This document summarizes a presentation about how states can facilitate a social and ecological transformation towards a post-growth sustainable welfare state. It outlines that states should ensure production and consumption patterns do not exceed environmental limits, define limits on economic and social inequality, and steer public and private actors. However, four main obstacles prevent states from taking these actions: the growth imperative, material interests of dominant groups, wellbeing concerns of the electorate, and asymmetric societal power structures. For states to become more active, there needs to be better academic understanding of alternative state roles, political/social mobilization to shift state balances of power, and co-development of eco-social policies between researchers, activists and citizens.

1. Towards a Postgrowth
Sustainable Welfare State
Max Koch, Lund University
ORSI Webinar, 17 February 2021
Contents
1. and 3) What states can/should do to facilitate a social and ecological
transformation
2. Four of the main obstacles why states do not act
4. Three preconditions for states to become active

2. 1 and 3. What states can/should do to facilitate a social and
ecological transformation (Koch 2020, Environmental Politics 29,1)
Economic development
regarded as bio-physical
process and oriented at the
provision of use values serving
as sustainable need satisfiers
Spatial target Eco-social policies
oriented at respecting
planetary boundaries
through redistribution of,
above all, wealth/income,
work and pollution rights
States ensure production and
consumption patterns not to
exceed environmental limits
Define limits for economic and
social inequality
Steer governance of public,
collective, communal and
private actors
Global and local levels
Global: Identification
of thresholds for matter
and energy throughput
These delineate the
leeway within which
national and local
economies may evolve
Outer planetary boundary:
e.g. caps on wealth and or
income, carbon budgets
Inner boundary/sufficiency
level: e.g. Universal Basic
Income and/or Universal
Basic Services and/or
vouchers, reduction in
working hours
2

3. 2. Four of the main obstacles why states do not act
• Growth imperative and its appearance as natural way to run ‘the’
economy (Koch 2018)
• Material interests of the dominant (Buch-Hansen 2018)
• Wellbeing concerns among the electorate (Büchs and Koch
2017/2019)
• Societal power asymmetries are ‘condensed’ (Poulantzas) and
expressed within the state as ‘metafield’ (Bourdieu): concentrating
power over all other fields and capital holders, but with particular
agents, interests and struggles (e.g. between its ‘left’ and ‘right’ hand)

4. 4. Three preconditions for states to become active
• Better academic understanding of state roles in growth economy,
welfare and environment, symbolic domination and its internal
divisions that may serve as entry points for challenging the status quo
• Political and social mobilization towards shifting the balance within
the state by occupying ‘centres of opposition’ (Poulantzas) to
strengthen its ‘left hand’ – and overcome the growth imperative
• Co-development of eco-social policies serving as sustainable needs
satisfiers and initiating a ‘virtuous circle of sustainable welfare’
(Hirvilammi 2020) between researchers, activists and citizens
• Many thanks!