Utopia competition: a new approach to the micro-foundations of sustainability transitions

Isabel Almudi, Francisco Fatas-Villafranca and Jason Potts ()
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Jason Potts: RMIT University

Journal of Bioeconomics, 2017, vol. 19, issue 1, No 9, 165-185

Abstract: Abstract We present a new evolutionary political economy approach to the study of transition dynamics based on a co-evolutionary model of differential citizen contributions to competing ‘utopias’—market fundamentalism, socialism, and environmentalism. We model sustainability transitions as an outcome of ‘utopia competition’ in which environmentalism manages to coexist with the market, while socialism vanishes. Our simulation-based framework suggests that the individual economic contributions of citizens to the battle of ideas—both the distribution within a utopia, and the interaction between different utopias—are crucial but much overlooked micro-factors in explaining the dynamics of sustainability transitions.

Keywords: Utopia; Sustainability transitions; Idea competition; Climate change; Citizens; Co-evolution; Evolutionary political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10818-016-9239-2

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