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Peter Newell, "States of Transition: From Governing the Environment to Transforming Society" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
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Pauline Heinrichs
Welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Pauline Heinrichs and I'm a lecturer in War Studies focusing on climate and Energy security at King's College London and a co convener of the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. I'm excited to speak to Peter Neal today who just published the book States of Transition From Governing the Environment to Transforming Society Society. Peter is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and a specialist in the politics and political economy of environment and development. For more than 25 years, he has conducted research, consultancy and advisory work on issues of climate change and energy, agricultural, biotechnology, corporate accountability and trade policy, working across the world. Welcome Peter. It's great to have you.
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Peter Neal
Thank you very much. Thanks for the invite. Very happy to be here.
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Pauline Heinrichs
Not at all. We're excited to hear from you. But before going into the book's main arguments, I thought to start by asking you, why now and how did the book come to be?
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Peter Neal
Yeah, so it's a project I've been thinking about for a while and I wrote something a few years ago. I think it was back in 2018, 2019 with a colleague, Phil Johnson, just sort of starting to push some thinking around the role of the state in sustainability transitions. And we sort of sketched out a few arguments there, particularly for the sort of transitions community. But it struck me carrying on thinking about it after that. There was just so much more to be said and particularly if we start to take all aspects of state power seriously. Because I think often in thinking about transitions, and obviously transitions away from a fossil fuel based economy towards a lower carbon, one of the other focus of a lot of that work, there tends to be a strong focus on industrial policy or on innovation and those sorts of sites of state policy and authority. And it was increasingly clear to me that we needed to think much more widely about the role of the state in terms of all aspects of state power, which particularly impact on energy, but clearly not just energy, also on, you know, food systems and transport and finance and sort of all, all things that need to be transitioned are impacted by all aspects of state power in a way. And so I set my. The slightly ambitious task of thinking that through, like what would it mean? So as you've seen in the book, each chapter sort of starts out with what is the military state or what is the democratic state? What is the welfare state? Why is that relevant to discussions around transition? Because that might not be obvious in some cases, like why the welfare state, for example, or why the global state. Some of the connections are not immediately obvious. They're not the usual sites of state power that people think about transitions look at. But then in each case trying to push myself also to say, well, what might be the scope for change? You know, what are the sites, the levers, the openings, the cracks, the opportunities to try and push the state in a different direction, from just sort of managing and keeping a lid on tensions and contradictions to maybe actually ultimately possibly in a slightly utopian fashion, but thinking about the ways in which a state could play more progressive role and actually address some of the drivers of unsustainability, the things that are really driving environmental and social problems, which is obviously a far more ambitious project. So that's really, that's the sort of background to it. A slight frustration, I guess, with the state of the debate, a slight frustration maybe with some of the binaries around. Good state, bad state, state to blame for everything. You know, state's the only solution. And I guess a sense, and maybe that's the privilege of having worked in different parts of the world over a number of years that you sort of get a Clear sense of differentiation in terms of what states can do, the sorts of forms of power relations that they are part of, but also constrained by in different contexts. So wanting to bring a bit of a nuance to discussions about which state, which part of the state, when, how, which state functions. So it's both a sort of generalizing project in trying to think across state capacities and functions, but also some nuance around getting beyond the binaries, thinking a bit more specifically about which aspect of the state which transitions. How do those two things come together?
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Pauline Heinrichs
And it's really interesting. I think in many ways the state is almost received as a mythical status where everything is packed into. And it struck me when reading the book, and do correct me if you felt that it's a misrepresentation, but it's not quite right to speak about one state. So it's many multiple states that we tend to organize under an umbrella term and then almost add some mythical flavor to what that umbrella term is meant to capture. Sure. Can you tell us a bit more about that main argument and what it does to the analysis to conceptualize multiple states and the role of those multiple states within the context of transitions?
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Peter Neal
Yeah. So I sort of deal with multiplicity in lots of different ways in the book. So one is around the multiple functions that states perform and the contradictions that that then generates between sort of promoting industry, for example, and you know, that being crucial to sort of achieving accum objectives and so on through the industrial state, the entrepreneurial state. But that that very same process creates tensions around other state functions, around protection in welfare state or the environmental state, the functions of environmental state. And so one of the questions is how do those tensions or contradictions get played out? And often it's, you know, imbalances of power between different ministries that are asserting their preferences in these space. Sometimes it results in the sorts of fudges or the institutional fixes that result from trying to sor. Sort of hold things together that really are in conflict in the end. So there's multiplicity at that level. But then I guess bringing in a more international relations perspective is also locating states within that sort of uneven global political economy. So both sort of historically differentiated, but also the uneven patterns of development that they are part of and trying. I guess that was a slight frustration. Sometimes in the literature on transitions, people tend. I mean, there's just numerous case studies of national level transition experiments in food, transport, energy and so on. Sometimes as if they're a little bit divorced from a global context or are only possible because of Those global relations. And that's what I was trying to bring into it a little bit in terms of, you know, where the money comes from or what are the trade ties that either enable a particular type of transition or frustrate it, make it impossible. So very much trying to sort of bring that in. But, but read it through the lens of power, I guess as well that some states are just far more constrained and get actively disciplined when they try to do more ambitious things around transitions. So you know, to take a concrete example, Colombia right now you have the government of Petro saying that they're going to issued a pledge not to issue new licenses for oil and gas. But then there was, you know, the capital markets went crazy, the domestic oil and gas lobbies went crazy. There's been like, you know, orchestrated backlash. And of course, you know, we're seeing that in many parts of the world now and again that brings in for me the importance of that transnational dimension, the way the right is mobilizing globally and pushing back very strongly on climate and energy transition and net zero agendas and so on. So that speaks to me about the need to situate these sort of supposedly national level transition experiments in a global context to understand some of the sort of common challenges, but also the differences in terms of what they're able to do about it. Which for me is all around the power relations in which their states are embedded, but at the same time creating in terms of relations with labour and capital, civil society, et cetera. So trying to understand those sort of state society complexes in a slightly broader sense and understanding how they're situated globally, that's a little bit what I was trying to do.
