The Climate Emergency, State Power, and the Expansion of Democratic Control

Abstract

The global climate emergency has presented a deep challenge to the capacities of states throughout the world, and this challenge has been one to which thus far most states have failed adequately to respond. At the same time, the problem of climate change has also presented a connected challenge to mainstream contemporary liberal egalitarian political philosophy, which has since its foundations in the work of Rawls and Dworkin, proceeded on an assumption of the centrality of market mechanisms in coordinating economic production. In this presentation I will explore how these two challenges are linked, and the implications of this connection for how we should think about the role of markets within plausible accounts of social justice. I will argue that illumination of these problems can come from a perhaps unexpected source, when we return to the work of George Orwell, and in particular his discussion of the relationship between state capacities in times of emergency, the need to subordinate markets to democratic purposes, and the significance of reducing forms of unequal political and financial power within democratic societies.

Martin O'Neill

Martin O'Neill is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of York. He works on issues of equality, democracy and economic justice. His research connects normative political theory with practical questions about institutions, public policy, and the organisation of economic life.

Martin is the co-author of The Case for Community Wealth Building (Polity Press, 2019), and the co-editor of Taxation: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). His work has appeared in leading journals including Philosophy & Public Affairs, Political Philosophy, and the Journal of Political Philosophy.

Before coming to York, Martin was Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester, and before that he was Research Fellow in Philosophy and Politics at St John's College, Cambridge. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (BA, BPhil) and at Harvard University (PhD).

He has acted as a consultant to organisations such as the International Labour Organization, and is a member of the Trustee Board of the Democracy Collaborative, a US-based 'think-do tank' which works on models for a more democratic economy. In 2026 he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.