Rise of the Climate State

Many countries and even continents are undertaking a fundamental restructuring of their economy to meet the challenges posed by climate change. These structural changes are laid down in large scale climate policy plans colloquially referred to as ‘Green Deals’. In some cases such as Japan the plan ‘merely’ focus on decarbonization by 2050 by changing initiating green growth policies. In some cases such as South Korea, the US and the EU, the plan also envisions large scale social transformations by focusing on just distribution (EU) or to rebuild the middle class (US) or strengthen social safety nets (S.Kore). This raises the question to what extent these climate plans are transformative – in the sense that they aim to fundamentally restructure the political, economic and legal systems that produced the climate crisis or simply focus on innovation and technological progress.
In order to analyze the plans of Japan, South Korea, the US and the EU we will use the tools provided by sociological pragmatism, ANT, discourse analysis and constitutional theory (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Latour, 1999; Hajer 1995, Kotzé, 2017). We will analyze the climate plans as networks of actors and objects that aim to transform societal relations. The research focuses primarily on three clusters of questions:
- What kind of future is envisioned in the climate plan? What kind of notions of good citizenship are prescribed? Which objects and actors are being elevated and which are devalued?
- The political decision-making processes that structured the design of the climate plans. Who were the key actors involved in decisions? Which groups were excluded?
- The legal constellation of the climate plans. How are relations between actors legally arranged?

By investigating the discourses from which these plans draw and the systemic legal changes they provoke, these four plans give us insight in how notions of citizenship, the role of the state and legal systems change in high-income, liberal democracies because of climate change. Do we see the emergence of a ‘climate state’ (Meadowcroft 2005) with an ecological socio-legal order and green constitutionalism (Kotzé 2017) or do we continue down the path of technology focused ecological modernization? (Hajer 1995).