Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2025
This chapter looks at the industrial state and the ways in which state strategies for managing the economy through industrial policy, tax and regulation have a significant bearing on sustainability transitions. It explores the purpose of the state in industrial society and what implications this has for the prospects of industrial transformation for sustainability, including the potential for shifts in the developmental state that has thus far been deployed to promote conventional economic growth. The final section of the chapter on transforming the industrial state explores the idea that the very dynamism, uncertainty, volatility and ostensibly competitive nature of global capitalism which currently drives unsustainability can also lead to openings for transformation and revival, creative construction following ‘creative destruction’ and the reconfiguring of alternatives.
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