States of Transition

The book takes a deep dive into the multiple roles states are playing in supporting transitions to a more sustainable world, exploring where there is scope for their transformation.

It goes beyond unhelpful binaries which cast the state as the central problem or the all-encompassing solution to ecological and social crises, it explores diverse current state practice across key domains from the military and democratic state to the welfare, entrepreneurial industrial and global state.

To do this, it builds on theoretical resources from a range of disciplines, as befits the challenge of making sense of these diverse aspects of state power.

It moves beyond existing analysis of the ‘environmental state’ and normative projections around the form a ‘green state’ might take, in order to explore scope for a ‘transition state’ to emerge, capable of corralling and transforming all aspects of state power behind the goal of responding to the existential threat of planetary collapse.