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  <title>EconStor Collection:</title>
  <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/157766" />
  <subtitle />
  <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/157766</id>
  <updated>2026-04-28T10:22:21Z</updated>
  <dc:date>2026-04-28T10:22:21Z</dc:date>
  <entry>
    <title>Ordering Change: The Dynamics of Energy Transition and Capitalist Power</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/334358" />
    <author>
      <name>Levi, Tia Renata</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/334358</id>
    <updated>2026-01-08T06:35:51Z</updated>
    <published>2025-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Ordering Change: The Dynamics of Energy Transition and Capitalist Power
Authors: Levi, Tia Renata
Abstract: The study of energy transition is crucial to confronting the risks of climate change. However, it lacks a methodical approach to understanding relations of capitalist power, energy regime, and transitional dynamics. This study offers a systematic analysis of how business power shapes and controls socio-technical change under varying energy capture and power accumulation conditions. [***] The research’s novel analytical perspective differentiates between four ideal-types of socio-technical pathways (structural change, stagnation, innovation, transformation) and relates these to changes in the breadth and depth of energy capture (exergy and energy conversion efficiency, respectively), and in the dominant business strategies which lead differential capital accumulation. [***] I use a mixed-method research approach: the quantitative study of social power dynamics as they are represented in differential prices is complemented by qualitative content analysis. [***] I explore two case studies: the historical process of transition to fossil-fuels and industrial capitalism in 19th century Britain; and the German Energiewende – the contemporary energy transition process that combines a decarbonization of the German electricity system with a reorganisation of the sector’s ownership structure. To achieve a better understanding of socio-technical change pathways under capitalism, the undetermined Energiewende process is studied against the fulfilled transformative process of transition to fossil-fuels, in the context of their respective energy capture and differential accumulation conditions. [***] The quantitative analysis is based on new conceptual tools developed for this study. These tools integrate the differential analysis of physical data, used to study industrial change, with financial and accounting records data, used to study business processes. The German case study also includes an analysis of in-depth interviews with business representatives from the German electricity sector. [***] The results suggest that rather than growth in energy capture, it is the ability to control the socio-technical process which is essential to the reproduction of capitalist power. As shown in the analysis of both, admittedly very different, case studies, it was only when dominant business formations (or their precursors) acquired a mechanism through which to shape and control processes of socio-technical change that these could be leveraged in differential capital accumulation. [***] The British case study analysis traces a period which I term the energy-core’s seven good years of differential accumulation (1894-1900), during which, as rates of change in the transition to fossil-fuels began to decline, energy-intensive businesses began to supplement the control of output by early price-shaping mechanisms. [***] The Energiewende case study analysis shows how dominant electricity generation firms in Germany regained sectoral control by seizing the shrinking conventional generation capacity necessary to secure reliable electricity supply in the context of increasing variable (renewable) energy resource penetration. Thus, an implicit threat to future grid reliability gained German conventional electricity generation firms the leverage needed to increase differential prices and profits. This process coincides with spatial centralization, ownership concentration, and decreasing penetration rates of renewable energy resources in Germany. [***] The study sheds light on the relations between dominant business strategies, and the techno-physical attributes, scope, and pace of energy transition processes under capitalism.</summary>
    <dc:date>2025-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Degrowth and Capital: Assembling a Power-Centred Theory of Change</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/282201" />
    <author>
      <name>Vastenaekels, Julien</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/282201</id>
    <updated>2024-02-13T02:19:23Z</updated>
    <published>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Degrowth and Capital: Assembling a Power-Centred Theory of Change
Authors: Vastenaekels, Julien
Abstract: In the context of contemporary socio-environmental shifts, the concept of “degrowth” advocates for transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a well-being for all within planetary boundaries. This PhD thesis, positioned within degrowth studies, provides a processual, holistic and interdisciplinary exploration of the dynamics between degrowth transformations and capital accumulation, understood as an all-encompassing power process. *** I start by critically exploring the role of capital accumulation in the unfolding of degrowth transformations, highlighting some shortcomings of conventional views that predominantly see capital accumulation as a primarily production-oriented process. While, historically, the degrowth project has opposed economism, these perspectives tend to overlook the deep intertwinement between economics and politics in the intersection between degrowth transformations and capital accumulation. This thesis then considers the theory of “Capital as Power” (CasP), which dissolves the boundaries between economics and politics in the study of capital. Key implications of CasP for the unfolding of degrowth transformations are highlighted. Through this lens, I identify four distinct elements of dynamics, each represented as a causal loop diagram (CLD), capturing the complex relationship between degrowth transformations and the power processes of capital accumulation. Using insights from Social Practice Theory (SPT), I further investigate how degrowth-aligned practices, reforms, and ruptures may be inhibited by “strategic sabotage” processes that bolster capital accumulation, conceptualising four modes of sabotage, set into motion through two additional elements of dynamics. These six elements of dynamics are then assembled into a single CLD, which is used to explore four scenarios for the unfolding or marginalisation of degrowth transformations against the process of capital accumulation. *** In short, as the journey progresses, this thesis assembles a power-centred theory of change for degrowth against the process of capital accumulation. It emphasises the importance of understanding and navigating these power dynamics for those willing to move towards a degrowth society.</summary>
