‘Treasury Control’ and the British Environmental State: The Political Economy of Green Development Strategy in UK Central Government

Martin P.A. Craig

New Political Economy, 2020, vol. 25, issue 1, 30-45

Abstract: A growing literature uses the term ‘environmental state’ to refer to the new roles and institutional capacities that the modern capitalist state has acquired in relation to the environment and the unfolding ecological crisis. Green development strategies for the transformation of unsustainable accumulation models are an important qualitative and quantitative indicator of environmental statehood. Yet in Britain, the powers and policy priorities of H.M Treasury are proving a significant constraint on the articulation of such a strategy. I situate the Treasury's obstructive stance in the broader history of the internal politics of the British state, arguing that it reflects a long-standing tendency for the Treasury to assert a position of power vis-à-vis departmental rivals in ways that undermine their capacity to conduct interventionist industrial policies. I analyse the post-2008 context as a moment in which this regularity has re-asserted itself as the Treasury privileges a strategy of accumulation model repair over one of transformation. I illustrate the implications of this stance for the emerging British environmental state by examining two episodes: the containment and privatisation of the green investment bank, and recent incursions by the Treasury into energy policy. I conclude by considering the methodological and practical implications of the analysis.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1526269

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