023. Why are feminist perspectives, analyses, and
actions vital to degrowth? Degrowth Journal 1:1–16. https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.001.01.11.
Edenhofer, Ottmar, Matthias Kalkuhl, and Christina Roolfs. 2021. Carbon pricing and revenue recy-
cling: an overview of vertical and horizontal equity effects for Germany 22. CESifo Forum., 10–14.
München: Ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universität.
Fitzpatrick, Tony. 2014. International handbook on social policy and the environment. Cheltenham: Ed-
ward Elgar Publishing.
Foster, John B. 2020. The return of nature: socialism and ecology. New York: Monthly review Press.
Fremaux, Anne, and John Barry. 2019. The “good Anthropocene” and green political theory: rethinking
environmentalism, resisting eco-modernism. In Anthropocene encounters: new directions in green
political thinking, 1st edn., ed. Frank Biermann, Eva Lövbrand, 171–190. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108646673.009.
Gengnagel, Vincent, and Katharina Zimmermann. 2022. The European green deal as a moonshot—caring
for a climate-neutral yet prospering continent? Historical Social Research/Historische Sozial-
forschung 47:267–302. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27182683.
Gerstenberg, Anne, Kai-Uwe Schnapp, Johannes Jarke-Neuert, Grischa Perino, Ella Karnik Hinks, and
Sarah Fenske. 2024. Documentation for the Dataset of the Research Project „Policymakers‘ Percep-
tions of Climate Policy Instruments”. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=4831980.
Gough, Ian. 2013. Carbon mitigation policies, distributional dilemmas and social policies. Journal of So-
cial Policy 42:191–213. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279412001018.
Gough, Ian. 2015. Climate change and sustainable welfare: the centrality of human needs. Cambridge
Journal of Economics 39:1191–1214. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bev039.
Gough, Ian. 2022. Two scenarios for sustainable welfare: a framework for an eco-social contract. Social
Policy and Society 2:460–472. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746421000701.
Gough, Ian, and James Meadowcroft. 2011. Decarbonizing the welfare state. In The Oxford handbook
of climate change and society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg,
490–503. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566600.003.
0033.
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
Hankammer, Stephan, Robin Kleer, and Max Polewsky. 2023. Degrowth vs. Green growth. A computa-
tional review and interdisciplinary research agenda. Academy of Management Proceedings https://
doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.14757abstract.
Harrison, Kathryn. 2015. International carbon trade and domestic climate politics. Global Environmental
Politics 15:27–48. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00310.
Hay, Colin. 2011. Interpreting interpretivism interpreting interpretations: the new hermeneutics of public
administration. Public Administration 1:167–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.01907.
x.
Hickel, Jason. 2021. What does Degrowth mean? A few points of clarification. Globalizations 18:1105–1111.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222.
Hickel, Jason, Tim Jackson Giorgos Kallis, Daniel W. O’Neill, Juliet B. Schor, Julia K. Steinberger, Peter
A. Victor, and Diana Ürge-Vorsatz. 2022. Degrowth can work—here’s how science can help. Nature
612:400–403. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022- 04412- x.
Hirvilammi, Tuuli, and Max Koch. 2020. Sustainable welfare beyond growth. Sustainability 12:1–8.
https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051824.
Huwe, Vera, and Marc Frick. 2022. Far from optimal? Exploring the normative premises and politics
of carbon pricing. Energy Research & Social Science 86:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.
102458.
Hylland, Aanund, and Richard Zeckhauser. 1979. Distributional objectives should affect taxes but not
program choice or design. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 81:265–284. https://doi.org/10.
2307/3439965.
Jordan, Andrew, Viviane Gravey, and Camilla Adelle. 2021. EU environmental policy at 50. In Environ-
mental Policy in the EU, 4th edn., ed. Andrew Jordan, Viviane Gravey, 357–374. London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429402333-25.
Kallis, Giorgos. 2011. In defence of Degrowth. Ecological economics 70:873–880. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.ecolecon.2010.12.007.
Kallis, Giorgos, Angelos Varvarousis, and Panos Petridis. 2022. Southern thought, islandness and real-
existing Degrowth in the Mediterranean. World Development 157:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
worlddev.2022.105957.
Koch, Max. 2013. Welfare after growth: theoretical discussion and policy implications. International Jour-
nal of Social Quality https://doi.org/10.3167/IJSQ.2013.030102.
