Special Issue "Political Economy and Sustainability"

Guest Editor
Dr. Robert Krueger
Worcester Community Project Center; and Environmental Studies Program; Office Project Center Building, Second Floor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA
Website: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/IGSD/People/jrk.html
E-Mail:
Interests: developing and applying political economic theory to questions of urban sustainability and economic development and the environment; examining economic theory from a critical cultural perspective

Dear Colleagues,

It is generally accepted that we, as a world, must learn to live more sustainably. While many recipes for structures of governance and economy exist in the academic and popular literature, one only has to revisit the recent COP-15 meeting to realize that sustainability is not a technological problem. It is a political problem. Sustainability is about overcoming embedded power relations at macro-scales (i.e., nation-state and international governance), and meso-scales (i.e., local and regional development) on down to the micro-scale (e.g., communities and households). Neoliberals and Neo-Keynesians may promise the hidden hand of the market or a third way of market based regulation present the keys to success. However, the sustainability transformation, like any other socio-political change of the past 100 years, is going to be fraught with the unintended-and intended-consequences of corrupt epistemologies, co-opted institutions and the limitations of human knowledge. Many of the world's countries have espoused their sustainability credentials-even George W. Bush-but who is seriously living up to the tripartite concerns of sustainable development: economic prosperity, social equity and ecological integrity?

This special issue is about exploring issues related to the sustainability transition in the context of current economic institutions, dominant forms of knowledge and embedded actors and institutions. We welcome theoretical contributions, case studies and methodological papers on this timely and important topic.

Dr. Robert Krueger,
Guest Editor

• sustainability transition
• critical sustainability studies
• Urban environment
• economy-environment relations
• political ecology

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Green Political Economy I: The Paradox of the Limits and Power of Neo-Classical Economics
Author: John Barry
Affiliation: School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Institute for a Sustainable World, Queen's University Belfast, 21 University Square Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK; E-Mail: j.barry@qub.ac.uk
Abstract: This article outlines both the limits and power that neo-classical economics has on sustainability policy. It begins by describing the main weaknesses of neo-classical economics from a sustainabilty perspective in terms of its failure to recognise its own normative and political assumptions, its methodological individualism and growing mathematical abstractness and its consequent inability to predict economic phenomenon and be applicable to realworld economic activity, and above all its promotion of the imperative of 'economic growth'. In analysing its power and reach the article focuses on three areas:
1. the dominance of the neo-classcial model within the modern discipline of 'economics' and the marginalisation and silencing of 'heterdox' positions, here the article will focvus on the 'toxic texbooks' campaign to illustrate the dangers of this lack of pluralism within the teaching and research agendas of modern economics.
2. its colonisation of other social sciences via what has become known as 'economics imperialism' and the danger of this for interdisciplinary sustainability research.
3. based on 1 and 2, the dominance of the neo-classical model in comtemporayr policy making and popular culture as the only or main model of the economy and how to think about economics i.e. its capacity to be seen as 'commonsense'. The article concludes by calling for pluralism within thinking about the economy in relation to sustainablity and relatedly the unavoidability of developing an explicitly political economy approach to developing an economics of sustainability i.e. the intregration of political and ethical issues in thinking and making policies about the economy. This article sets the stage for a second article 'Green Political Economy II' which explores in more detail the alternative forms of economic thinking (heterodox, degrowth, green, post-autistic, ecological economics etc) that can inform a political economy of the transition to sustainability.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Violence, the State and Sustainability
Author: John Hoffman
E-Mail: j.a.hoffman@ntlworld.com
Abstract: For a society and the world in general to be sustainable, it is necessary to tackle critically the question of the state and violence. The resort to violence imperils the culture and policies necessary for sustainability, and the state, as an institution which normalises and naturalises violence, is a long term barrier to this sustainability even though in the short term the state may have an important and productive role to play. Such a critique is only possible if we distinguish rigorously between the state and government, and move beyond the abstract individualism of the liberal tradition.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Political Economy, Capitalism and Sustainable Development
Author: George Liodakis
Affiliation: Department of Sciences, Technical University of Crete, 73100 Chania, Greece; E-mail: liod@science.tuc.gr
Abstract: After a critical review of conventional approaches to sustainability, this paper contrasts orthodox (neoclassical) economic theory with a political economy approach, arguing that such an approach focusing on the historically specific organizational form of production and the inherent characteristics of the capitalist mode of production is crucial for exploring the preconditions, the content and the prospects of sustainability. Analyzing briefly these characteristics and the developmental trends of capitalism, we locate the basic causes behind the currently exacerbating economic and ecological crisis, and on these grounds we briefly explore the required systemic transformations necessary to ensure a socially and ecologically, truly sustainable development.

Title: Rescaling Rent Gaps: Land Markets, Landesque Capital and Accumulation by Dispossession
Author: Eric Clark
Affiliation: Department of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden; Email: eric.clark@keg.lu.se
Abstract: The isolation of land from social institutions and cultural practices, 'freeing' it up for the formation of land markets - "perhaps the weirdest of all the undertakings of our ancestors", as Polanyi put it - is a key process in the construction and expansion of capitalism, indeed the very basis for primitive accumulation and ongoing global search-and-execute operations for accumulation by dispossession. These processes have intensified and sprawled with increasing global inequalities, time-space compression and the global wave of neoliberalism. This paper analyzes these processes as instances of rescaling rent gaps, most dramatically manifested in the current global land-grab frenzy. From this perspective on the political economy of land, the concept of landesque capital, currently enjoying a renaissance in political ecology, is scrutinized. It is argued that the making and taking of rent gaps at increasing scales is a key form for the expansion of capitalism, and a form of accumulation by dispossession with major impacts on whole cultures across the globe.

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Why Do We Observe so Little Sustainability in Representative Democracies: A Preliminary Public Choice Analysis
Authors: Friedrich Schneider ¹ and Andrea Kollmann ²
Affiliation: ¹ Departement for Economics, University Linz, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria; Email: friedrich.schneider@jku.at
² Energy Institute at the University Linz, Departement for Energy Economics, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria; Email: kollmann@energieinstitut-linz.at
Abstract: There is a wide-spread consent among players in developed countries that a shift towards an eco-social market economy is essential for sustainable growth. Nevertheless, implementing economic instruments in environmental policy has not been satisfyingly achieved yet. Identifying the reasons for this less than optimal implementation in the past decade is analyzed using the public choice theory. The players (voters, politicians, interest groups and bureaucracies) behavior will be analyzed and it will be shown that their incentives for implementing environmental instruments in economic policy instead of using other more common economic measures is surprisingly small. Knowing the obstacles for implementing economic instruments gives valuable knowledge about how to overcome these obstacles.