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Pauline Heinrichs
And I think frustration, by the way, is always a very good start to a book. So that's always quite productive or can, at least in your case it is. But if we're thinking about this, and relationality plays quite a central theoretical role in your book overall. And there is on the one hand the relation between different complexes and power structures. But how would you characterize the role of relationality in your book at multiple scales? And what does it tell us that non relational theories of states cannot capture in the same way?
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Peter Neal
Yeah, so relationality, again, play with it in different ways. It's partly about bringing in social relations is one thing to try and understand the states not just as these sort of isolated bureaucratic administrative units, but they are, and this is sort of, you know, Jordan Palantzis and Jessup's work and sort of, you know, critical neo Marxist theories in A way trying to understand those power relations that are crystallized or ossified in the state in a way, but always subject to change. I guess that's what I'm always trying to bring into the analysis and again come back to what you were just saying. Frustration, frustration sometimes with political economy accounts that present it as states or capital as sort of fixed entities that just impose these iron like constraints on what states can do. And naturally for me it's more fluid than that. And there is ongoing political work by elites, states and capital and others to try and preserve their power and privilege constantly and secure levels of market access and push out discourses that benefit their positions around energy security or gas as a transition fuel or climate smart agriculture, whichever, take your pick really. But there's lots of those sorts of discourses that again, it's all about that work of trying to hold things together together and preserve market access and power. But for me that points to the fact that there are openings for change as well. That that relationality is there and it's important and it's fundamental to, to what states are able to do. And I sort of flag, you know, the argument around the, the tension between accumulation, legitimation. So it's always sort of trying to pursue those core economic objectives but at the same time having to validate these, particularly in democratic settings. Right. So seeking to the sort of social license to operate and to. That they want to achieve. And so that creates again there's tensions and openings there, so those relations can change. And I guess there's the relationality with nature. Right. With more than humans. That element is in the book too. I don't go so far down that path, but I think it's really important in understanding sort of the ecologies of statehood, which is something I sort of do briefly talk about there. And that's. Yeah, I mean that comes from earlier work in a way. I wrote a book a few years ago called Global Green Politics, was trying to bring that more ecological reading of different aspects of ir, including the state and the sort of ecological underpinnings of a lot of what states do and which they're currently undermining and why that's important. So that sort of relational and relations with more than human nature comes to the fore a bit as well.
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Pauline Heinrichs
Super fascinating. Also in part, I think we often assume that the rut or some form of static functioning is part of stability. But the moment you add a transition, transition lens to questioning stability, it becomes much clearer that on the one hand multiple facets of the states have an ability to be much more agile. And in fact, it's also a question around where discourses place stability and where they make it essential for the state.
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Peter Neal
Right, yeah, exactly. And I bring in that notion of transformismogramsch's concept a little bit, which is always that tension between change and stability and that change is necessary in order to secure stability. And that goes back to what I was saying before. For these strategies by companies or states to reinvent themselves, to legitimate themselves in new ways. It's always that motion and that tension and that's about stabilizing, but it's still a process of change which you need to understand. So it's always the sort of tension between those two things that I personally find helpful in trying to understand what is more static and harder to shift, but where also there may be vulnerabilities, openings to sort of move things forward.
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Pauline Heinrichs
Also, in part, I would assume that a relational account makes us attentive to the fact that even the expectation towards the state changes. So that must have necessary implications for how the state is understood and how it needs to react, or multiple organs need to react to that.
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Peter Neal
Yeah, definitely. And then that's, I guess that's sort of born of things I've been involved with for many years now as a sort of lobbyist in an earlier life, but also, you know, being involved in activism of one sort or another. It's just, you know, wary of abandoning the state altogether as a project. And there are colleagues that sort of make those arguments and I understand them and I appreciate them, but also a frustration with the naivety of assuming the state can just intervene in a top down way and all will be well. So again, it's sort of navigating that sort of space. But yeah, the relationality I guess is the sort of, let's think productively about where spaces exist within the states and across different states where change can come about.
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Pauline Heinrichs
And to go a bit more into your substantive chapter, so for the listener, they're organized around multiple forms that the state takes on, and the first more substantive one is around the entrepreneurial state. And what I took from it was not merely that there's sort of a privatization of entrepreneurialism, even when states often play a decisive role in innovation and, but also a form of hopes placed in innovation. So did you feel that the hope in the entrepreneurial state was in part its limitation and that transformation of it from a relational point of view also required a revisited relationship between the public and the state itself?
