Change from within? The strategies used by public officials to advance post-growth approaches

Daniel W. O'Neill; Laura Angresius; Milena B\"uchs

arxiv: 2606.24439 · v1 · pith:ABSVPWN5new · submitted 2026-06-23 · 💰 econ.GN · q-fin.EC

Change from within? The strategies used by public officials to advance post-growth approaches

Laura Angresius , Milena B\"uchs , Daniel W. O'Neill This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-06-25 21:39 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💰 econ.GN q-fin.EC

keywords post-growthpublic officialscivil servantselected officialsstate capacitycivil societystrategiesEuropean governance

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The pith

Public officials promote post-growth approaches mainly by shaping discourses and forming coalitions rather than driving direct structural change.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper investigates how 41 post-growth-minded public officials across seven European countries navigate promoting post-growth ideas while working inside growth-oriented government institutions. Interviews show these officials focus on influencing thinking, decision processes, and policy implementation, with elected officials tending to speak out more directly than civil servants who act more indirectly. Both groups build coalitions inside and outside their institutions. The findings indicate that such efforts reveal the state's limited ability to advance post-growth transformations under the prevailing growth paradigm. The authors conclude that partnerships with civil society actors are key to developing collective agency and linking different types of post-growth strategies.

Core claim

Interviews with post-growth-minded civil servants and elected officials at local to supranational scales reveal that they seek to influence discourses and policy implementation through indirect means and internal-external coalitions, with elected officials feeling freer to be outspoken than civil servants; these patterns demonstrate the constrained capacity of the state to drive post-growth change within a growth-centric system and point to civil society cooperation as essential for building collective agency and integrating symbiotic and interstitial strategies.

What carries the argument

Strategies of post-growth-minded officials, including discourse influence, indirect policy work, and coalitions, differentiated by role (elected vs civil servant) and linked to symbiotic and interstitial approaches.

If this is right

Elected officials can pursue more outspoken promotion of post-growth than civil servants.
Both groups rely on coalitions with actors inside and outside government institutions.
The state has limited capacity to advance post-growth under the current growth paradigm.
Civil society cooperation builds collective agency for post-growth transformations.
Symbiotic and interstitial strategies interact more effectively through external partnerships.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

Advocates might achieve more by strengthening external networks than by focusing only on internal government roles.
Similar role-based constraints could limit state insiders in other areas like rapid decarbonization or equity reforms.
Comparative studies across countries with varying civil society strength could test whether such cooperation predicts actual policy shifts.
The patterns suggest post-growth transitions may require hybrid insider-outsider models rather than purely state-led ones.

Load-bearing premise

The self-identified post-growth-minded officials accurately described their real strategies and influence without selection bias or pressure to give socially desirable answers.

What would settle it

Finding that post-growth policies were enacted through direct state action without reliance on civil society coalitions or that the interviewed officials' accounts did not match observable policy outcomes.

read the original abstract

Current societies face interconnected environmental and social crises. Post-growth research argues that addressing these challenges requires a reorganization of society around the priorities of environmental sustainability, social equity, and human wellbeing over economic growth. While scholars highlight the state's potential role in enabling post-growth transformations through changes from within government institutions, post-growth-minded public officials face tensions between aspiring for radical changes of established structures while working within these structures. To understand how public officials across contexts navigate this tension, we ask: How do post-growth-minded public officials promote post-growth approaches in their work? How do the strategies differ between civil servants and elected officials? What do these strategies reveal about the capacity of the state to advance post-growth transformations? To answer these questions, we interviewed 41 post-growth-minded civil servants and elected officials. Interviews covered seven European countries and local to supranational governance scales. We find that public officials aim to influence thinking and discourses as well as decision-making processes and the implementation of policies. Overall, elected officials tend to feel that they can be more outspoken in their activities whereas civil servants are more inclined to promote post-growth approaches indirectly. Both groups pursue coalitions with various actors within and beyond their institutions. Public officials strategies underscore the limited capacity of the state to advance post-growth approaches under the current growth paradigm. We suggest that cooperation with civil society actors is central to build a sense of collective agency and to foster the interactions between symbiotic and interstitial strategies for post-growth transformations.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

The paper collects interview accounts from 41 post-growth-minded European officials on their tactics but its claims about state capacity limits rest on self-reports without clear verification steps.

read the letter

The main point is that this study interviewed 41 officials across seven European countries who see themselves as post-growth advocates. It describes how they try to shift discourse, influence decisions, and build coalitions, with elected officials reporting they can be more direct while civil servants stick to indirect routes.

