Atlas of political stances

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Reading the map

Both axes are adapted from those of the political scientist John Dryzek, in The Politics of the Earth (2022).

The horizontal axis is a continuum running from hardening to systemic transformation, by way of the status quo and then reform. The hardening is that of capitalist productivism, which makes ever-growing production and profit an end in itself, regardless of ecological limits. The status quo is therefore not the origin of the axis: the dashed line marks it, and to its left, the regime is hardened rather than changed.

The vertical axis sets, as Dryzek does, prosaic discourses against imaginative ones. The former deal with problems inside the political and economic frame of industrial society: the market, the administrative state, the growth imperative. The latter redefine that frame. This axis does not measure how deeply the balance of power is upended, which is read instead on the horizontal axis and on the scope of justice.

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A summary comparison. Click a stance's name to open its full card (ten analytical dimensions).
StanceFamily and number	In one sentenceAs stated from within	DimensionsDiagnosis, goals, means	Preferred solutionLevers used	Growth and technologyRegime of accumulation	Observed footholdsQuébec, Canada and beyond

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The dimensions in detail

Each card is situated on nine dimensions, in three stages: diagnosis, goals, means. Click a position to see its definition and the stances that share it. On the driver of change, a stance carries a main mode and, sometimes, one or two secondary modes. A tenth, experimental and marked Beta, places how each stance means to absorb shocks.

Index of key terms

The nature indicates whether the word is claimed by the actors or forged by research to describe them. The sign ≠ marks the terms that several stances use in incompatible senses.

Methodology

The framework

The backbone: Dryzek. The tool follows the fourth edition (2022) of his book. The atlas takes up Dryzek’s two axes: the more or less deep challenge to the industrial system, and the opposition between prosaic and imaginative discourses. Dryzek analyses discourses; the tool describes stances, each of which carries a discourse, but also actors, institutions and means.

Three discourses turned modes. All ten of Dryzek’s discourses are present, but not all on the map. Administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism and economic rationalism share a single cell in his book, environmental problem solving. He tells them apart not by his axes but by the agent the problem is handed to: the expert, the citizen, the market. Plotting them as three points on the map would make him say what he does not. They have therefore become modes of action, and the driver-of-change dimension says which stance borrows which.

Three complementary frameworks. They complete Dryzek without replacing him, none covering the whole spectrum. Ekberg et al. (2022) break obstruction into three levels: denial of the finding, deliberate delay, and unintended hindrance by well-meaning actors. The Just Transition Research Collaborative (JTRC, 2018) and Morena, Krause and Stevis (2020) gauge degrees of ambition in the just transition. Köhler et al. (2019) and Geels describe sociotechnical transitions.

The families

The families. They sort the stances by the depth of the change sought, from openly assumed obstruction to systemic transformation. They overlap with the JTRC’s continuum: status quo, managerial reform, structural reform, transformation. That continuum itself derives from the two-axis map of Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien (2005). Our families B and C belong mostly to the two kinds of reform, family E to structural reform and transformation. The JTRC notes that its transformative pole largely joins degrowth, and that the status quo can itself be held to be unjust.

One family is the exception: Warning on limits is defined by a diagnosis, not by a degree of radicality. The authoritarian drift used to form a sixth family. It has joined the modes of action: it rests on a means, coercion, and not on a doctrine. It can therefore graft itself onto almost any stance.

Authoritarian ecological modernization. It joins Reform of capitalism as a project of growth and industrial power under political direction, not simply a recourse to coercion. This classification is Pareto’s choice, not the Chinese regime’s name for its economy. It sits near reform because it maintains accumulation. The axes do not measure how democratic a government is: its authoritarian driver of change shows that. The card separates documented energy security objectives from Pareto’s critical reading, which sees above all a search for societal robustness.

Why so many stances. The transformative pole does not fit into a single box: degrowth, ecosocialism, decolonial justice and deep ecology diverge within it on substance. The atlas separates them to bring these disagreements out, as it already separates the variants of obstruction.

Dimensions and key terms

Dimensions to analyse the stances. The cross-cutting notions are not free-form labels: each position is defined once for all the cards. You see at a glance which stances share a position, even across families. The definitions are in The dimensions in detail. A card with no position on a dimension is information, not a gap: ecological redirection sets no level of production, obstructionism seeks no decision.

Locus of sovereignty. This dimension does not measure how democratic a decision is, which belongs to the driver of change: national planning can be democratic, and a commune can be run by local notables. No scale of organization is virtuous in itself. Jérôme Baschet rejects, moreover, “the overly regular image of a concentric nesting of ever-larger scales” (Baschet, 2026, our translation).