Kuss, Maria Klara, and Anne Gerstenberg. 2023. The role of elected politicians in donor-led social pro-
tection: Insights from Zambia. Social Policy & Administration 57:919–931. https://doi.org/10.1111/
spol.12922.
Lamb, William F., Giulio Mattioli, Sebastian Levi, J. Roberts Timmons, Stuart Capstick, Felix Creutzig,
Jan C. Minx, Finn Müller-Hansen, Trevor Culhane, and Julia K. Steinberger. 2020. Discourses of
climate delay. Global Sustainability 3:1–5. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13.
Lessenich, Stephan, and Thomas Barth. 2022. Nachhaltige Arbeits- und Sozialpolitik. In Deformation oder
Transformation, ed. Sigrid Betzelt, Thilo Fehmel, 297–316. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Linder, Stephen H., and B. Guy Peters. 1989. Instruments of government: perceptions and contexts. Journal
of public policy https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X00007960.
Mandelli, Matteo. 2022. Understanding eco-social policies: a proposed definition and typology. Transfer:
European Review of Labour and Research 28:301–393. https://doi.org/10.1177/10242589221125083.
Mandelli, Matteo, Maristella Cacciapaglia, and Sebastiano Sabato. 2023. EU Eco-social policies for a “Just
transition”: comparing the Just transition fund and the social climate fund. Politiche Sociali 1:81–98.
https://doi.org/10.7389/107140.
Mayring, Philipp. 2021. Qualitative content analysis : a step-by-step guide.NewYork:SAGE.
Mildenberger, Matto, Erick Lachapelle, Kathryn Harrison, and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen. 2022. Lim-
ited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing. Nature Climate
Change 12:141–147. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021- 01268- 3.
Nenning, Larissa, Paul Bridgen, Katharina Zimmermann, Milena Büchs, and Merita Meisäislehto. 2023.
Climate crisis and social protection—from worker protection to postgrowth transformation? Social
Policy and Society 22:695–714. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746423000246.
Newell, Peter, and Dustin Mulvaney. 2013. The political economy of the ‘just transition’. The Geographical
Journal 179:132–140. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12008.
Newell, Peter, and Matthew Paterson. 2010. Climate capitalism: global warming and the transfor-
mation of the global economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/
CBO9780511761850.
K
A. Gerstenberg
Nonhoff, Martin. 2008. Die ökonomische Bedrohung politischer Selbstbestimmung. Zum Verhältnis von
Demokratie und Wohlfahrtsstaat. In Bedrohungen der Demokratie, 1st edn., ed. André Brodocz, Mar-
cus Llanque, and Gary S. Schaal, 287–308. Wiesbaden: VS.
Offe, Claus. 1972. Advanced capitalism and the welfare state. Politics & Society 2:479–488.
Örtl, Elke. 2022. CO2-Bepreisung sollte und kann soziale Ungleichheit vermeiden. Umweltbundes-
amt. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/co2-bepreisung-sollte-kann-soziale-ungleichheit.
Accessed 9 Apr 2024.
Ossewaarde, Marinus, and Roshnee Ossewaarde-Lowtoo. 2020. The EU’s green deal: a third alternative to
green growth and degrowth? Sustainability 12:1–15. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12239825.
Ouma, Marion, and Jimi Adésínà. 2019. Solutions, exclusion and influence: exploring power relations in
the adoption of social protection policies in Kenya. Critical Social Policy 39:376–395. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0261018318817482.
Parrique, Timothée, Camille Étienne, and Dominique Méda. 2023. A postgrowth Europe critical to survive
and thrive, urge over 400 civil society groups and experts. https://friendsoftheearth.eu/wp-content/
uploads/2023/05/EN-BG- Open-Letter-1.pdf. Accessed 9 Apr 2024.
Paterson, Matthew, Paul Tobin, and Stacy D. VanDeveer. 2022. Climate governance antagonisms: policy
stability and repoliticization. Global Environmental Politics 22:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_
00647.
Patt, Anthony, and Johan Lilliestam. 2018. The case against carbon prices. Joule 2:2494–2498. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.11.018.
Petschow, Ulrich, Steffen Lange, David Hofmann, Eugen Pissarskoi, Nils aus dem Moore, Thorben Ko-
rfhage, Annekathrin Schoofs, and Hermann Ott. 2020. Social Well-Being Within Planetary Bound-
aries: the Precautionary Post-Growth Approach. Dessau-Roßlau: Umweltbundesamt.
Rausch, Sebastian, and Valerie J. Karplus. 2014. Markets versus regulation: the efficiency and distribu-
tional impacts of US climate policy proposals. The Energy Journal 35:199–228.
