Welfare systems without economic growth: A review of the challenges and next steps for the field

Walker, Christine Corlet; Druckman, Angela; Jackson, Tim

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107066

Cited by 72 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Given the lack of evidence for an absolute decoupling of GDP growth and environmental resource use in any welfare regime, the traditional reliance of welfare states on the provision of growth is being questioned (Corlet Walker et al ., 2021; Hirvilammi, 2020; Koch, 2022; Laurent, 2021b). In the existing welfare state arrangements, regardless of regime affiliation, economic growth is a necessary condition for the maintenance of high employment levels and thus the government’s fiscal base.…”

Section: Welfare Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context: Towards an Ecosocial Research Agenda

et al. 2023

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Social policy developed as a research field and academic discipline to ensure protection from social risks in the era of emerging capitalism and industrialization. While welfare states have successfully increased their citizens’ wellbeing, they have also contributed to the ecological crisis, while the shared scientific understanding of exceeded planetary boundaries and worsening climate change scenarios has not (yet) reshaped mainstream social policy research. In this article, we suggest that the established traditions in social policy research can nevertheless provide a solid ground for responding to the climate emergency and facilitating the sustainable transformation of society and the economy. With a focus on four of the research fields that are central in social policy scholarship – risks, citizenship, welfare regimes, and wellbeing – we develop an ecosocial research agenda. By discussing the classic and climate-adjusted understandings of these fields, we open future pathways for social policy research and invite scholars to engage with our proposed research agenda.

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Section: Welfare Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the climate emergency context, one of the most important challenges is to make welfare systems independent of economic growth (Corlet Walker et al ., 2021; Koch, 2022). Accordingly, recent contributions have begun to reconsider both the supply and demand aspects of welfare provision.…”

Section: Welfare Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context: Towards an Ecosocial Research Agenda

et al. 2023

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“…Accordingly, social policies would no longer take the relatively unproblematic form of redistributions of growing tax takes but involve, in postgrowth contexts, controversial decisions targeted at the power, resources, and interests of the rich (Corlet Walker et al. 2021 ; Koch 2022 a).…”

Section: From the Postwar Welfare–work Nexus To Sustainable Welfarementioning

confidence: 99%

Deliberating a Sustainable Welfare–Work Nexus

Lindellee

Koch

Alkan-Olsson

2023

Polit Vierteljahresschr

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Very few countries have managed to decouple economic growth from resource use and greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms and at rates to meet the climate targets of the Paris Agreement. To achieve this, technological solutions would need to be combined with sufficiency-oriented policies in a postgrowth context. This paper develops policy ideas for a sustainable welfare–work nexus via citizen engagement and examines the level of democratic support for such ideas. Theoretically, it employs “sustainable welfare” to understand welfare and wellbeing within planetary and social limits. The paper first sketches the welfare–work nexus as developed in the postwar circumstances in Western Europe, highlighting that this model was at no point in time ecologically generalizable to the rest of the world, and then briefly reviews the existing debate on sustainable welfare. The empirical analyses start with qualitative data from 11 deliberative forums on sustainable needs satisfaction, with emphasis on policies targeted at respecting the upper and lower boundaries of a “safe and just operating space” for economic and social development. The qualitative data are then triangulated with quantitative data from a representative survey, which was constructed based on the policy suggestions from the forums, hence allowing for an exploration of their popularity in the Swedish population as a whole. We find a considerable gap between the far-reaching policy measures that forum participants consider necessary and the measures that the general public in Sweden are prepared to support, especially when it comes to policies targeting maximum levels of needs satisfaction.

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“…(Wray 2015: 8) In perspective adopted in this article, what MMT offers is no alternative either to externalising the costs of economic growth to the environment or to undermining popularised consumption styles. And without these solutions and their underlying phenomena, such as commodification, basing the economic model on economic growth, and the predatory exploitation of nature, we will not stop the coming ecological disaster (Walker, Druckman, & Jackson 2021).…”

Section: The Poverty Of Economics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

From ‘Political Economy’ to ‘Political Sociology’ of the Climate Catastrophe: Why the Economy Needs to Be Blown Up to Be Born Again?

Baranowski

2021

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The conceptual approach to real social phenomena and problems, as well as factors influencing and shaping them, although theoretical in nature, has momentous practical consequences. The issue of nature, and in a narrower sense of climate, constitutes a telling and representative example of the implications of the theoretical and methodological orientation adopted to study society and its relationship with the environment and its resources. This short paper aims to highlight the consequences of the shift in research perspective from ‘political economy’ to ‘political sociology’ in the context of climate change and its challenges. The article’s main argument is to outline the implications of the change of reference point for the conceptualisation and operationalisation of theoretical frameworks related to social problems and challenges, which, nota bene, are conditioned directly and indirectly by the state of the ecosystem. And the central thesis is that a fundamental reorientation towards nature and climate change within the dominant capitalist system will only be camouflaged maintenance of the status quo (accompanied noisily by a series of technological and fiscal solutions that solve nothing).

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Welfare systems without economic growth: A review of the challenges and next steps for the field

Cited by 72 publications

References 53 publications

Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context: Towards an Ecosocial Research Agenda

Social Policy in a Climate Emergency Context: Towards an Ecosocial Research Agenda

Deliberating a Sustainable Welfare–Work Nexus

From ‘Political Economy’ to ‘Political Sociology’ of the Climate Catastrophe: Why the Economy Needs to Be Blown Up to Be Born Again?

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