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Peter Neal
Yeah, I mean, so I started with the entrepreneurial state. Because there's just, there's a lot of work in that area now and a lot of interest in, you know, my former colleague Mariana Matsukata's work on that, which I find really useful and important and an emphasis on mission. These big sort of, you know, using state power to really drive missions in new directions. And I'm going to use the word frustration again, a frustration a little bit, yeah. Particularly in discussions around climate finance like this big shift. And obviously Daniela Gabor and others have written about this very usefully around de Risking and the de risking state and essentially given limits on public finances. It's really all about the state levering private finance, in other words, states taking on huge risks themselves and creating investment opportunities that then private actors come in and cash in on. And I've seen that in so many different contexts, not just energy. I mean, you mentioned in the introduction years ago to work on agricultural biotechnology and I was based in India at one point doing some work there. And that was very much the model as well. It's just like, okay, let's invest enough public money to trial different genetically modified crops and traits and so on. The moment it looks like anything might actually take off commercially, the private actors come in and I'm like, well, what sort of deal is that really where you do all the hard work? Or likewise in Kenya in another context, and I think I might have cited that in the book around geothermal development. It was going to be the big new source of low carbon energy, but all of the sort of landscaping of the potential of the energy source, dealing with the difficult property rights issues and land claims and so on, somewhere like Kenya, around Masai land claims and all these sorts of things. All of that difficult political work was all done by the state. And then the investors come in when it's just the easy bit about putting some money on the table and investing in the technology. And so I was a bit, you know, quite concerned and critical about those sorts of things. I guess where I end up with that chapter, and this is a more transformative take on it, and it certainly goes beyond those discussions about the entrepreneurial state, is that some of those accounts potentially fall into that trap of rarefying a sort of centralizing state that knows best and can pick winners. So in a way, the pendulum swings almost too far that way without also thinking about the need for what I call ex innovation. So there's, you know, studies and literature as looking at that concept about how do you take things out of production? How do you. Because there's something a little bit centralizing sometimes around the notion of missions and you know, state bureaucrats or managers knowing best around technologies. I guess it's a slight allergic reaction to that sort of Soviet style notion of state, state planning. And actually where I end up with that is as you probably saw, is around social innovation like democratization of some of these processes around innovation for what and for whom? And actually where does innovation really occur? And I guess that's again where I am sympathetic to Mariano Matsukata's work, that a lot of these innovations are coming from everyday practices or communities or people experimenting in different ways that the private sector doesn't have a monopoly on innovation. Actually a lot of the things that allow things to take hold meaningfully as socio technical systems are communities and people. And there's the social aspect that actually makes it work and holds it together. So it's not just about, about you know, innovating in hardware and technology. But I guess the critical, the more ecological element I tried to bring to it is that it's like how do we put down limits and steer and, and you know, I use that phrase that comes from work on consumption around choice editing that you know, states can say we actually don't need private jets or, or maybe we don't actually need ever bigger cars. And it's legitimate for states to say we won't authorize those forms of production or we won't build infrastructures to have ever bigger car parks or to expand airports to accommodate private jet use in a context of a climate and ecological emergency. You know, states do have those powers and occasionally they're all often in quite weak ways, but they will exercise them. You know, like France with the, the ban on short haul flights of a certain distance. You can just say it's really not okay to take a 45 minute flight when there's a train that will get you there in more or less the same time. So states can do those sorts of things. And I guess that's where I ended up a little bit with some of those, those positive can do stories. And you know, again, slightly aside from my academic role, I run something called the Rapid Transition alliance and we talk a lot about evidence based hope. So it's really about stories about the possibility of change and some of them are in the book and it's, and it's really that sort of showcasing examples of when change can happen across each of these sites, including the entrepreneurial state. So that's where I end up in that chapter with that sort of we need to rethink who's innovating, what counts as innovation, how you can support more grassroots innovation. So there's growing literature on that which I think is really useful and important and not just it's not to say there's not a role for the missions, the top down, the entrepreneurial state, there's an element of that. But if it's to be really socially useful and guided by a deeper set of values, we need more sort of inclusive and democratic forms of innovation.
- [21:00]
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Pauline Heinrichs
Sit in the driver's seat.
- [22:09]
Peter Neal
I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.
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Peter Neal
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Pauline Heinrichs
It felt like I was the captain.
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Peter Neal
Allowing my son to see the flight.
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Peter Neal
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Pauline Heinrichs
Yeah, it's also really I talk to my students a lot and there is quite a persistent narrative of well, the state can't really do long term planning because it's not aboard. It's run by certain elector cycles or cycles of legitimation in a way that hampers the ability to plan long term. Or I often say but what do you think energy system planning is but a long term planning cycle in many ways and in particular kind of metrics around innovation are often also themselves limited by certain ideas of what innovation means and how it comes to be. If we take that that a little bit further in terms of the tension between a more central role for the state and transformations versus the centralization of state power that you just alluded to, that comes quite strongly out in your industrial state chapter as well. Where are you on that divide or spectrum? And how do you think we can manage this tension between kind of guiding, if you wish, transformation versus centralizing state power in a way that might itself either be counterintuitive to transformations or might exclude a significant number of people from the process?
