2025 Theses Doctoral

Climate Action, Movements, and Political Change

Marwege, Rebecca Sophie

This dissertation brings critical theory and environmental political theory into dialogue with the political science of parties and sociology of movements to develop a movement-focused theory of political change in the context of the climate crisis. Focusing on new climate movements, such as Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement, it recenters an important discussion that has fallen out of political theory: It demonstrates not only that these movements represent creative innovators who bridge moral and structural demands, but also analyzes how they interact with parties and the state to translate these demands into political outcomes on the local, national and global level.

Contrary to the view that movements are being coopted if they interact with parties, the dissertation argues that specifically by engaging with parties and contesting counter-movements, movements work towards political change from within the existing political system. This way, climate movements facilitate a system-immanent critique of existing norms and institutions, and indicate ways out of the climate crisis. On the global level, movements similarly introduce an element of dynamic critique into an otherwise technocratic global discourse and underscore the importance of including a diverse set of voices in global climate policy processes.

The dissertation contends that climate movements therefore present a democratic and ecological necessity in facilitating critical reflection on what just global climate action should look like and engaging with political power to translate this influence into political outcomes.

Generally, the dissertation conceptualizes the political agency of movements as a way to overcome the conceptual gridlock between a “business-as-usual” approach which underestimates the existential threat of the climate crisis (Malm 2016), and radical status-quoism, which theorizes the need for radical change, but fails to analyze already-existing forms of political agency that could contribute to achieving this change. Instead, thinking through the emancipatory capacity of climate movements, the dissertation argues that these indicate the potential for an embedded utopianism which envisions an eco-emancipated future, but starts from within an existing democratic and institutional framework and engages with existing political actors to achieve it.