Collective actors in Germany and their role in eco-social transformation

While climate crisis exacerbates inequalities, the reverse causal relationship also holds: inequality causes and fuels the climate crisis. Climate policy instruments not taking this interrelationship into account tend to deepen Inequalities, hence they appear to be ineffective in reducing emissions in the required scope. To break this vicious cycle, it seems necessary to address inequality and climate crisis in an integrated way. While research on eco-social policies as public policy instruments is emerging, the stakeholder pushing such policies in public debate as well as in the policy process remain under researched. The proposed paper aims to fill this gap on a national level empirically by answering three research questions: 1) How are different types of (non-state) actors positioned within the public debate on eco-social policies? 2) What issues do actors (not) address within the nexus of eco-social policies and how does this change? 3) Do certain types of actors treat issues differently in a systematic way? Following the dynamic and mesolevel-focused Theory of Fields of Fligstein and McAdams (2012) the paper conceptualizes stakeholders as organized groups operating with each other within a Strategic Action Field of eco-social policies. Differences in the institutional context and in the interests of different groups of actors as well as the resulting logics of actions are taken into account. Using a combination of computer-assisted text-analytic tools, namely Structural Topic Modelling and Sentiment Analysis, press releases of four different types of non-state actors on a national level (welfare organizations, environmental organizations, trade unions, social movements) are analyzed over a period of two years. The Contribution of the paper to the panel is twofold: First, it addresses the politics dimension on a national level by gaining insights on the role of different actors in eco-social transformation and by shedding light on interactions potential alliances. Second, on the policy dimension it elaborates main discussed areas in public communication on eco-social policies, showing content-related commonalities as well as lines of conflict.