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Peter Neal
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a very fine line and I certainly don't have all the answers there. But I think, I mean, what I try to argue in that chapter is that there clearly is a role for industrial policy and that's being used more importantly. And you know, know, I don't think we should be afraid of sort of picking winners and using state levers to try and support the sorts of actors and businesses that will sustain life on Earth, frankly, to put it really bluntly. And it's okay at the same time, therefore, to accelerate the decline of other sectors. So it's a little bit picking up on the exnovation discussion we just had, but also more broadly around what I call and what I'm working on now, actually, which is more around supply side climate policy. So policies to sort of leave fossil fuels in the ground, to deliberately cut production. And that's. Economists hate this because it's a sort of, it's an intervention in the market. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And because it's basically your potentially profitable reserves, you're saying we won't use these, we'll leave them in the ground. And you know, increasing numbers of governments are doing that. I'm very interested in the political economy dynamics around that. So I guess that's what, again with the industrial policy saying, look, there can be that proactive nurturing of what transition scholars often call niches, you know, supporting renewable energy technologies or alternative food systems or whatever it might be, that work of, you know, subsidies, tax relief, you know, all those sorts of measures. Thinking through the social aspects of that industrial shift that we're having to, to undertake, and I deal with that a little bit in the welfare state chapter, talking about transitions, you know, just transitions. But and you know this, we know increasingly that that's what has to happen. Because the social costs of when you get it wrong or when you don't do that are huge, whether it's the Gilets Jaunes in France or protests around coal transitions in many parts of the world. If you just sort of plow ahead saying, okay, we're going to manage the decline of this sector, but we haven't really thought about an alternative or retraining or regional redevelopment plan, then things get very toxic very quickly and particularly at the current moment in terms of right wing populism, they feed on that. Any whiff of elites overlooking excluded working class communities is grist for the mill for reform in this country or other right wing parties. So we need to be absolutely attentive to those sorts of issues. But what it points to is the, the importance of planning. But to sort of come back to your question, it has to be inclusive and it has to have the voices of actors in it. Again, it can't be this sort of state knows best. You know, pick a graph of this sector up, this sector down and we'll do it in a sort of Stalinist five year plan type mode. It has to, it has to be that sort of engaged, okay, what are the values that are going to guide this transition? Who's going to be affected? How can we, how can we build political demand for this sort of change? And social acceptance of it I think is the really crucial thing. So there's definitely that sort of tension and there is that role for central states to do some of those things. What I also argue though, and this comes back to your question, I think is the sort of the need to decentralize as well. And I've seen this in many sort of country level settings where the central state is often very reluctant to concede power or cede power downwards to, you know, provinces in China or local states and other contexts, particularly over things like energy. They like to keep control over the procurement process and negotiate the big contracts with oil and gas majors. And there's a politics of rent seeking and I'm being polite here, you could call it corruption in many contexts, which explains why there's that urge to centralize and keep control of industrial politics and processes. But there is scope to try and decentralize and pull those powers downwards to give of, you know, where the accountability mechanisms are stronger and people would have more say over how their cities or regions or provinces or whatever are managing processes of industrial policy. Because that's, you know, that's where the impacts are felt as well socially and environmentally of industries that continue to pollute or don't, you know, don't employ people properly or whatever it might be. So I think there is, that's that tension, right? There are, and I guess overall, you know, one way of thinking about this, and I touched on a little bit in this book, but in others more is sort of subsidiarity. What are the lowest levels of authority and power and decision making that you can reasonably take decisions. When do you need to go upwards. But start with that assumption like could we is the preference on the local and the accent on the local rather than always assuming it has to be state led and only in exceptional circumstances do you go downwards. Or if you flip the logic and start to do that a bit more. I mean in theory that's how the EU is meant to be organized around subsidiarity. In practice that doesn't quite work that way. But that's one way of thinking about it. So it's not to abandon that state level industrial policy using those levers having a vision of where to go. But some of the key decisions, the resourcing discussions, et cetera, could be taken at lower levels and I think it's healthier to have that sort of more democratic control and it ends up being a messy multi governance system. But that's. That's life.
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Pauline Heinrichs
Yes it is. To bring in one of my frustrations, which leads nicely to the next question I had. Very often the sort of transparency and democratic politics that climate change politics are sort of in dealt with also positively in that way are not entirely absent, but mostly absent when it comes to discussions about the military and the military state itself, including sort of the use of uncertainty I think is really fascinating that in climate often the notion of uncertainty is evoked to not do certain things or to say but we don't yet know we need more data. Whereas for military threat landscapes ultimately they're often more uncertain. We don't quite know what we're procuring or preparing supposedly for. In addition, of course the destructiveness of the pursuit or military pursuit is and it felt to me that this chapter is really urgent especially in light of militarization at the scale that we're seeing at the moment. What did you think are prospects for rethinking security in this context? And this is not to. I don't, this doesn't have to be a hopeful account in any meaningful way but I think your, your kind of ask to rethink what we mean by security is really, really crucial. How do we take that forward? What does that mean?
