The Comparative Politics of Green Growth

• In Event: The Politics of Green Industrial Policy: Lessons for a Green New Deal

Abstract

Climate policymaking presents a hard test for state capacity, as successful emissions reductions require state-led transformation of virtually every sector of the economy. A popular political strategy to overcome vested interest opposition has been to promise ‘green growth’ in an attempt to build coalitions of decarbonization supporters that expect material benefits from green industrial change. Yet states have varied dramatically in the types of green growth strategies that they have chosen. Some states, including China and Germany, have emphasized export-driven growth strategies. Others, such as the UK, have focused on domestic consumption of clean energy technologies while reducing emissions primarily through deindustrialization. Particularly the Nordic economies have balanced domestic and international green growth objectives, combining strict regulatory standards and state support for internationalization of domestic firms. Developing a typology of green growth strategies, this paper argues that divergent patterns of green growth reflect broader cross-national differences in growth models that emphasize different types of aggregate demand in the domestic economy. It shows that the associated differences in state-business relations, labor and wage politics, and distributional outcomes have had important consequences for the types of coalitions that have emerged behind climate policy and therefore shape the long-term political viability of decarbonization

Author

• Jonas M. Nahm, Johns Hopkins University