    <dc:date>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Follow the Money: The Political Economy of Petrodollar Accumulation and Recycling</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/284467" />
    <author>
      <name>Noble, Leonie</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/284467</id>
    <updated>2024-03-08T02:20:12Z</updated>
    <published>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Follow the Money: The Political Economy of Petrodollar Accumulation and Recycling
Authors: Noble, Leonie
Abstract: This thesis makes two unique contributions to the International Political Economy literature. It presents the first comprehensive, empirical investigation of petrodollar accumulation and recycling spanning the period 1980-2021. It also corrects the misconception that petrodollar recycling in the 1970s and 1980s involved the extension of loans to developing countries using fractional reserve banking and argues that these loans were the extension of created credit. Petrodollars garnered significant academic attention in the 1970s and 1980s when increased oil prices led to large influxes of petrodollars to oil-exporting states and widespread deficits and stagflation in oil-importing states. The recycling of these petrodollars led to increased militarisation in oil-exporting states, as well as increased national debts in oil-importing states which precipitated the developing world’s debt crisis. Between 1999 and 2021, oil prices have hit peaks higher than those reached in the 1970s and this has resulted in a similar transfer of petrodollars. This thesis uses a quantitative and qualitative methodology to explore the key role of petrodollars in the current global political economy, and to illustrate the impact they are likely to have in the future as resources deplete. Over the period 2004-2021, petrodollar accumulation averaged $1.27 trillion annually, with approximately 54.6 percent of this accumulated by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. These petrodollars predominantly flow back into the global economy through one of two channels: economic, through increased imports and domestic expenditure; or financial, through foreign investments and the purchase of foreign exchange reserves. These recycling methods will have lasting implications as they impact on which oil-importers’ deficits are financed and which are not, and which businesses/industries are funded and which are not. The significance of petrodollar accumulation and recycling is likely to further increase in the future. While advances are being made in alternative energy, oil’s unique characteristics and its embeddedness in the petrochemical, agriculture, and transportation sectors make it invaluable in a petro-market civilisation which is dependent upon transnational supply chains and large-scale agriculture. This makes it likely that high oil-consumption rates will continue, as will petrodollar accumulation, until we reach depletion. (Posted with the author's permission.)</summary>
    <dc:date>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Rethinking the Political Economy of Environmental Conflict: Lessons from the UK Fracking Controversy</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="https://hdl.handle.net/10419/297283" />
    <author>
      <name>Marshall, Adam Patrick</name>
    </author>
    <id>https://hdl.handle.net/10419/297283</id>
    <updated>2024-06-11T10:49:51Z</updated>
    <published>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</published>
    <summary type="text">Title: Rethinking the Political Economy of Environmental Conflict: Lessons from the UK Fracking Controversy
Authors: Marshall, Adam Patrick
Abstract: As governments and corporations have intensified their efforts to locate, extract, and capitalise oil, gas, and various other biophysical materials, the world has simultaneously witnessed a proliferation of social resistance to these efforts. While taking many forms, such resistance, and concomitant ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs), are invariably motivated by a diverse range of objections regarding the unequal distributions of power, harms, and benefits associated with these extractive endeavours. This thesis primarily addresses the EDC literature, an environmental justice activist orientated literature at the intersection of ecological economics and political ecology. Despite offering numerous insights regarding the socio-metabolic drivers of EDCs, this literature often tends towards problematic explanations regarding the role of capitalist power. Thus, while these explanations foreground questions of capitalist power, their core assumptions - especially the analytical distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘the economic’- serve to elide key aspects of capitalist power within this context. Moreover, they also tend to obscure an important counterpart to capitalist power of special relevance to the activists who mobilise for environmental justice within EDCs; namely, capitalist vulnerability. Consequently, this thesis enfolds existing EDC insights within a broader theoretical framework underpinned by the Capital as Power (CasP) approach to political economy. CasP’s overarching contribution is to enable researchers to map how intra-capitalist conflicts unfold through the reorganisation of social ecological relations. Mobilising this framework, and a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in the context of the UK fracking conflict (2010-2020), this thesis aims to explore, understand, and explain capitalist power and vulnerability in fracking conflicts (specifically) and EDCs (generally). Alongside other key findings, the inherent uncertainty surrounding future earnings and the divergent interests of competing capitalist coalitions are identified as key sources of capitalist vulnerability that environmental justice activists can exploit within EDCs. These findings highlight the analytical benefits of a CasP-driven theoretical framework for elucidating capitalist power and vulnerability in fracking conflicts and EDCs, not only for activists and academics, but also for policy makers, businesses, and other advocates for just transformations towards sustainability.</summary>
    <dc:date>2023-01-01T00:00:00Z</dc:date>
  </entry>
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