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Peter Neal
It's a really good question. I mean and I think it forces us to think about what are the entry points because it can quite quickly drift into a sort of more normative utopian discussion. And you know, I brought in some of like Matt McDonald's work on ecological security, which I think is really important and really useful that you know, know what is to be secured is the biosphere. And that the, you know, and there's as you know, advocates of Planet Politics and others, Anthony Burke and co, talking about, you know, new institutional mechanisms that can pursue those things. I think those, those are all useful and important interventions. There are obviously some way off, I guess in terms of like that being an actual set of practices that guide state policy in the interim, I guess. And these are the battles I'm involved with sort of talking to government officials and others is sort of when the first case around energy security, trying to get a handle on that, like whose energy for what, what is to be secured and how. Just thinking about some of those conversations and you know, they, as you were alluding to, I think become very pertinent post Ukraine and the weaponization really of some of those discussions to say, okay, you know, insecurity around fossil fuels and reliance on gas from Russia means, means we need to exploit even more fossil fuels in the uk you know, and of course you have Farage and co saying we need to drill for victory instead of dig for victory. And you know, just using any sort of metaphor, rhetorical device they possibly could, you know, and it wasn't just Farage. There was, you know, many capitalizing on it. In fact, I was part of activists discussions at the time. We're sort of saying at what point do we start to make these points about the problematic dependence on fossil fuels from other, from other states. And we were like, well, now is not the time in this moment of crisis. And it's about human rights and you know, standing in defense of Ukraine. And then very, very quickly the right and the oil and gas lobby were right on this. Or saying energy security means exploiting energy, domestic energy resources. Okay, right, gloves are off. We can, we can now have this conversation. Yeah, I mean really, it was exactly like that and having to say, okay, let's think actually about what, like in the UK the ongoing discussion around oil and gas, like who would that oil and gas before. Okay, largely it's for export. It's over a longer time frames. It would do absolutely nothing to bring down domestic bills. So let's get into the detail here. If you want a serious discussion about energy security and whose energy systems would be secured. And then it brings in questions of resilience of energy systems. Not just energy systems, also food systems. We saw under Covid how those are so strained when they're so reliant on just in time production and sort of fragile production networks, all of these sorts of things. So I think thinking about security in that broader way, which of course militaries are doing themselves, this is, isn't from environmentalists and others trying to put like, you know, water security or food security or energy security, front and center military thinkers as, you know, a way ahead on this and anticipating threats. I guess some of the concerns I flagged were around a bit like Nick Buxton's book about the secure and the dispossessed. It's the way in which, as you were saying, in a way like uncertainties or concerns around migration, to pick another sensitive topic, can be, can be invoked to validate more military interventions and responses. It's about protecting borders, protecting populations, or managing social disorder that comes with collapsing food prices or flooding, or, you know, the sorts of things we're seeing as a result of environmental change that this revalidates or gives the military a new role. I mean, these are, these are old arguments, but we are seeing them playing out increasingly that this is, this is. And you know, potentially, and I think I tried to say that in the book, there will be a role for militaries or, or actors that are able to do some of that work of strengthening these systems or dealing with disasters. We are going to face one, one sort of disaster after another of various forms, and we will need forces, hopefully not the use of force, but forces or, or actors that are able to, to do some of that work of protecting communities and, you know, making the infrastructure is more resilient and all of that. So that's a very different purpose from sort of them validating their role in a sort of global geopolitical sense, which is a whole other set of discussions. So for me, it's those entry points about really unpicking and unpacking some of those claims about security when they get thrown in your face around this is why we can't act on climate or energy, because there's these more pressing concerns and that means going local. It means exploiting your resources even more. Or as we're seeing, it means expanding your military budgets at a time when really those resources could and should, in my view, be used for other purposes. So, you know, it's just, those are the entry points. For me, it's just questioning those, those tactics, those discourses and so on, and continually, I think, and movements and others try to do this, just build out those solidarities as well, because the, the success of those narratives relies on, you know, nationalistic frames and, and fear of the other and all of those classic things that you know much more about than me. And so I think that's an important counterpoint to that sort of building those solidarities and sort of saying, actually, and, you know, a lot of the framing at the moment around make polluters pay or other campaigns that are going on is sort of saying, actually this is around elites or billionaires versus most of us in these things. And it's not about national boundaries or contexts. There's something bigger here in terms of who's winning and who's losing and whose planet is at stake. So I think those are all sort of entry points for. I mean, that's. Maybe that's still too abstract. It's also, of course, going to be battles around military expenditure and where you deploy forces and all those sorts of things. There's always going to be that ongoing firefighting. But I think the key thing always for me, at least in these struggles, is to keep an eye on what's your alternative notion of security or where do you want to get to? Not something that will happen in the next even five to ten years, but like, what's your notion of what a more peaceful, safer, more resilient world would look like. But in the here and now, it's going to be this sort of firefighting around dealing with, leading with toxic narratives and pushing back.
- [36:51]
Pauline Heinrichs
Yeah, the toxicity is not just in the fossil fuels themselves, but also the narratives around. Also interesting that in the context of national security, in terms of who determines what that is, I think what we are seeing, and that also goes to the legitimacy point, what we are seeing is that there is a disconnect between what certain articulators of state power argue to be security and how people, people, I don't like the term on the ground, but how people in different communities relate to the concept of security and what makes them feel secure. And often that is actually much more immediate concerns around the cost of living, for example, or energy prices. That.