The six coding rules

Code the destination. We code the world aimed for, not the starting point or the strategy. A stance that uses the state to transfer power to communes is coded by the world it aims for.
Code the centre of gravity. Every stance allows for several levels. We code the one that holds the decisive levers.
Do not confuse it with the driver of change. The driver says by what mechanism a decision is made, sovereignty at what level. Self-governing a commons remains deliberative (Ostrom, 1990): it justifies “Confederated communal” only if the commune is the basic political unit of the world aimed for.
Local is not communal. A localism defined by the nation is coded “National”. Setting what is made “here” against what comes from “elsewhere” is nationalism, not relocalization (François, 2023).
Stances that contest or delay. We code the institutional order they defend or profit from, as their card describes it.
One source per coding. Each coding rests on a reference the card cites, shown under the dimension. A card that does not decide receives “Not determined”.

Range of answers. This dimension says how many of the major questions of social organization a stance answers itself: production, decision-making, distribution. It measures neither the depth of change, which the horizontal axis gives, nor the quality of a stance, nor its weight. The notion comes from Freeden (1998): a thin ideology grafts onto others to answer the rest, as nationalism or populism do.

Each coding rests on a reference the card cites. It is strong when the card and its reference state the same range, moderate when only one of them does or when the defence of an existing order has to be counted. A card that describes a practice rather than an order to aim for counts as a thin ideology: the practice grafts onto the existing order without answering the three questions itself.

Key terms. The lexicon is shared across the whole tool. Each term appears once and points to the stances that use it, which brings out overlaps, from ecological planning to the commons. It belongs to one of four natures: a current that calls itself by that name, a concept forged by research, a rallying cry claimed in public debate, or an instrument of public policy. The sign ≠ marks disputed terms, which stances use in incompatible senses. Their card says who uses them, and in what sense.

Writing the cards

Symmetry of treatment. Each stance is first stated as its proponents would defend it. Then come what it brings to the debate and what it is reproached for, with sources, including for the stances Pareto is close to. Among the modes of action, only the coercive drift is granted no contribution. Each card also asks the question its stance puts to the others: the teaching core of the tool.

Leading figures. Each card names an emblematic author or actor, chosen for clarity and because their role is documented. This is neither an official spokesperson, nor a summary of the person, nor a judgement upon them. Several of these figures have also defended positions foreign to the box in which they appear.

Political footholds. The parties mentioned illustrate tendencies, observed in platforms, votes and public statements. These are not fixed identities: a party often houses several stances, depending on the issue and the spokesperson. These attributions are dated and revisable. They should ideally rest on a documented survey, and they commit Pareto, not the authors cited.

The limits

What Dryzek’s grid does not capture. His frame is institutional first of all, and four criticisms recur. Political economy, Malm in particular, faults him for detaching discourses from material interests: inertia would come above all from the power of fossil capital. Feminist and decolonial readings note that neither gender, nor race, nor the colonial legacy structures his axes. Yet these determine who suffers what. For Blühdorn, the lock is normative and cultural: our societies know without acting. Gibson-Graham, lastly, fault any grid that measures the break with capitalism for making it the whole of the economy, when care, volunteering and the commons make up most of it. The tool’s dimensions answer these blind spots in part. Justice carries what the axes do not, the relationship to the living world the normative side, growth the material interest. And the driver of change gained a social movement, absent from Dryzek, whose three modes all act from above. Capitalocentrism remains an acknowledged blind spot: the families rank the stances by their distance from the regime in place.

Acknowledged limits. Every typology cuts up a continuum. The borders between neighbouring stances are porous, and their place on the map is indicative. The corpus remains dominated by Western sources, despite the inclusion of decolonial and Indigenous work. Finally, the atlas shows narratives, not their weight: each stance holds a point of the same size, whether it governs or remains marginal. Measuring that weight would require studying actors, their networks and their resources (Pühringer and Bäuerle, 2026). A narrative can exist among elected officials without yet carrying weight: members of the European Parliament defend post-growth, and it remains to be seen when their ideas will become policy (Kallis, Mastini and Zografos, 2023).

The atlas sorts responses to the crisis more than strategies for adapting to shocks. A tenth dimension, “Facing shocks”, fills that gap on a trial basis and is marked Beta. It partly overlaps the horizontal axis, the scope of justice and the driver of change, because research sees the same dividing lines in adaptation (Granberg and Glover, 2026). Several cards say nothing about shocks: that is information in itself.

