Presentation short abstract

Effective communication strategies are a prerequisite for any impactful political project. We conducted more than 50 interviews with post-growth-minded public officials across Europe to understand which language and arguments they found most useful to foster post-growth approaches in their work.

Presentation long abstract

Effective communication strategies are a prerequisite for any impactful political project. While there has been some research on how post-growth approaches could be most effectively communicated to the public, we lack an understanding of which language and arguments are the most useful for public officials to contest growth dependencies in (urban) policymaking and support a post-growth agenda within political institutions. To help answer these questions, we have conducted more than 50 interviews and one workshop with civil servants, elected officials, and civil society actors across seven European countries.

Our preliminary results suggest that which framings and arguments are most useful depends on the context and on the position individuals hold. The local level is seen as more favorable to post-growth framings than higher governance scales due to a greater focus on practical problem solving. Within political institutions, interviewees suggest linking to widely shared challenges of resource and capacity constraints and focusing on redefining resilience and efficiency in non-growth-oriented ways. Introducing alternative measurement frameworks is further seen as a useful tool to argue for the priorization of post-growth aligned projects and policies. To support the broader post-growth agenda, interviewees suggest focusing on hopeful framings of post-growth societies rather than directly criticizing growth. Since data collection took place across governance scales, our findings could inform political campaigns and urban governments advancing post-growth approaches on the municipal scale, as well as local actors' communication strategies towards higher governance scales.