Description
This article contributes to the green state debate by presenting the first archival case study of the contradictions between climate and debt policy in the UK. I firstly contend that the existing literature lacks an adequate conceptualization of the state’s intimate relationship with global capitalism as constituted on unequal North-South economic relations, which I argue entails an additional barrier to climate action. Secondly, the literature’s epistemological and methodological shortcomings have meant an inability to locate policymakers as agents that actively reproduce this unequal world order. The article remedies these weaknesses by analysing newly released British governmental documents through a combination of Marxist approaches on debt relations and the North-South divide. I argue that the Thatcher government faced profound contradictions between Western debt policy objectives and environmental goals, and consistently eschewed climate measures such as ambitious debt-for-nature swaps. Indeed, those were seen to conflict with the successful advance of neoliberal reforms in the Global South, and more largely with the capitalist imperatives that permeate Western debt policy and North-South relations at large. These findings reveal Western state managers’ fundamental unwillingness to engage in international cooperation, which would challenge market discipline but would allow to tackle pressing climate and environmental issues.