- [37:35]
Peter Neal
And I think the key thing is to link those things. I mean, this is something I was involved with when I was on the board of Greenpeace until quite recently. And that was one of the key things is okay, the companies that have benefited so much from the Ukraine war in terms of the rising price of gas and so and so on, can we use that windfall tax to go for a massive home insulation program, starting with the poorest regions? And so there's a, you know, like that direct hypothecation is okay, these people benefiting from a crisis, you're suffering through no fault of your own because you're living in a, you know, really badly insulated house. Can we go for a big retrofit program, sort of thing they've done in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and bring people's energy bills down. And so it's, it's very clear, like these people pay, these people win. And so you make very clear, like where the agency lies, where the responsibility is. And, and, and that for me, that'll be a great use of state power to say, okay, winful tax, which we got. Great. But then where does that go? What is it used for? Can you show that there's a direct benefit to, to benefit those people that are really losing out in terms of cost of living? And that's, and that's when a sort of global geopolitical moment lands in a very particular place. You know, that's when you make it real, this distant conflict which you've had nothing to do with, but suddenly you, your energy bills are completely unaffordable. And yet here's the state coming to try and make those bills more affordable. And the people are paying for it are those that are profiting from what's going on.
- [38:58]
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- [39:24]
Peter Neal
Phew.
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- [40:00]
Pauline Heinrichs
Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot that also really resonates with your chapter on the democratic state, which is one I really, really enjoyed. And you close with the key strategic question of whether how and at what point the ecocidal pursuit of the latter undermines state legitimacy. I think that's actually a key question that's rarely interrogated. We often, in analysis at least I see a sort of stability of legitimacy that then is being reconfigured around power relationships. But do you see that reconfiguration of legitimacy already taking place place? And how do we move towards different, some might argue, more substantive forms of the democratic state to re. Kind of initiate those discussions around what legitimacy needs to do or does in a democratic state?
- [41:22]
Peter Neal
Again, very good question, and I'm not sure I have all the answers, but let me have a go.
- [41:26]
Pauline Heinrichs
No need to.
- [41:27]
Peter Neal
I mean, I think, I think it's. I mean, it's a very, very difficult moment to be having as I was writing that chapter, I guess was, you know, a couple of years ago probably, and possibly things have got worse since then, really in terms of the democratic moment and, and the rollback of liberalism and the rise of populism and all of those sorts of things. It's very, you know, when you're writing things around, oh, there could be climate assemblies and there could be participatory budgeting and let's open up all these spaces and, you know, those things are important and you can find examples of them still. But there clearly is also a closing down of civic space in, in so many different contexts. In fact, involved with recently with colleagues at the Institute of Development Studies was around that as around energy transitions and just transitions. But the role of civic space and in many places where you would, you know, want to involve people more in these conversations about energy pathways and futures and what technologies they really want, what sort of jobs are viable and just impossible because of, you know, the level of militarization, police violence, all of those sorts of things, and work of Global Witness and others on environmental defenders. You know, the number of people that I think I saw a figure the other day, it's like, you know, five to six people every week somewhere in the world are being killed in defense of environmental causes. So it's a brutal world out there and it's very, very difficult to sort of eke out these moments and spaces for, for democratic engagement. But I think they are absolutely crucial. And I guess there are. What I was alluding to a little bit in that chapter are some of these tensions and you see it running through Environmental debates between the impulse to say okay, the urgency of the crisis means we need to be, be a little bit less democratic somehow, a bit more. They wouldn't use the language authoritarian, but there is that sort of eco leviathan type perspective, right, which is we haven't got time for all this deliberation around these complex socioecological futures. There has to be a bit of deference towards state. And that's maybe that brings us to the legitimacy question that you raised that you know, are there states that are sufficiently legitimate that people defer to them to make those sorts of big decisions to make the right choices on, on sort of targets, timetables, technolog, infrastructures. My sense overall is in most cases not that there really is that need for ongoing accountability, because otherwise what you get is what we've seen. And I think I had some examples in the book where we'll say, well like in the UK there was the example of overriding local councils, oppositions to fracking, to say well we need fracking because of the climate crisis. And so you override local democratic processes in the interest of some larger good notionally that the state has a monopoly on supposedly and that's very problem or as we know, the rollout of nuclear being justified under the guise of a climate crisis. So I think what I was pushing for is the need to keep open and fight for continually those sorts of spaces around who gets to define what those overall objectives are. But also, I mean the legitimacy question I think comes up in terms of the states losing legitimacy because of their obvious inability and or unwillingness to deal with these crises. That, that in itself, the fact that the state can no longer protect you from flooding or from, or sort of big, big impacts really shakes people's faith in the state. If it's number one task of the state is to sort of defend its citizens not just from externalist act, but from, from threats to their livelihood or their lives. Increasingly it's hard to do that because of an ongoing failure to, to deal with environmental problems. And that really does sort of potentially chip away at the social contract. You know, what, what is the state doing if I can't even live safely in my house because it might just get flooded every year or whatever it might be. But I guess the flip side of that is things like Covid say okay, there's this global pandemic and then suddenly the state really, when it really wants to, can step up and suddenly there is a