Policy makers’ perceptions of the social-ecologic transformation in Germany and the European Union

The interconnectedness of social and climate policy has relatively newly entered the scientific and political arena. In the past two years actors in social and climate policy-making have made progress in developing expertise and positions around the topic, integrated the topic into their institutional structure and presented first policy instrument suggestions. In the academic lit-erature, numerous typologies ordering different approaches towards the social-ecological transition are currently released (Adloff & Neckel, 2019; Mandelli, 2022; and others forthcom-ing). This article explores policy makers’ perceptions of the social-ecologic transformation in Germany and the European Union from a perspective of discursive institutionalism and offers a first stocktake of the policy field: which narratives are currently dominating and which per-spectives are consequently neglected. It is based on a critical discourse analysis of 20 semi-structured expert interviews in Germany and the European Union in the social and climate policy-making arena, including parliamentarians, ministerial bureaucrats and a spectrum of interest groups. The article locates the policy-makers’ perceptions within these scientific ty-pologies and reveals how aware policy-makers are of their own narratives in this spectrum. The paper further explores the more detailed nuances and differences across different stake-holders’ perceptions. It finds that the current dominant strategy is highly connected to a green growth paradigm, financing instruments and adaptation-focused. The paper thus offers a con-tribution to several of the special issue’s guiding questions regarding dominant discourses, how political and civil society actors position themselves towards the eco-social transfor-mation and which policy and reform proposals have been formulated.