What’s behind the Political Support for Green Welfare State Institutions?

In a context of rising inequalities and environmental challenges, there is an urgent need to disentangle the socioeconomic and political factors fostering the emergence of Green Welfare State institutions such as laws effectively improving redistribution and favouring the ecological transition. Arrangements over these two dimensions are entangled thus yielding rise to political coalitions. Our analysis shows that people’s green coalitions (i.e. red-green alliances) improve redistributive and environmental choices in line with the Green Welfare State challenges ahead. However, the greening of the financial elite ultimately leads to de facto alliances with the educated bourgeoisie (i.e. Jamaica coalitions) thus isolating working classes on the political chessboard: the subsequent decline of the socioeconomic consensus behind the redistributive Welfare State calls for urgent solutions to be found in both the political and policy spheres.