Version notes

20261018

The dots on the map fill according to the range of answers: a quarter for a thin ideology, half for a partial programme, all of it for a societal project. The name of the dimension, in the legend, leads to its detail, where each dimension now carries a fold with its references.
Greenwashing is coded as a thin ideology on the range of answers, after Blühdorn (2007): a practice that simulates action to defuse demands for change, grafted onto the existing order. The rule now says so for any card that describes a practice rather than an order to aim for, and the dimension no longer shows “Not determined” on every card.
Green growth moves to the left of sustainable development and slightly lower, to (43, 33): its codings make it less transformative, with a framing limited to carbon, no scope of justice and a market driver. The “See also” line also points to the map of ecological thought by Bon Pote and Fracas.
The Relationship to the living world dimension states the two criteria that order it, after Bogert et al. (2022) and the IPBES values assessment (Pascual et al., 2023): does society stand outside the living world or is it part of it, and what grounds its value. Its definitions are rewritten accordingly, and Subject now requires humans to be members of the living world, not its guardians. Ecosocialism moves to Partner, its card making nature the setting of a social metabolism, and planetary stewardship to Constraint, its card governing thresholds through expertise.
In the Facing shocks dimension, Protect and Bounce back become a single position, Protect and restore: both took the prior state as their reference. Bounce back rested on sustainable development alone, which joins the merged position.
The tool is now called Atlas of political stances, subtitled “Locating political responses to the ecological crisis”. The word “compass”, which pointed to a heading and recalled voting-advice quizzes, is gone; the main view is now the map.
The glossary now reads in alphabetical order and says, under the entry “Stance”, how a stance differs from a discourse, Dryzek’s unit of analysis: a stance carries a discourse, but also actors, institutions, means and acts.
The introduction names the symptoms of the crisis rather than the institutions that establish them, and links each to its source. The marker before you go in spells out the IPCC and IPBES acronyms.
A dimension joins the goals, Range of answers: how many of the major questions of social organization a stance answers itself, production, decision-making and distribution. Three positions, thin ideology, partial programme and societal project, after Freeden (1998). Each coding names its source, its strength and its grounds. It was first called Breadth of the project, a name that read as the extent of change, which the horizontal axis already gives.
The map reads better on screen and on paper. A simplified legend, next to the colour choice, filters the stances of a family or a position in one click. On desktop, the map fits the screen. “Print the map” puts it on one landscape page, with its legend, its filters and the reference for citing it.

20261017

A ninth dimension, Facing shocks, enters on trial and is marked Beta: six positions, from denying to transforming, grounded in the literature on adaptation and resilience. Three cards remain not determined, and three codings are inferences.
The Facing shocks dimension can be discussed piece by piece: each coding states the strength of its support and what grounds it, each card that is not determined says why, and each position says where it comes from and which neighbour it differs from. A coding table and a link to the contact form invite comments.
Obstructionism gains a rhetorical device, conspiracy: the false news of Canada’s 2023 wildfires (Russill et al., 2024), and of Australia’s 2019–2020 bushfires (Weber et al., 2020).
Administrative rationalism gains Granberg and Glover’s (2026) critique of technocratic closure, which the methodology cites for adaptation.
The term Robustness joins the index, after Olivier Hamant, and is marked disputed: authoritarian ecological modernization uses it for a country’s security, Hamant against performance. Collapsology gains his critique of collapse.
Stance 9 is now called Planetary stewardship, after Steffen et al. (2011). The planetary boundaries are a finding that nine stances share; the card now carries what this one concludes from it: governing by thresholds, at the global scale and through expertise. Biermann and Kim (2020) join its criticisms.
The fossil obstructionism and greenwashing cards no longer show a raw tag in their problem framing.
The term Fossil fascism is now also attached to fossil obstructionism, whose card now uses it. Its definition follows Conversi, Karkour and Enguer (2026), and it is marked disputed.
The fossil obstructionism card no longer cites Dryzek’s (2022) gray radicalism twice in its academic frame.

20261016

On phones, an “Enlarge the compass” button replaces full screen: the compass widens within its frame and is explored by finger. In full screen, pulling down no longer reloads the page in Chrome for Android.
The “Reading the compass” note introduces John Dryzek before citing him: both axes are adapted from his.
The methodology reads in five groups: the framework, the families, dimensions and key terms, writing the cards, the limits. The JTRC continuum joins the families, and the six coding rules for the locus of sovereignty move into a sub-fold.
The backbone of the methodology says why the tool speaks of stances rather than discourses: a stance carries a discourse, but also actors, institutions and means.
A “See also” line follows the introduction and links to the systems map of societal determinants and to the timeline. It replaces a fourth illustrated line that read as one more idea.
The marker before you go in now lives in a closed fold, whose summary keeps the gist: scientific findings are not stances.

