From Disaster Capitalism to the Big Green State: State and Economy in the Age of Climate Change
Alyssa Battistoni
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Barnard College
Award: $25,000
In recent years, Western states’ approach to climate policy has changed dramatically. Following three decades of policy dominated by market mechanisms, many states in North America and the E.U. have begun to take a more interventionist role in building green infrastructure, stimulating green investment, and encouraging nascent clean tech industries via green industrial policy. The workshop being co-convened by Alyssa Battistoni, Adam Tooze, Thea Riofrancos, and the Climate and Community Institute and funded by CPE proposes to investigate the drivers and dynamics of these changing political economic configurations—considering among other things the role of domestic climate movements; the driving force of Chinese state investment and pressures of global competition; the rise of economic populism; the return of great power politics; and, now, an assault on the U.S. administrative state—with the aim of clarifying the present dimensions and likely future directions of climate politics. It proposes that this pivotal conjuncture of climate politics can act as a lens onto broader dynamics of state and market within capitalism, and holds that climate policy is crucial to the development of a new political economy. The workshop will bring together climate scholars and climate policy practitioners during Climate Week 2025 to consider these topics at a higher level than policy discussions typically permit, while engaging more closely with ongoing political developments than is typical in academic spaces. A second workshop in Spring 2026 will convene a select group of participants for a more focused discussion of a research topic to be determined in the course of the initial convening, with the aim of seeding collaborations and developing an innovative research agenda. In the intervening months, the grant will also support a focused, public-facing series of articles.
Collaborators
- Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University;
- Thea Riofrancos, Associate Professor of Political Science, Providence College; Climate and Community Institute.
