Governments promise all three at once — but that promise no longer holds. Growth, Democracy, or Climate Action? reveals the hard trade-offs now reshaping advanced capitalism, and maps the political paths still open before the window closes. We outline three scenarios — a market-led Liberal Status Quo, a state-led Big Green State, and radical Degrowth — and show why none has yet resolved the trade-off. What it will take instead is a rebuilt, capable state and a broad coalition of working- and middle-class voters who see the transition as a route to good jobs, not just carbon cuts.
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Chapter by chapter
Book summary
01 The New Trilemma
Climate change is not only an ecological crisis but a crisis of political economy. Decarbonizing at the required speed demands state-led economic transformation at a scale liberal democracies have not attempted since the mid-twentieth century.
Growth has legitimized democratic capitalism for decades, but its gains now concentrate at the top while wages stagnate — fuelling backlash. Decarbonizing fast enough collides head-on with that growth promise.
The core claim: growth, democratic legitimacy and effective climate action cannot all be maximized together. Something has to give.
02 Why the Liberal Status Quo cannot solve the crisis
Left to liberal markets, the green transition is partial, uneven and unjust. Renewables are added on top of fossil fuels, not in place of them.
Carbon inequality is the crux: the top 10% emit nearly half of all emissions; the bottom 50% just 7%. Asking ordinary voters to pay while elites pollute freely is politically untenable.
Under the status quo, growth and democracy win — at climate's expense. Every diluted target and reversed regulation is the trilemma in action.
03 The prospect of a Big Green State
Could a state freed from electoral pressure decarbonize at the needed pace? China is the prototype: ~80% of global solar production, dominant in batteries and EVs, ~$675bn invested in clean energy in one year.
Its "developmental environmentalism" blends planning with markets, steering finance toward strategic green sectors — achieving climate action and growth without democracy.
But the model carries authoritarianism, overcapacity and no guarantee of a just transition. Should democracies want this — even if it works?
04 The political impossibility of Degrowth
Degrowth proposes planned contraction, shorter working weeks, redistribution and well-being indicators over GDP — and is democratically deliberative by design.
The obstacle isn't conceptual but political: no party in a competitive democracy can campaign on shrinking the economy. Growth is the currency of political legitimacy.
So degrowth secures climate action and democratic deliberation in theory, while sacrificing growth — and stays trapped by the very political economy it seeks to transcend.
05 Politics under pressure
Inequality corrodes climate politics from within: a vicious circle where inaction deepens inequality and inequality blocks reform.
Distributive justice is the terrain on which the trilemma will be fought. Climate action grafted onto an unequal order loses public support fast.
The far right has grasped this faster than the left — weaponizing climate grievance by casting the "green agenda" as an elite project.
06 Conclusion: degrowth for the rich, green growth for the rest
The lesson from China isn't to become autocratic — it's to rebuild the democratic planning capacity neoliberalism dismantled. The real choice is weak vs. effective states.
Climate action must be a class project: a rural–urban, working- and middle-class coalition, rooted in social protection and public investment, with the costs falling on the rich.
The trilemma cannot be solved — that window has closed. It will be fought, not managed. At stake is the credibility of democracy itself.
This page presents the analytical core of the book. It maps the trade-offs between growth, democracy, and climate action that every advanced democracy now has to navigate. Explore the framework at the heart of the book: three strategies, three different trade-offs, and no escape from the choice between them.
Three strategies
Pick any two corners
Each strategy secures the two goals it sits between — and sacrifices the third. There is no point in the middle. Click an edge of the triangle, or a strategy below, to open it.
The Liberal Status Quo
✓ Growth✓ DemocracyClimate Action
Chapter 2
Left to liberal markets, the green transition is partial, uneven and unjust. Renewables are added on top of fossil fuels, not in place of them. Carbon inequality is the crux: the top 10% emit nearly half of all emissions; the bottom 50% just 7%. Asking ordinary voters to pay while elites pollute freely is politically untenable. Under the status quo, growth and democracy win — at climate's expense. Every diluted target and reversed regulation is the trilemma in action.
↳ This is where almost every Western democracy sits today.
