Change from within? The strategies used by public officials to advance post-growth approaches

Current societies face interconnected environmental and social crises. Post-growth research argues that addressing these challenges requires a reorganization of society around the priorities of environmental sustainability, social equity, and human wellbeing over economic growth. While scholars highlight the state's potential role in enabling post-growth transformations through changes from within government institutions, post-growth-minded public officials face tensions between aspiring for radical changes of established structures while working within these structures. To understand how public officials across contexts navigate this tension, we ask: How do post-growth-minded public officials promote post-growth approaches in their work? How do the strategies differ between civil servants and elected officials? What do these strategies reveal about the capacity of the state to advance post-growth transformations? To answer these questions, we interviewed 41 post-growth-minded civil servants and elected officials. Interviews covered seven European countries and local to supranational governance scales. We find that public officials aim to influence thinking and discourses as well as decision-making processes and the implementation of policies. Overall, elected officials tend to feel that they can be more outspoken in their activities whereas civil servants are more inclined to promote post-growth approaches indirectly. Both groups pursue coalitions with various actors within and beyond their institutions. Public officials strategies underscore the limited capacity of the state to advance post-growth approaches under the current growth paradigm. We suggest that cooperation with civil society actors is central to build a sense of collective agency and to foster the interactions between symbiotic and interstitial strategies for post-growth transformations.