Framework for the case studies

This document introduces a case study framework that will be used in work package 3 of the “ToBe” project to explore drivers, barriers and outcomes of alternative growth initiatives in the Global North and the Global South, and how these dynamics contribute to change, and even transformation, of larger economic systems and practices. Our focus is on change from ‘business as usual’ to alternative economic systems.

We develop the case study framework around a set of themes derived from theories of change relevant to this field. The themes included are capitalist economic system and power, crisis as a driver for change, roles of different actors in driving or opposing change, and different strategies of change. An important question for the empirical cases is to explore how respondents perceive their capacity to introduce transformative change and what, in their view, supports or hinders their capacity, given the wider growth imperatives present in the wider economic system, other existing institutions and established decision-making processes, as well as power and resource imbalances that affect their room for manoeuvre.

To build our framework, we first briefly discuss a typology of alternative growth initiatives (e.g. Faccer et al., 2014; van den Bergh & Kallis, 2012) from green growth to post-development. In between green growth and post development, we position post-growth which makes a distinction between a-growth and de-growth positions emphasising growth-agnostic and growth-critical approaches that represent the central division in postgrowth thinking. To highlight some of the different stances, a-growth perspective takes for instance a ‘middle position’ between green growth and de-growth with regards to the question of whether staying within planetary boundaries can be combined with GDP growth. While green growth positions assume that it is possible to combine staying within planetary boundaries with GDP growth through decoupling (Jacobs, 2016), de-growth positions question that decoupling is possible based on lacking evidence of absolute decoupling at the global level and at the required speed (Haberl et al., 2020; Hickel & Kallis, 2020; Vogel & Hickel, 2023).

After introduction of typology of alternative growth initiatives, we move on to discuss different theories of change. Given that change is always shaped by context (Buch-Hansen & Nesterova, 2023), different lenses to understand change are necessary.  We also adopt a view of the role of technology and innovations stemming from a philosophical perspective that technology and innovation changes practices and routines (Likavčan & Scholz-Wäckerle, 2018). According to a Schumpeterian and Marxist ontology on economic development, technologies and innovations are shaped by societal values and they shape outcomes of production, redistribution, labour, and ultimately societal power relations, depending upon what type of activity, value creation, or societal ideological goals, for example, they have been designed to achieve or appropriated in use (Likavčan & Scholz-Wäckerle, 2018).