20261015

The methodology opens with its backbone, Dryzek’s two axes, then the three frameworks that complete it and the dimensions. The introduction no longer names his book. It fits on three illustrated lines: the crisis’s established symptoms, its unclear and contested social diagnosis, the tool.
The administrative mode counts the glass ceiling of Hausknost (2019) among its criticisms, and the social movement the role of conflicts according to Pichler (2023) among its contributions.
The term Transition gives the distinction drawn by Eckersley (2020) between transition and transformation. Kallis, Mastini and Zografos are now cited as 2023, the year they appeared online.
Card 11 is now called Socio-ecological transformation, as is its index entry, which gives the French term in brackets. The French version keeps transition socioécologique.
One more limit is acknowledged: the compass shows narratives, not their weight (Pühringer and Bäuerle, 2026).
The Socio-ecological transformation entry gives its four definitions in full before commenting on them. The fourth is that of Pühringer and Bäuerle (2026); Brand et al. (2021) add societal boundaries.
Two terms enter the index: Imperial mode of living, after Brand and Wissen (2017), and Social metabolism, with the Vienna school. Cascading risks now defines the polycrisis (Lawrence et al., 2024).
A term now opens from a link: the home page thus points to the four definitions of socio-ecological transformation.

20261014

Seven terms enter the index. Climate obstruction and discourses of delay give families A and B their typologies, that of Ekberg et al. (2022) and that of Lamb et al. (2020), as lists.
Regulatory capture and social acceptability are the first disputed terms of those two families. Productivism names the regime that the left side of the compass hardens, and ecological economics the field behind the limits and degrowth stances.
Rebound effect enters with the Jevons paradox, also as a disputed term: green growth and degrowth do not draw the same lesson from it.
Low technology is now also attached to degrowth, with Bihouix (2014).
A term is now attached only to a card whose text uses it. Thirteen attachments did not: ten are anchored by a few words added to their card, three are removed (low technology from redirection, the commons, just transition).
The dispute on the commons now names the socio-ecological transition, which uses the word, rather than ecosocialism, which does not.

20261009

The scales are now called dimensions throughout the tool, and fall into three stages: diagnosis, goals, means.
Two dimensions renamed: Scope of justice, formerly the place of justice, and Driver of change, formerly the mode of action. The six cards keep the name modes of action.
The introduction names the tool’s starting point, John Dryzek’s The Politics of the Earth.

20260921

A new ordered scale, Locus of sovereignty: five positions, from Global to Confederated communal. It places the level at which structuring decisions are made in the world aimed for, whereas the mode of action says by what mechanism decisions are made. It is ordered by extent, not by commitment: its single-hue gradient ranks nothing.
Six coding rules added to the methodology. Each sovereignty coding cites a reference from its card, shown under the scale.
A new stance: Bookchin’s ecological communalism, in the Systemic change family. It enters after a profile test: at least two scales apart from every stance, degrowth and collapsology being the closest. Seventeen stances, five families, six modes, eight scales.
Bookchin’s current and Durand Folco’s municipalism leave the socio-ecological transition card for the communalism card.
Lexicon: communalism, confederalism, subsidiarity, polycentrism, bioregionalism and localism, the last marked as disputed. Eleven references added.
The build check now refuses two stances with the same profile on every ordered scale, flags those that differ on a single scale, and requires a reference for each sovereignty coding.
A dashed line marks the status quo on the compass, headed “← hardening · change →”. The left pole of the horizontal axis is now called “Hardening” rather than “Regression”, to match the line. Prometheanism now reads on the hardening side, through less state and the refusal of binding standards: its badge moves from “Status quo” to “Hardening”.
“Political ecology” enters the lexicon, attached to decolonial ecology and ecosocialism. The name stays in English in both languages, so that it is not confused with écologie politique in the French sense.
Card 16 is now called Biotic consciousness, without “and the rights of nature”, which are one of its instruments rather than its worldview. Its frame names ecocentrism and the land ethic, and its sentence Leopold’s gesture.
“Rights of nature” becomes a disputed term, also attached to decolonial ecology, with Tănăsescu (2022). Three references added.

