Growth, Democracy or Climate Action?

The New Political Trilemma of Advanced Capitalism

Aidan Regan, Hanna Schwander, Cyril Benoît, Tim Vlandas (Autoren)

Buch | Hardcover

192 Seiten

2026
Agenda Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-78821-888-7 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. April 2026)
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Governments are confronted with a tradeoff between growth, liberal democracy and effective climate action. They cannot achieve all three objectives at the same time. The authors consider which one has to give.

Governments face a conflicting choice between economic growth, democracy and tackling the climate crisis. They cannot achieve all three objectives simultaneously and the growing tensions between them are being played out in countries across the world. It is the new trilemma of advanced capitalist democracy.

The authors use this trilemma as a fresh analytic framework to conceptualise these tradeoffs and tensions in the study of capitalist democracies. In a compelling analysis, the authors argue that the type of democratic politics that is required to generate growth and prosperity within the ecological limits of the planet has not been taken seriously in the study of comparative political economy and needs to be located at the heart of future research. Given the unprecedented scale of structural reform that governments need to implement to effectively tackle the climate crisis, the authors question whether the transition to carbon neutrality can be done within the liberal rulebook that has governed the politics of advanced capitalism for the past 100 years.

Aidan Regan is Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin. Hanna Schwander is Professor of Political Sociology and Social Policy at the Humboldt University, Berlin. Cyril Benoît is a CNRS Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris. Tim Vlandas is Professor of Comparative Political Economy and Social Policy at the University of Oxford.

1. Introduction: the climate crisis as a political trilemma

2. The unsustainability of the status quo

3. The political impossibility of degrowth

4. The prospect of a big green state

5. The conditions under which we can escape

6. Conclusion

Erscheint lt. Verlag	16.4.2026
Reihe/Serie	Comparative Political Economy
Verlagsort	Newcastle upon Tyne
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
Themenwelt	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Wirtschaftspolitik
ISBN-10	1-78821-888-4 / 1788218884
ISBN-13	978-1-78821-888-7 / 9781788218887
Zustand	Neuware