The Evolutionary Political Economy of Climate Change: Utopia Competition

22 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2015

See all articles by Isabel Almudi

Isabel Almudi

University of Zaragoza

Francisco Fatas‐Villafranca

University of Zaragoza

Jason Potts

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technolog (RMIT University)

Date Written: December 14, 2015

Abstract

We present a new evolutionary political economy approach to the study of long-run dynamics of socio-economic evolution and change based on a co-evolutionary model of differential citizen contributions to competing ‘utopias’ – market, statism, and environmentalism. We model the transition to a sustainable economy as an (plausible) outcome of ‘utopia competition’ in which environmentalism manages to coexist with market, while state fundamentalism vanishes. Our simulation-based framework suggests that the contributions of citizens to the battle of ideas – both the distribution within a utopia, and the interaction between different utopias – are crucial factors in explaining the dynamics of the transition to a sustainable economy.

Keywords: Utopia, Sustainable transitions, Climate change, Citizens, Co-evolution, Evolutionary political economy

JEL Classification: B52, Q57

Suggested Citation

Almudi, Isabel and Fatas‐Villafranca, Francisco and Potts, Jason, The Evolutionary Political Economy of Climate Change: Utopia Competition (December 14, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2703593 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2703593

Isabel Almudi

University of Zaragoza ( email )

Gran Via 2
Zaragoza, 50005
Spain

Francisco Fatas‐Villafranca

University of Zaragoza

Zaragoza, 50005

Jason Potts (Contact Author)

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technolog (RMIT University) ( email )

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