Greening the state?
Current debates in Green political theory can thus be interpreted as exercises (even where this is not expressly stated) in attempting to think through what the greening of the state might entail. We start here with discrete debates about ‘risk society’ and ‘ecological modernization’ before more moving on to broader arguments about the contemporary greening of the state by Dryzek and colleagues, and by Eckersley. There are various sorts of possible interpretations of these debates and the phenomena they analyse; the Green point is to retain critique of what it is about contemporary state forms which is problematic, while recognizing the transformations of states being brought about by ecological reforms, and focus on their potentials.
More on the topic Greening the state?:
- The so-called ‘new institutionalism’ is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of theories of the state and, like some of the other perspectives considered in this volume, it is by no means only a theory of the state
- Like Henry Higgins who, through his work changed the object of his studies into something other than what it was, the purpose of the Marxist theory of the state is not just to understand the capitalist state but to aid in its destruction. (Wolfe 1974: 131)
- What is the state?
- The concept of the state
- Beyond the state?
- Marxism and the state
- SANCTION AND THE STATE
- The state as institutional contextualization
- The genealogy of the concept of the state
- The state and problems of legitimacy
- Green critiques of the state
- The Weberian definition of the modern state