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Decision-support tool Typology

Political stances compass

Faced with an ecological crisis whose findings are established, political responses diverge radically. This tool records them, places them and unpacks them, to see more clearly.

A marker before you go in.

The existence, human origin and severity of climate change (IPCC, 2023), like the collapse of biodiversity (IPBES, 2019), are not political stances: they are robust scientific findings.

What is legitimately contested is what to do about them: how fast, at what cost, for whom and towards what ends.

The first family, “Contesting the problem”, is treated here as a documented political phenomenon (Oreskes and Conway, 2010; Roberts et al., 2025), not as a defensible scientific position.

Glossary

Typology : a classification that distinguishes and organizes positions, actors and statements.

Stance : the overall position of a group of actors in the face of the crisis. These are ideal types in the sense of Max Weber, one of the founding figures of sociology: nobody coincides perfectly with a box, and the same actor may move between them depending on the issue, the audience or the moment.

Controversy (sociology) : a situation of public disagreement in which actors clash over the definition of a problem, its causes and its solutions, around contested facts, interests and values.

Frame of reference : a framework of meaning that organizes what is thinkable and legitimate.

Discourse (political science) : the set of concrete statements through which the crisis is defined, justified or contested.

Weak / strong sustainability : weak sustainability accepts that destroyed natural capital can be replaced by technical or financial capital; strong sustainability holds some elements of the living world to be non-substitutable (Boisvert et al., 2020).

How to use it
  • Compass : situates the 17 stances on two axes. Click a dot to open its card.
  • Cards : browse the stances as thumbnails, then open the ones that interest you.
  • Table : compare the structuring dimensions row by row.
  • Modes of action : six cards saying who takes the decision and by what instrument. They open from the “Mode of action” scale in the conceptual axes in detail, and combine with the stances rather than standing against them.
  • Search and filters : search for a concept, an author, an actor, an example; filter by family.
  • Inside an open card: Esc closes, ← and → move from one stance to the next.

Reading the compass

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 takes up Dryzek's distinction between prosaic discourses, which deal with problems inside the political and economic frame of industrial society, notably the market, the administrative state and the growth imperative, and imaginative discourses, which 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 justice scale.

No stance matches this search.

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 Key conceptsSustainability, living world, vision Preferred solutionLevers used Growth and technologyRegime of accumulation Observed footholdsQuébec, Canada and beyond

No stance matches this search.

Conceptual axes in detail

Each card is situated on eight scales. Click a position to see its definition and the stances that share it. On the first six, which are ordered, the colour runs from the least committed end towards the most committed; it indicates a position, not a judgement. The seventh, the locus of sovereignty, is ordered by extent, from global to communal: its single-hue gradient does not say that one scale is worth more than another. The eighth, for modes of action, is not ordered: its six hues differ from one another without ranking anything. A stance carries a main mode on it and, sometimes, one or two secondary modes.

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 families. They sort the stances by the depth of the change sought, from openly assumed obstruction to systemic transformation. 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 mode of action shows that. The card separates documented energy security objectives from Pareto’s critical reading, which sees above all a search for societal robustness.

A shared classification. These families overlap with the continuum of the Just Transition Research Collaborative (JTRC, 2018): 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.

The backbone: Dryzek. The tool follows the fourth edition (2022) of his book rather than the third. It adds a tenth discourse, gray radicalism. This gives scholarly grounding to our stance Fossil obstructionism. Dryzek keeps it apart from Prometheanism. The family that brings the two together is therefore called Contesting the problem: it refuses the diagnosis, without a shared programme of obstruction. The compass takes up Dryzek’s two axes: the more or less deep challenge to the industrial system, and the opposition between prosaic and imaginative discourses.

Three discourses turned modes. All ten of Dryzek’s discourses are present, but not all on the compass. 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 compass would make him say what he does not. They have therefore become modes of action, and the scale of the same name 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 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.

Why so many stances. The previous version finely divided the obstructionist pole but fitted the transformative pole into a single box. This masked deep disagreements between degrowth, ecosocialism, decolonial justice and deep ecology. Thirteen stances were added to bring them out.

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 scales answer these blind spots in part. The justice scale carries what the axes do not, the relationship to the living world the normative dimension, the growth scale the material interest. And the modes of action 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.

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.

Scales, not labels. 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, and what the colour says on each scale, are in Conceptual axes in detail. A card with no position on a scale is information, not a gap: ecological redirection sets no level of production, obstructionism seeks no decision.

Locus of sovereignty. This scale does not measure how democratic a decision is, which belongs to the mode of action: 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). Six rules guide the coding.

  1. 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.
  2. Code the centre of gravity. Every stance allows for several levels. We code the one that holds the decisive levers.
  3. Do not confuse it with the mode of action. The mode says by what mechanism a decision is made, sovereignty at what level. Self-governing a commons remains a deliberative mode (Ostrom, 1990): it justifies “Confederated communal” only if the commune is the basic political unit of the world aimed for.
  4. 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).
  5. Stances that contest or delay. We code the institutional order they defend or profit from, as their card describes it.
  6. One source per coding. Each coding rests on a reference the card cites, shown under the scale. A card that does not decide receives “Not determined”.

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.

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.

Acknowledged limits. Every typology cuts up a continuum. The borders between neighbouring stances are porous, and their place on the compass is indicative. The corpus remains dominated by Western sources, despite the inclusion of decolonial and Indigenous work.

Version notes

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).