WELFARE STATES AND ENVIRONMENTAL STATES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

This paper investigates the commonalities and contrasts between the earlier development of welfare states and the recent emergence of ‘environmental states’. To answer this question I present an earlier framework which posits five drivers of welfare state development, the ‘five I’s’: Industrialisation, Interests, Institutions, Ideas/Ideologies, and International Influences. The respective roles of these have been much studied in comparative welfare state scholarship over the past three decades and this theory and evidence is summarised in the first part. Next, the more recent expansion of the environmental state is examined in the light of these five factors, and available comparative research is trawled to assess their respective importance. The conclusion at this stage is that the drivers of welfare states and eco-states have been remarkably similar. Both can be broadly explained in terms of institutional structures, both economic and political, supporting earlier findings that coordinated market economies with social democratic welfare states tend to see economic and ecological values as mutually reinforcing. However, the final section examines some sharp contrasts between the emergence of welfare states and environmental states which warn against the latter simply repeating the evolution of the former. These include: the climate change agenda have risen in the era of dominant neo-liberal anti-state ideas; environmental policies must be built on top of existing welfare political and fiscal commitments; above all, the 2008 crisis and its aftermath poses grave challenges to both welfare states and climate change mitigation policies.