The Environmental Power Bloc: a Conceptual Framework

This paper introduces the concept of the Environmental Power Bloc to argue that environmental foreign policy and green industrial policies reflect the internal class struggles and hegemonic interests that shape a dependent state's environmental commitments. It is the specific configuration of the generally dominant bloc in a given conjuncture reflected in environmental stances, not as an autonomous bloc, but the environmental expression of the ruling power bloc in a dependent state. Although maintaining relative autonomy — that allows it to manage contradictions between different class interests — the state is the space where fractions of capitalist’s classes dispute hegemonic power, that is, where industrial capital, agribusiness, financial fractions, and emergent green capitalists vie for dominance. The conceptual framework proposed aims to situate each environmental power bloc posture historically, while exploring the interplay between capitalism, state power, and environmental governance, and highlighting the complexities of power dynamics in the era of ecological transition. The study integrates neo-Marxist and neo-Poulantzian perspectives to analyse how domestic class fractions permeated by international forces steer environmental foreign policy and green industrial policies and champions that these policies outlooks may vary across the political spectrum of positive (non-reformist and revolutionary) and negative (moderate obstructionist and obstructionist) environmental power stances vis-vis imperialism. This paper frames environmental governance within capitalist structures to critically analyse the power dynamics and contradictions of the ecological transition. It investigates how these forces determine its beneficiaries and casualties, and it proposes a conceptual framework to better understand the pathways through which dependent countries are forging ecologically and socially sustainable growth models.