magic money tree and we do have furlough for workers and we can put people above profit. I mean, those for me sort of are interesting examples of where state priorities can change quite quickly. And again, in transition debates, we boards, industries can't just switch overnight or change production very quickly. And yet they did, you know, brew dog normally brewing beer, was doing hand sanitizer. Dyson normally making Hoovers, was doing ventilators for hospitals. And so those are interesting moments of crisis for me where you get this sort of rethinking fundamentally of what the state can and should do. It gives you little glimpses whether, I mean, of course, this is what Andreas Malm and others were writing about. Can we read anything from that into the ability of the state to deal with the climate crisis? Perhaps only so much. But that was an example of that state taking control in quite a centralizing sort of way, but in ways that you could argue benefited populations, at least in some ways. But yeah, I think the bigger point you're talking about is that tension between needing a strong state that does have some autonomy of action and yet at the same time constantly trying to democratize and open up sites of decision making that are traditionally very closed to any sort of citizen engagement. And, and classically that would be like industrial policy, entrepreneurial state, those sorts of areas. And that's what I was trying to say in other chapters as well, the need to sort of open up those, those things and you know, trade investment. Because this is generally a sort of classic IR point, I suppose, that softer areas of ir, there's much more participation. You see that globally as well, not just at national level. Know, there's quite good engagement with civil society actors around, you know, health issues and environmental issues. But try getting access to WTO or, or, you know, around security or arms treaties discussions, and it's just that much harder. So that's sort of the closer you get to sort of core state power, the harder it is to have that democratic oversight and engagement. But. But the more important it is.
- [47:27]
Pauline Heinrichs
Yeah, absolutely. And some would, at least I would consider myself also to argue that some of those forms of interventions that we've seen, or during COVID at least, also geographically dispersed and differentiated and imbued with power relationships too, around vaccines, but that it also enables democratic processes to take place. So securing livelihoods in one way or another is also securing the possibility of democratic participation, or trying to widen access to democratic participation, which is quite crucial in that regard. That might then also lead to the welfare state, which I would say at least in a lot of transition politics plays a very not marginal role, but is often sort of sidelined in discussions. Having said that, it's also where most of public expectation lands and where sort of the role of the state becomes very, very, very visible. What I really enjoyed about the chapter itself, and I say this to my students a lot, that in a warming world, domestic policy is always foreign policy, because you're arbitrating about the possibility of life elsewhere. And you do see a role in sort of progressive global governance as well. How does that. If we bring those two final chapters into one question, how does that square with moving away from governance, governing the environment towards transformations? Can we govern the environment towards transformations might be the bigger question to take up the title of the book.
- [49:08]
Peter Neal
We can and we should. And I guess what I was trying to do throughout the book in a way is find, you know, where are those openings and leave us to try and do that. And one of the things, you know, is sort of operating on different levels as well. So we've talked a little bit in this conversation around like challenging and unpacking the discourses. That's one thing. And on one level it's those sort of deeper values that this is really about around, like who, who the state serves and, and how, and for what purposes, but around welfare. To take that particular chapter. It is also what, what's a notion of, of welfare and sustainable welfare or prosperity. Of course, there's all those discussions about prosperity rather than growth and so on as the sort of what happens if that starts to become the key objective. And since I wrote the book, I was just reading Tim Jackson's new book, the Care Economy, which is, which is really interesting. And obviously there's long standing feminist debates around that. Like, what is the economy that really sustains all of this, you know, care for others, care for children, care for the elderly, care for the environment. Like literally the economy would collapse without, without that. So what does that mean in terms of how we allocate resources and, and you know, build institutional frameworks? There's this huge amounts of work to do there. And one of the things I touch on in that chapter on the welfare state is that the growth question, because that sort of, that's attention through the book and it's attention in all of these debates, particularly when the parts of the world where welfare states are paid for by forms of extractivism tied to fossil fuels or mining, whatever it might be, that's, you know, bang on direct contradiction. We're generating welfare for some at the expense of, of, you know, huge social environmental damage for others. And that's like written into the sort of the social contract in that particular society and how do you start to have that conversation? And so, you know, concrete ways in which you can do that. And I can't remember what I mentioned in this one in the chapter, but we've been doing some work in with colleagues in Nigeria and they've been starting to do work with different communities around. And there's a project called which Way Nigeria? And the premise of it is, is what would be prosperity beyond fossil fuels or beyond oil in particular in Nigeria? Can we even imagine such a thing? And if we could, what would it look like and how would we get there? And it's very interesting that what they found and it's a group, it's a Nigerian NGO called Spaces for Change that do some fantastic work on this is that younger people can imagine that older people, it's just like, oh, it is what Nigeria does, It's what it's always done. It's what we live on. And others are like, no, there is a better way to sort of imagine an economy beyond fossil fuels and try to open up that different discussion around the future well being and prosperity of a society. I think those. So on a discursive level, I think those sorts of things are really important. On a more institutional or policy level, of course, there's huge things to do around taxation. So I tried to bring in the taxation discussion in there and that's often more and more it's on the agenda now. So you have President Lula talking about wealth tax and various groups pushing for that. But that's often traditionally been seen as