The Big Green State
✓ Climate Action✓ GrowthDemocracy
Chapter 3
Could a state freed from electoral pressure decarbonize at the needed pace? China is the prototype: ~80% of global solar production, dominant in batteries and EVs, ~$675bn invested in clean energy in one year. Its "developmental environmentalism" blends planning with markets, steering finance toward strategic green sectors — achieving climate action and growth without democracy. But the model carries authoritarianism, overcapacity and no guarantee of a just transition. Should democracies want this — even if it works?
↳ Already emerging in China, Vietnam, Singapore — and perhaps the Gulf petrostates.
Degrowth
✓ Climate Action✓ DemocracyGrowth
Chapter 4
Degrowth proposes planned contraction, shorter working weeks, redistribution and well-being indicators over GDP — and is democratically deliberative by design. The obstacle isn't conceptual but political: no party in a competitive democracy can campaign on shrinking the economy. Growth is the currency of political legitimacy. So degrowth secures climate action and democratic deliberation in theory, while sacrificing growth — and stays trapped by the very political economy it seeks to transcend.
↳ The most coherent, least plausible route — until it is suddenly the only one left.
The Data
Here you can find a glimpse of some of the various empirical evidences we present in the book to underlie our argument.
Figure 1
Why voters won't vote for less
Book Figure 4.5 — Life satisfaction vs. CO₂ emissions per capita, 2024
Life satisfaction and per capita emissions remain closely correlated across countries — higher emissions, higher reported well-being, even if the relationship flattens at the top. This illustrates the book's central argument against degrowth as a political strategy, whatever its scientific merits. As we put it in the book: "A democracy that relies on growth for legitimacy cannot easily survive without it." Asking voters to accept less isn't just unpopular — it's a structural contradiction for any government whose legitimacy depends on rising living standards.
Source: Our World in Data
Figure 2
Wealth and emissions, still tied together
Book Figure 2.3 — Consumption-based CO₂ emissions per capita vs. GDP per capita
Across high-income countries, consumption-based emissions per capita still rise and fall with GDP per capita. This is exactly the pattern the book argues the Liberal Status Quo cannot escape: as long as prosperity is measured by GDP, decarbonizing what people actually consume — not just what their country produces — remains unsolved.
Source: Our World in Data
Figure 3
Progress, or the illusion of it?
Book Figure 4.1 — CO₂ and GDP growth in 21 advanced capitalist democracies since 1960
Since 1960, emissions in advanced capitalist democracies have grown more slowly than GDP — the textbook signal of "decoupling," and the evidence usually cited for green growth optimism. Read next to Figure 1, the figure shows that this decoupling is largely a production-side story — once emissions embedded in imported goods are counted the link between growth and emissions barely loosens. The two figures together make the book's "decoupling paradox" argument: progress that looks real from one angle and stalls from another.
Source: Own illustration based on data from Our World in Data
About the Authors
We're a team of political scientists based in Dublin, Berlin, Oxford and Paris.
Aidan Regan
University College Dublin
Aidan Regan is Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin, where he leads an ERC-funded project on corporate tax avoidance, wealth inequality, and democracy. His research spans comparative and international political economy, with a focus on housing, climate politics, social class, and the transformation of welfare states. He is a regular contributor to Irish and international media and writes a monthly column for The Business Post.
Hanna Schwander is Full Professor and Chair of Political Sociology and Social Policy at Humboldt University Berlin. Working at the intersection of comparative political economy and political sociology, her research explores how structural challenges — including welfare state transformation, labour market inequality, and climate change — shape political life. She is a founding member of the Progressive Politics Research Network and leads the Berlin Polarization Monitor.
Tim Vlandas is Professor of Comparative Political Economy and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, and an Associate Member of Nuffield College. His research examines the political determinants and consequences of social and economic policy in advanced capitalist democracies, and has been published in over 70 peer-reviewed articles and three books.
Cyril Benoît is a CNRS Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po in Paris. A unifying theme in his research is how political institutions shape economic outcomes — from regulatory design and pharmaceutical markets to the welfare–finance nexus and the political economy of the green transition. He teaches industrial policy, comparative politics, and public policy at Sciences Po's School of Public Affairs.
