Re-thinking the Fiscal and Monetary Political Economy of the Green State

Bailey, Dan (2020) Re-thinking the Fiscal and Monetary Political Economy of the Green State. New Political Economy, 25 (1). pp. 5-17. ISSN 1356-3467

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Abstract

Proponents of the Green State repudiate the historical antipathy to the state from many in the green movement and endorse the pragmatic usage of state capacity and legitimacy to realise environmental protection. This article offers a sympathetic critique of the Green State’s fiscal and monetary institutional design in order to refine the concept further. It will investigate an under-theorised contradiction in the political economy of the Green State; centring upon the operationalisation of an interventionist state, moving beyond economic growth, and deference to the ceteris paribus conventions of state financing. It is argued that the three cannot co-exist harmoniously, given the ramifications of moving beyond growth for the fiscal capacity of the state. Therefore, there is a need to go further than even Eckersley does in re-politicising and challenging capitalist conventions. Specifically, Eckersley’s own critical constructivist approach is invoked to interrogate the capitalist conventions that constitute the constraints surrounding state financing, such as the depoliticised production of money and the viability of debt relations.