For a Neorealist Political Ecology

A Political Economy Approach to Analyze the Political Conditions for the Ecological Bifurcation

Celâl Güney

Motivation

Multiplication of proposals for a social-ecological transformation and degrowth based on ecological planning

  • Mainly dedicated to find the good institutions and reforms to make the social-ecological transformation technically possible

  • But one major blind spot: the political limits of those proposals

  • Finding the “good” institutions and policies is not enough, one needs to analyze institutional change in a non-normative way

The fundamental question

“Obviously, many areas remain to be explored, including the crucial one of the specific political conditions that make such an aspiration [i.e. ecological planning] possible. (p. 247, author’s translation)

“The question would be the following: to what extent could a social-ecological bloc seize upon ecological planning to establish itself as a hegemonic political force ?” (p. 247, author’s translation).

In other words, could a political strategy based on social-ecological planning aggregate a dominant social bloc ?

Objective

Use the neorealist approach to institutional change (Amable and Palombarini 2005, 2008, 2024) to answer this question

  • An approach which has been proven useful to analyze institutional change from a political economy perspective in a non-normative way, especially in France and Italy

  • The (in)stability of a socio-economic model depends on the (in)existence of a winning political strategy aggregating a dominant social bloc

  • But how can “the environment” be integrated into this approach ?

My argument

  1. Through the identification of socio-political groups
  2. Through the three dimensions of social conflict: institutions, political mediation and ideology

1. Identification of socio-political groups

SPG1

SPG2

SPG3

SPG4

SPG5

SPG6

Socio-political groups: groups of individuals sharing similar expectations regarding public policies and their preferred socio-economic model

Political actors (unions, political parties, associations…) want to transform or validate a given socio-economic model. They elaborate political strategies which try to find compromises between social interests expressed by SPGs.

1. Identification of socio-political groups

Political strategy 1: social bloc 1

Marginal group

Well-integrated group

Core group

Political strategy 2: social bloc 2

Social bloc: socio-political groups aggregated by a political strategy

Dominant social bloc: social bloc aggregated by the winning political strategy

Socio-political groups: what indicators ?

flowchart LR
    %% Déclaration des nœuds
SPG["Socio-political groups"]
I1["Labour Market"]
I2["Product market"]
I3["Financial system"]
I4["Social protection"]
I5["Education system"]
I6["Broad economic policy orientation"]


SPG --> I1
SPG --> I2
SPG --> I3
SPG --> I4
SPG --> I5
SPG --> I6

Indicators used to define the socio-political groups relate to the five institutional domains considered in Amable (2003), along with broad economic policies. They usually are “issue position” variables found in survey data.

Example: Amable (2021)

The problem

Further identifications of socio-political groups must take more indicators related to ecological issues

But what ecological issues should be taken into account ?

Identification of socio-political groups

flowchart LR
    %% Déclaration des nœuds
SPG["Socio-political groups"]
I1["Wage-labour nexus"]
I2["Forms of competition"]
I3["Monetary regime"]
I4["International integration"]
I5["Form of the state"]
I6["Social relation to the environment"]


SPG --> I1
SPG --> I2
SPG --> I3
SPG --> I4
SPG --> I5
SPG --> I6

Social relation to the environment as a sixth institutional form

The political aspects of how societies regulate their relation to the environment and how they manage constraints imposed by ecosystems (Cahen-Fourot 2023)

Indicators related to the environment should capture individuals’ expectations regarding their prefered social relation to the environment

2. The three dimensions of social conflict

How the social relation to the environment (“environment”) integrates in relation to the three dimensions of social conflict (ideology, institutions, political mediation). Elaboration based on Amable and Palombarini (2024, figure 5.2, p.123)

Conclusion

An institutional ecological change approach (“neorealist political ecology”) can be build on the neorealist approach by:

  1. Considering more indicators related to ecological issues in the identification of socio-political groups

  2. Considering the relationships between the social relation to the environment and the three dimensions of social conflict (ideology, institutions, political mediation)

Further issues:

  • Finding good survey data with the good questions can be hard
  • Still puzzled by the definition of “the environment” and the “social relation to the environment”

Conclusion

References

Amable, Bruno. 2003. The Diversity of Modern Capitalism. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
———. 2021. “In Search of the Bloc Bourgeois.” Revue de La Régulation. Capitalisme, Institutions, Pouvoirs, no. 31 (August). https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.20350.
Amable, Bruno, and Stefano Palombarini. 2005. L’économie Politique n’est Pas Une Science Morale. Raisons d’Agir. Paris.
———. 2008. “A Neorealist Approach to Institutional Change and the Diversity of Capitalism.” Socio-Economic Review 7 (1): 123–43. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwn018.
———. 2024. Blocs Sociaux Et Domination: Pour Une Économie Politique Néoréaliste. 1er édition. Paris: Liber/Raisons d’agir.
Cahen-Fourot, Louison. 2023. “Chapitre 9. Économie et écologie : le rapport social à l’environnement.” In Théorie de la régulation, 87–95. Dunod. https://doi.org/10.3917/dunod.boyer.2023.01.0087.