By its presence or its absence, the state is frequently invoked in debates about sustainability transitions. For those who believe technological innovation and market mechanisms are the real drivers of change, a top down, overly bureaucratic state provides an easy caricature to play off against in making the case for market-led transitions, instead of a proactive entrepreneurial state. Equally, for those critical of the centralisation of power and the violent and repressive nature of state power, it is not hard to point to plentiful examples of the ecocidal and oppressive behaviour which give cause to doubt that the state could ever support positive social and environmental change despite the existence, in some parts of the world at least, of welfare and legal systems designed to do precisely that.

There is merit in these attacks on the state and the scepticism they give rise to about the prospects of the state playing a progressive role in supporting much needed transitions to a more sustainable world as we continue to pass planetary boundaries and key ecological thresholds. But these narratives are also complicated by a reality that is more messy and contradictory. States make markets and, in many cases, build the infrastructures necessary for transition, train the labour and set the rules markets require to function and (sometimes) redistribute the wealth they generate to those in most need. Indeed, there is long list of examples of positive state policy which protects the environment, redistributes wealth, nurtures innovation and defends the rights of citizens. Context and history matter in making sense of these competing state practices. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that coordinated and rapid change across all areas of the economy and society is unlikely to take place without at least some role for the state. The struggle is over which and whose state can play that role. The more interesting questions are then around which states and which parts of the state are engaged in processes of transition, when and how — and more importantly, how can they support more transformative change?  

Recognition of this forms the starting point of my new book States of Transition, whose subtitle captures the need to move beyond a predominant focus on the state’s role in governing the environment, markets and technology and to attend more to the limits and possibilities of social transformation through and beyond the state.  States do much more than govern. The causes of unsustainability are hard-wired into economic, political, social and cultural systems, infrastructures and behaviours, over which states have significant degrees of direct and indirect influence and control and are centrally implicated. To grapple with this reality adequately requires a broad notion of the state which extends way beyond its executive functions, to the multiple levels and arenas in which its authority is exercised. Debates often start (and frequently) end with the governance of transitions where the state is merely one actor among many. The tensions and contradictions between the range of roles it performs are often under-analysed. The need to simultaneously innovate, regulate, consult, redistribute, police and globalise transitions confronts the state with a series of trade-offs in its approach to sustainability transitions. The book explores diverse current state practice across key domains: military, democracy, welfare, entrepreneurial, industrial and foreign policy- and the linkages between them.

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, though broadly grounded in a political economy account which roots the state in broader social relations of which it is a part and helps to reproduce- and which need to be challenged if transformational change is to be achieved. This means being attentive to the networks and social and global relations of power in which the state is situated and which it seeks to enrol to achieve collective social ends and manage the tensions and contradictions it is confronted with. In this sense, the book moves beyond existing analysis of the ‘environmental state’ and normative projections of the form a ‘green state’ might take. Instead it explores 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.

In practice, this means not treating the state as an aspatial and universal, homogeneous governance structure abstracted from social, economic and ecological relations. The messy and everyday politics of transformation in each of these domains of state power will necessarily be a function of the interplay between competing pathways to sustainability. How they interact and unfold will be a function of the nature and capacity of the state, the role of political culture and where countries are located in the global economy such that moving from a transition state to state-led transformation will be an uneven and globally differentiated process. Effective strategies will need to reflect this if they are to succeed. The process of transformational change will not have a clear end point regarding the form and character of the state. It will be a protracted and conflictual struggle given the shifting nature of demands on the state from human and non-human sources in the face of ever-shifting challenges. But having a clearer understanding of the nature, breadth and contested nature of state power allows us to engage more effectively in this endeavour. 

Each chapter of the book introduces a key dimension of state power of relevance to debates about sustainability transitions. Starting with the aspect of state power which has received most attention to date, the entrepreneurial state, it moves on to the industrial and military state, the democratic, welfare and global state, dimensions that have been neglected in the study of transitions to date. In States of Transition, I show how these other aspects of state power deserve as much, if not more, attention. Having introduced a dimension of state power, each chapter then examines its significance for sustainability transitions. The final part of each chapter explores scope for transforming that aspect of state power. Exploring questions, for example, such as whether the entrepreneurial state be called upon to accelerate exnovation (phasing out unsustainable technologies) as is starting to happen and support social innovation and greater citizen engagement in identifying social priorities for innovation. Since the demands of the military state cast a long shadow over technological innovation and exact a huge ecological and human impact, what form could a more de-militarised state take in a world that requires less policing of extractivism and where vast resources could be reallocated to sustainability transitions? This is a tall order in a today’s conflictual geopolitical landscape, but states have dismantled military structures before and the incompatibility of militarism with meaningful visions of a sustainable society is becoming ever clearer.

Beyond posing these vital questions, each chapter looks at emerging strategies to transform the state  from efforts to nurture repair and circular economies to break the link between innovation for unsustainable economic growth, to deepen democracy through deliberation and citizen assemblies that challenge the power of incumbent actors and to re-think work and welfare through job-sharing and basic income schemes where the state has a vital role in rebalancing economy, society and ecology. This is in no way a defence of the actually existing state. But a more disruptive politics of transformation requires us to acknowledge and then challenge and change the relations of power where the state sits at the centre. It invites a wider view of politics and a deeper view of the state to understand its role in disruption and acceleration. This demands a better understanding of the military, global, welfare, industrial, entrepreneurial and democratic functions of the state, their interrelationship, and how these may impinge on the possibilities of transformative trajectories.

A state committed to positive transformative change might look very different. It might be a smaller state, if military functions are reduced as some states have in the past, and greater control passed to local authorities and regions as part of projects to deepen the democratic state. But there may be a scope for a more activist and interventionist state, not afraid to stand up to incumbent actors and interests, willing to construct visions and plans for a sustainable society, using key state levers of tax and industrial policy and support to sustainable innovation but held to account for them through stronger mechanisms of citizen engagement and oversight. A state willing to support socially useful and ecological sustainable forms of technology and investment in new infrastructures, to redistribute wealth through a basic income scheme and to tax corporations and pollution to redirect resources to where they are most needed to centre sustainable welfare as a core goal sounds like an attractive proposition. For it to succeed, would mean managing the tensions and contradictions between competing state functions, priorities and sites of power in ways which advance an altogether different social contract. State legitimacy would no longer defined by narrow and goals of accumulation and securitization because the citizens that cede that power to states demand an alternative.

Questions of capacity and the resourcing of the state are critical here. While some areas of state power might be extended, others would significantly retract guided by a different vision of the purpose and nature of state power. This implies, in turn, shifts in power and new social settlements where the state is less captive to actors pushing us beyond planetary boundaries. There is no one model of ‘the state’, and just as there are varieties of capitalism, so too there will be varieties of transition and transformation. Either way, the state is at the centre of competing claim-making about the politics of different pathways and attempts to build a more sustainable world which all of us surely aspire to.