20260916

Secondary modes: a stance’s main mode still colours its dot and drives the filters. Eight of them combine one or two others, each backed by a reference from their card.
The deliberative mode now includes self-governance of a common resource, which the democratic pragmatism card already described with Ostrom (1990).
Three stances recoded under this rule: collapsology stays deliberative, degrowth stays planned with a deliberative secondary mode, biotic consciousness remains undetermined. No mode is added.
Card 11 becomes Socio-ecological transition: planning is a mode of action, which degrowth and ecosocialism also carry. The card takes on the strong reading of the term.
“Ecological transition” is now also linked to socio-ecological transition, with a broader dispute and a note under the table.
“Climate transition” enters the lexicon as a disputed rallying cry.
“Ecofeminism” is linked to degrowth, ecosocialism and decolonial ecology, and its dispute names the debate over essentialism.
“Libertarian municipalism” enters the lexicon. Five references added.
The build check now also covers secondary modes: one or two per stance, distinct from the main one, backed by a reference the card cites.

20260914

Authoritarian ecological modernization joins Reform of capitalism: sixteen stances, five families, six modes.
An explicit authoritarian mode of action distinguishes state-led modernization from authoritarianism of limits.
Critique of the priority given to societal robustness and energy security in the face of imported oil vulnerabilities; five references added.

20260911

Administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism, economic rationalism and the state of emergency leave the compass for a modes of action section: they say who takes the decision and by what instrument, not which world to aim for. Dryzek places the first three in a single cell.
A seventh scale, Mode of action, the only unordered one: five positions, assigned to each of the fifteen stances, and a compass colouring that shows them.
Two modes added to Dryzek's trio, none of which acts from below: democratic planning (Durand and Keucheyan, 2024) and the social movement. Without them the transformative pole would have no mode of its own.
A new stance: ecological redirection (Monnin, Bonnet and Landivar, 2021), the only one asking what must be closed and who inherits the negative commons.
The Point of vigilance family is withdrawn, its single member having joined the modes of action. Five families, fifteen stances, six modes.
“Ecological bifurcation” enters the lexicon as a disputed rallying cry rather than as a stance: placed on the two axes it lands on existing stances, and its three lineages do not agree.
A stance's number is no longer a key: the tables are indexed by identifier, and renumbering can no longer shift a profile in silence.
A new build check: bibliography and lexicon cited and defined on both sides, every position carried by at least one stance, and the three tables covering exactly the cards.
The count of terms is written by the script rather than kept by hand.

20260812

From 6 to 18 stances; the transformative pole, until then a single box, is differentiated.
Addition of the families Warning on limits and Point of vigilance (state of emergency and authoritarianism of limits).
Addition, for each stance, of a “contributions / criticisms” block and of a question addressed to the other stances.
Addition of a two-axis compass, full-text search and filters by family; the table no longer requires full screen.
References assigned stance by stance; bibliography brought to more than seventy entries.
Party attributions grouped, dated and explicitly presented as revisable tendencies.
Shift from Dryzek 2013 (3rd ed.) to 2022 (4th ed.): the stance Fossil obstructionism is attached to “gray radicalism”, a discourse added by Dryzek in that edition.
Family A renamed Contesting the problem : it brings together the refusal of the diagnosis in its two forms, active denial and the refusal of limits, which the word “obstructionism” conflated. Prometheanism accordingly moves into the status quo band, since it does not campaign to undo existing policy.
A fifth position, Relativized , added to the crisis-framing scale, between Denied and Carbon-centred. No stance now shares its conceptual profile with another.
Families anchored to the continuum of the Just Transition Research Collaborative (2018) and to Hopwood, Mellor and O'Brien (2005).
An unstable reference on carbon populism replaced by Ekberg et al. (2022) and their three-level typology of obstruction.
A shared lexicon of 81 de-duplicated terms, sorted into four natures, all defined, with 9 terms flagged as disputed and an alphabetical index.
The 84 free-form labels replaced by a controlled vocabulary of six scales and some twenty concepts, each defined, clickable and filterable; addition of a glossary and of compass colouring by concept.
Addition of a leading figure per stance; the compass's horizontal axis extended leftward to distinguish regression from the status quo; the stance's name shown on hovering a dot.

20260629

New title; the family “Soft obstruction” renamed “Structural delay”.
The Liberal Party of Canada moved to structural delay; addition of carbon populism and of the glossary.

Full bibliography

Theoretical framing: environmental discourse analysis (how actors build and set against one another their narratives about the crisis), political economy (underlying power relations and economic interests) and political ecology (ecology, power and justice in socio-environmental conflicts).