outside of sort of transition policy and outside of climate policy. But more and more people are bringing that in to talk about, as I say in that chapter, not just a just transition, which tends to be traditionally more narrowly framed around how do you compensate workers and so on, but economic justice, which also brings in the debt question. So again, to come back to sort of core arguments of the book, it sort of states within an uneven economy, but some of them are highly indebted. And if we get this wrong in terms of supporting them to transition away from fossil fuels or to engage in other transitions, they will end up being even more indebted. So we have these just energy transition partnerships, for example, but a lot of them are on it's about more loans with interest to be paid back and you're just locking countries into even more debt. And so recognizing the constraints that those economies are under and the need to sort of link debt to some of these other transition imperatives, I think is really important. So it's thinking about welfare and prosperity within states in a different way. But also it has to be that rebalancing between states as well. So that's the sort of global part. The multilateral system can do some of that. But clearly there's a role for regional and other institutions, I think in really sort of shifting the debate on that front because at the moment, and I've picked up on that, I think in that final global chapter is that that sort of imbalance in global institutions where the ones leading the conversation have quite an orthodox narrow view about more neoliberal transitions. And it's about sort of, you know, using the market and tweaking things and all of that and avoiding the difficult conversations. So one piece of World bank funded research suggest just came out, was talking about build first, break later and their whole argument was, you know, use the markets to build out renewable alternatives but don't take on the fossil fuel lobby because that's just too difficult to do. And in the end it's all about the market. And so obviously we push back a little bit on that, I thought. A little bit. Quite a lot. A little bit, yeah, A little way. Because you know, unless you deal with that flip side, you can't just ignore those power relations and just sort of hope, hope that those actors will disappear because they're also deliberately trying to slow down and sabotage the pace of transition for, for the out part of the story. So it's not just that they have their own narrow sectoral interests and they're doing their thing, an interest like any other. They're not, they're actively trying to sort of disrupt and sabotage the build out of the alternative. So you basically, you can't get around having to deal with power in the end.
- [54:38]
Pauline Heinrichs
It's also, I mean the market fantasy of kind of, we know already that this is, remains to be a fantasy, but particularly in the context of fossil fuel subsidies. It's just, it's not even that there is a supposedly equal playing field to begin with, which is also interestingly I think often also understudied or something to think about is also that democratization of debt. So who takes on debt? We see that in the JDP discussion of course, but also in terms of how transparently those decisions about debt are being made and whose behalf I think is going to be really relevant in this context.
- [55:21]
Peter Neal
Definitely. And that's, I mean that maybe takes us back to the Democratic state discussion because that was one of the concerns with the JETP is that the sort of the plans about these coal transitions are elite discussions of Ministry of Finance, World bank, some of the bilateral donors, but I've been on many calls with trade unions, environmental groups, indigenous groups, others who are completely out of the conversation on this. And yet they're the ones that will live the consequences of how this is done. So, you know. Yeah, definitely their voices need to be be heard in that.
- [55:48]
Pauline Heinrichs
Absolutely. That leads us to the final question. Thanks so much, Peter. Also a fantastic book and I enjoyed reading it a lot and I recommend doing so for others as well. We always close with a question at the New Books Network by asking what comes next for you after what I hope is a break, what will you be or already working on after the book and where has it taken taking you?
- [56:14]
Peter Neal
Yeah, not much of a break unfortunately. The main thing I have at the moment is an ERC funded project on leaving fossil fuels in the ground. So supply side climate policy and what we're doing, and I'm lucky to have a great team of people around me doing this, is looking at the political economies of policies to try and leave fossil fuels in the ground. So we're looking at across different contexts. So some countries in Latin America with my colleague Daniela, we've been doing some field work in Chile and Costa Rica and places she's doing some stuff in Colombia and Equity Door and then I've got another colleague leading more work. I mean I've been doing some of the UK work, but he's been doing work in Denmark, looking a little bit Norway and other places. So different countries in different contexts, but trying to understand how are these policies possible, how are they coming about? And then in the end, and this is more the IR question, how can they be regionalized and then multilateralized? And in my sort of activist role, I'm very involved in the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which I was involved with from the, from the very start. And so, so one of the things we're trying to do is think about the pathways to reach those sorts of agreements. And now miraculously there is going to be this summit hosted by Columbia in April looking at precisely these sorts of questions. So yeah, for me, I guess throughout my career there's always been that strong overlap and intertwining of the sort of more activist engaged stuff with the academic. And for me that makes it a little bit more interesting. Like doing activism is also doing fieldwork in a way and you get lots of good insights that you would probably never get otherwise. So that's how I stay sane.
- [57:51]
Pauline Heinrichs
Absolutely, that makes sense. Also in part because I think while societies are shifting, so will the responsibility of scholars within this context. And it's very difficult not to take a stance in some of those discussions. There's a sort of sometimes bias towards neutrality that might be unfounded in the context of a warming world. So it's really important work and thank you for doing it.
- [58:18]
Peter Neal
Thank you very much for this interview. Very much appreciated.
- [58:22]
Pauline Heinrichs
Speak to you very soon, Peter. And you've been listening to the New Books Network. Peter's book States of Transition is out with Cambridge University Press. Now. My name is Pauline Heinrichs and until the next time.
- [58:46]
Peter Neal
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Peter Neal
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