Planet or Politics? The Permeation of Growthquestioning Ideas in EU Political Space, 2019-24

Abstract

This thesis investigates the factors explaining the unprecedented permeation of growthquestioning ideas within EU political space in 2019-2024, deploying the 2023 European Parliament Beyond Growth Conference as an explanatory single-case design. To uncover the politics and processes underpinning this novel episode, an original dataset of thirteen elite interviews is constructed and analysed. The data reveals that heterodox epistemic permeation stems from a range of interconnected factors which can be categorised in tripartite manner: firstly, the interlinked epidemiological, conflictual, climate, fiscal and social crises and pathbreaking policy responses; secondly, the (ninth) European Parliament as a favourable host; and thirdly, the incremental, inside-track process of heterodox epistemic permeation spearheaded by Philippe Lamberts and his networks in Brussels and beyond. Theoretically, this thesis contributes to degrowth and critical EU studies literatures, operationalising Magnus Ryner's framework of transformations in content and form, in dialogue with the literature on pathways to degrowth transformations.