The Environmental State

Summary

An environmental state is the constellation of public institutions that reshape production, consumption, and daily life to prevent long‑term ecological harm and secure “environmental welfare,” understood as the material and social conditions needed to sustain life. We review contributions to this understanding made by environmental historians, political theorists, and political scientists and argue that environmental sociologists have largely relegated the state to analytically secondary status, downstream of capitalist and market dynamics. Extending calls Fred Buttel made at the turn of the 21st century , we propose invigorating the sociological study of environmental states by drawing on political-sociological insights from welfare‑state theory to explain the provision of environmental rights and the distribution of environmental “goods” and “bads,” developmental‑state theory to help explain how and why states reorganize economic production in service of environmental welfare, world‑polity research and institutional theory more broadly to understand the causes and consequences of the diffusion of environmental regulatory and developmental institutions, and cultural sociology to reveal how meanings linked to “nature” structure environmental statecraft. We conclude with an FAQ section that answers several common inquires we have encountered about environmental states.