Towards post-growth policymaking: Barriers and enablers for wellbeing economy and Doughnut economics government initiatives

Abstract

Providing wellbeing for all while safeguarding planetary boundaries requires governments to pursue post-growth policies. An important question is how transformative government-led post-growth initiatives can be within the existing institutional context. While first empirical studies on this question demonstrate some of the current limitations of government-led post-growth initiatives, a broader empirical assessment of underlying barriers and enablers across institutional contexts is so far lacking. To address this gap, we examine wellbeing economy and Doughnut economics government initiatives across governance scales in Europe, New Zealand, and Canada. To identify barriers and enablers as well as priorities for future action, we apply a framework that captures systemic and political dimensions to analyze the data. Overall, our results suggest that the overarching economic growth paradigm severely limits the initiatives scope of action. Important enablers of existing initiatives are crises, the political agency of key individuals and high-level political support. Policymakers who promote growth-critical perspectives often face tensions: they need to appeal to broad stakeholder groups while avoiding cooptation. Structural changes and a closer engagement with, and pressure from, civil society are required to support post-growth government initiatives.