In this interview, Jan Pollex and Lars E. Berker discuss the research and findings of their recent article in Environmental Politics: Exploring the politics of degrowth – first evidence from two cases of repair policies in Austria and Sweden.
Congratulations on your recent article! What is the key message that you hope people take from this research?
[Jan:] There are two main takeaways. The first, more practical, one is that policies linked to degrowth can actually make it into real-world politics, even in systems that are still strongly focused on economic growth. Looking at repair policies in Austria and Sweden, we show that these measures didn’t succeed because everyone suddenly agreed on degrowth. Instead, they worked because different actors could support them for different reasons—environmental, social, or economic. This suggests that degrowth might advance less through confrontation and more through pragmatic compromises and broad coalitions. However, we are aware that the policies we investigated are low-hanging fruit for a socio-ecological transition.
Second, on a theoretical note, we want to make the case for integrating more theories of classic policy analysis into the research on degrowth. To our mind, they can help a lot to discover underlying power dynamics and shed light on important nuances of political struggles in the field of sustainability.
You’ve identified ‘repair policies’ in Austria and Sweden as examples of degrowth, can you explain why you do this, and what helped you identify these particular policies?
[Jan:] Repair policies are discussed in the degrowth literature because they slow down consumption by extending the life of products. Instead of constantly replacing things, repairing encourages people to use what they already have for longer—something that clearly challenges the logic of endless growth.
[Lars:] We focus on Austria and Sweden because they are among the few countries that have implemented such policies at the national level. Both are often seen as environmental frontrunners, which makes them good cases to explore whether and how degrowth-related ideas enter mainstream policymaking. Within our selected European context, we expected a higher likelihood of finding degrowth thinking in such countries.
Your approach is actor-oriented, as you are looking at how these policies can be introduced. What did you find?
[Jan:] What we found is that in our two cases there are no clear-cut “degrowth coalitions” in politics. Instead, repair policies were supported by quite diverse groups of actors. Green and left parties often framed them in terms of sufficiency and environmental limits, while conservative parties or business groups supported the same policies because they help local businesses, create jobs, or stimulate the economy.
[Lars:] So, the key point is that these specific policies didn’t require everyone to agree on degrowth as a broader vision. They worked because they allowed for overlapping interests and different interpretations. This is, of course, something that may be difficult to scale up.
Both of your case studies are in Europe, why do you think this is? Did you look further afield, or is Europe the place where these policies are first emerging?
[Lars:] Europe is currently where repair policies are most clearly visible at the national policy level, partly because of long-standing environmental debates and EU-level initiatives around circular economy. In Austria, for example, EU funding played an important role in making the policy politically feasible.
That said, we don’t think Europe is the only or the first place where degrowth-related ideas emerge. It’s simply where we currently find the most concrete and comparable cases – and, of course, to some extent the “logistics”, as Gerring calls it, like language accessibility, also play a part in the case selection. However, it is important to note that, as previous research has shown, expanding the focus beyond Europe is a major asset for degrowth research. This is equally true for policy analysis in this area.
Finally, what’s next? Are you publishing more on this topic?
[Jan:] Definitely. This article is meant as a starting point. One big open question is whether small, pragmatic policies like repair incentives can help open the door to more far-reaching changes—or whether they risk being absorbed into green-growth narratives without challenging consumption patterns more fundamentally.
[Lars:] And, going forward, we’re especially interested in examining the role of political parties in the politics of degrowth.
Bios
Jan Pollex is an Interim Professor for European Integration at the University of Osnabrück. His research focuses on European environmental and climate policy, political parties and social movements. A notable strand of his work examines policy dismantling in EU environmental regulation — specifically how the European Commission uses non-legislative instruments like comitology procedures to quietly reduce policy ambitions, as published in the Journal of European Public Policy.
Lars E. Berker is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Political Science and the Center for Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research (ZIN) at University of Münster, Germany. His research focuses on environmental policy analysis, political parties, and approaches to socio-ecological transformation, such as degrowth, sufficiency or green growth.