What the paper actually adds is a side-by-side look at those two roles and some concrete examples of the workarounds people describe. That fills in practical detail on how post-growth ideas move inside institutions, which prior work has mostly treated at a higher level of abstraction.

The soft spot is the data foundation. The sample consists of people already identified as post-growth-minded, and the write-up gives no information on recruitment method, interview guide, coding process, or any cross-checks against documents or outcomes. Without those, the inference that these accounts show the state cannot advance post-growth on its own stays shaky. The officials could be highlighting external coalitions because that fits their view or because it is socially expected in the interview setting.

Readers working on sustainability policy or post-growth transitions will find the role comparison and the listed tactics useful as raw material. It is not a theory-building paper and does not claim to be. It deserves a serious referee because the topic is live and the data collection targets a relevant group, even though the methods section will need substantial tightening on transparency and bias checks before the conclusions can carry much weight.

Referee Report

2 major / 0 minor

Summary. The paper examines strategies employed by post-growth-minded public officials to advance post-growth approaches within government institutions. Drawing on interviews with 41 civil servants and elected officials across seven European countries and multiple governance scales, it identifies efforts to influence discourses, decision-making, and policy implementation. Elected officials are reported as more outspoken than civil servants, who favor indirect approaches; both groups form coalitions inside and outside institutions. The findings are interpreted as evidence of the state's limited capacity to advance post-growth under the prevailing growth paradigm, with a recommendation for greater cooperation with civil society to enable symbiotic and interstitial strategies.

Significance. If the interview accounts can be shown to reliably reflect actual constraints and tactics rather than selection or reporting artifacts, the work would contribute to debates on insider-driven institutional change in sustainability transitions. The distinction between civil servant and elected official strategies, and the emphasis on cross-sector coalitions, could inform both post-growth theory and practical advocacy. However, the absence of methodological transparency in the provided abstract limits assessment of whether these insights are robust enough to shift understanding of state capacity.

major comments (2)

[Abstract] Abstract: The central claim that 'public officials strategies underscore the limited capacity of the state to advance post-growth approaches under the current growth paradigm' rests on self-reported accounts from 41 selected 'post-growth-minded' officials. No information is supplied on recruitment method, definition of the key term, interview protocol, thematic analysis steps, or checks for social-desirability or selection bias, making it impossible to evaluate whether the data support the systemic inference rather than the views of a non-representative subset.
[Abstract] Abstract (comparative findings): The reported difference that 'elected officials tend to feel that they can be more outspoken... whereas civil servants are more inclined to promote post-growth approaches indirectly' is presented as a key result, yet without any description of how these orientations were elicited, coded, or validated (e.g., via member checking or comparison to non-post-growth officials), the distinction cannot be assessed for robustness or generalizability.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their detailed comments, which highlight the need for greater methodological transparency even within the constraints of an abstract. We address each point below and will revise the abstract to incorporate brief but explicit methodological details while preserving its overall length and focus.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: [Abstract] Abstract: The central claim that 'public officials strategies underscore the limited capacity of the state to advance post-growth approaches under the current growth paradigm' rests on self-reported accounts from 41 selected 'post-growth-minded' officials. No information is supplied on recruitment method, definition of the key term, interview protocol, thematic analysis steps, or checks for social-desirability or selection bias, making it impossible to evaluate whether the data support the systemic inference rather than the views of a non-representative subset.