Raworth, Kate. 2017. Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. Vermont:
Chelsea Green.
Rosenbloom, Daniel, Jochen Markard, Frank W. Geels, and Lea Fuenfschilling. 2020. Why carbon pricing
is not sufficient to mitigate climate change—and how “sustainability transition policy” can help.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117:8664–8668. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.
2004093117.
Sabatier, Paul A. 1988. An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented
learning therein. Policy Sciences 21:129–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136406.
Sabato, Sebastiano, Milena Büchs, and Josefine Vanhille. 2023. A just transition towards climate neutrality
for the EU: debates, key issues and ways forward. OSE Paper Series Research Paper No. 52.
Saito, Kohei. 2023. Marx in the Anthropocene: towards the idea of degrowth communism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Salleh, Ariell. 2017. Ecofeminism. In Routledge handbook of ecological economics: nature and society,
ed. Clive L. Spash, 48–56. Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge.
Saurugger, Sabine. 2013. Constructivism and public policy approaches in the EU: from ideas to power
games. Journal of European Public Policy 20:888–906. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2013.
781826.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2008. Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and dis course. Annual
Review of Political Science 11:302–326. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2010. Taking ideas and discourse seriously: explaining change through discursive in-
stitutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism. European Political Science Review 2:1–25. https://
doi.org/10.1017/S175577390999021X.
Schulze Waltrup, Robin. 2023. An eco-social policy typology: from system reproduction to transformation.
Global Social Policy 0:1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/14680181231205777.
Schumacher, Katja, Johanna Cludius, Viktoria Noka, Swantje Fiedler, Christopher Leisinger, and Ker-
stin Tews. 2022. Der Klima-Sozialfonds im Fit-for-55-Paket der europäischen Kommission – Defini-
tion und Quantifizierung vulnerabler Haushalte und notwendige Investitionsbedarfe. Dessau-Roßlau:
Umweltbundesamt.
Siderius, Katrijn. 2023. Rewarding winners and losers of the climate transition: the political economy of
climate welfare policy. [Paper presentation]. ECPR General Conference. Vol. 5
Solo, Robert A. 1975. Neoclassical economics in perspective. Journal of Economic 9:627–644. https://doi.
org/10.1080/00213624.1975.11503316.
Sommer, Stephan, Linus Mattauch, and Michael Pahle. 2022. Supporting carbon taxes: the role of fairness.
Ecological Economics 195:1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107359.
K
Ideas in transition? Policymakers’ ideas of the social dimension of the green transition
Stengel, Oliver. 2011. Suffizienz: die Konsumgesellschaft in der ökologischen Krise. Wuppertal: Wuppertal
Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie.
Sultana, Farhana. 2022. The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality. Political Geography 99: 102638.
Theine, Hendrik, and Mario Taschwer. 2021. Ungleichheit: Warum wir uns die Reichen nicht mehr leisten
können. In Klimasoziale Politik: eine gerechte und emissionsfreie Gesellschaft gestalten, ed. attac
Armutskonferenz BEIGEWUM, 119–129. Wien: Bahoe Books.
Tienhaara, Kyla. 2018. Green Keynesianism and the global financial crisis. London: Routledge.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 1993. Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & society 4:249–283.
Vettese, Troy, and Drew Pendergrass. 2022. Half-earth socialism: A plan to save the future from extinction,
climate change and pandemics. London, New York: Verso Books.
Weart, Spencer. 2011. The development of the concept of dangerous anthropogenic climate change. In
The Oxford handbook of climate change and society, ed. John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard,
and David Schlosberg, 67–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/
9780199566600.003.0005.
Weible, Christopher M. 2018. Instrument constituencies and the advocacy coalition framework: an essay
on the comparisons, opportunities, and intersections. Policy and Society 37:59–73. https://doi.org/10.
1080/14494035.2018.1417705.
Zimmermann, Katharina. 2024. ‘Varieties of green transitions’? Comparative welfare state research and
the social dimension of green transitions. European Political Science 23:56–69. https://doi.org/10.
1057/s41304-023-00456-3.
Zimmermann, Katharina, and Paolo Graziano. 2020. Mapping different worlds of eco-welfare states. Sus-
tainability 12:1–20. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051819.
Zuanic, Orson. 2023. Existing outside the box: How community-centred philosophies can help shape a de-
growth society. Degrowth Journal 1:1–10. https://doi.org/10.36399/Degrowth.001.01.04.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
K