Authors: The referee is correct that the submitted abstract omits these details. The full manuscript contains a dedicated Methods section (approximately 800 words) that specifies: (1) recruitment via purposive and snowball sampling through post-growth networks and professional contacts in seven European countries; (2) definition of 'post-growth-minded' as officials who explicitly reference post-growth concepts or self-identify with the literature during initial screening; (3) semi-structured interview protocol with open-ended questions on strategies, constraints, and role differences; (4) inductive thematic analysis in MAXQDA following Braun & Clarke steps with two coders and inter-coder reliability checks; and (5) reflexive discussion of positionality and social-desirability risks. To address the concern directly, we will insert a concise methods clause into the revised abstract (e.g., 'Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 41 officials recruited via snowball sampling...'). This will allow readers to assess the basis for the systemic inference without expanding the abstract beyond typical length limits. revision: yes
Referee: [Abstract] Abstract (comparative findings): The reported difference that 'elected officials tend to feel that they can be more outspoken... whereas civil servants are more inclined to promote post-growth approaches indirectly' is presented as a key result, yet without any description of how these orientations were elicited, coded, or validated (e.g., via member checking or comparison to non-post-growth officials), the distinction cannot be assessed for robustness or generalizability.

Authors: We agree that the abstract presents the civil-servant versus elected-official distinction without indicating its empirical grounding. In the full manuscript, this pattern emerged inductively from the thematic analysis of interview transcripts; it was not pre-hypothesized and was validated through within-case comparison and discussion of representative quotes. No member checking or comparison sample of non-post-growth officials was conducted, which is a limitation we already note in the Discussion. We will add a short clause to the revised abstract (e.g., 'These differences emerged from thematic coding of interview data...') to make the origin of the finding transparent. We do not claim generalizability beyond the sampled officials and will ensure the revised wording reflects this. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity; conclusions drawn from primary interview data without reduction to self-referential inputs.

full rationale

The paper derives its claims from thematic analysis of 41 semi-structured interviews with post-growth-minded officials across scales and countries. No equations, fitted parameters, or self-citation chains appear in the reported structure; the central inference (limited state capacity under growth paradigm) follows from direct reporting of interviewee strategies rather than any definitional equivalence, renamed empirical pattern, or load-bearing self-citation. The derivation is therefore self-contained against external benchmarks.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central claim rests on the validity of qualitative self-report data from a purposively selected group of officials; no free parameters or invented entities are introduced, but the domain assumption about interview reliability is load-bearing.

axioms (1)

domain assumption Self-reported strategies from selected post-growth-minded officials accurately capture their real activities and the state's overall capacity
The study draws conclusions about state limitations and strategy effectiveness directly from these interviews without external validation mentioned.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.1-grok · 5800 in / 1248 out tokens · 24210 ms · 2026-06-25T21:39:47.854308+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

5 extracted references · 5 canonical work pages

[1]

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[1] [1]

Abers, R. N. (2021). Institutions, Networks and Activism Inside the State: Women’s Health and Environmental Policy in Brazil. Critical Policy Studies, 15(3), 330–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2020.1860782 Akba, A. A. (2023). Non-reformist reforms and struggles over life, death, and democracy. Yale Law Journal, 132, 2497–2577. Althusser, L. (2020)....

work page doi:10.1080/19460171.2020.1860782 2021

[2] [2]

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599- 024-03065-7 Bhaskar, R. (1998). The Possibility of Naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences. Routledge. Blühdorn, I. (2020). The legitimation crisis of democracy: Emancipatory politics, the environmental state and the glass ceiling to socio-ecological transformation. Environmental Politics, 29...

work page doi:10.1057/s41599- 1998

[3] [3]

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02394-y Brand, U., & Wissen, M. (2017). Social-Ecological Transformation. In D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F . Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu, & R. A. Marston (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology (pp. 1–9). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/97811187...

work page doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02394-y 2017

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https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5272 Gough, I. (2017). Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing. Edward Elgar Publishing. Grcheva, L., & Vianello, M. (2025). Doughnut Economics in Local Governments: An Overview of Emerging Practice. Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, 4(2), 258–299. ...

work page doi:10.3138/jccpe-2025-0002 2017

[5] [5]

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-020-0534-y Meuser, M., & Nagel, U. (2009). Das Experteninterview—Konzeptionelle Grundlagen und methodische Anlage. In S. Pickel, G. Pickel, H.-J. Lauth, & D. Jahn (Eds.), Methoden der vergleichenden Politik- und Sozialwissenschaft (pp. 465–479). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-91826-6_23...

work page doi:10.1186/s12961-020-0534-y 2009