All of the work presented in the 12 books and reports assembled here was completed before Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. In other words, the problems addressed by these studies predate Trump 2.0. In this fact one might see a silver lining in the dark clouds on the horizon: A second Trump administration could force hard looks and, possibly, hard choices on pressing problems we’ve repeatedly put off.
These books are aimed at academics and climate professionals. If you don’t fit into those categories, check out this book list to help you prepare.
The focus of the first three titles in this bookshelf is the function (and dysfunction) of the federal government. Historian Colleen Dunlavy dispels the myth that markets operate efficiently entirely on their own. Systems analyst Jennifer Pahlka starts from the premise that government can and should solve societal problems but argues that bureaucratic process often makes it all but impossible to produce the desired results. And this, political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum argue, has further fueled the new attacks on the administrative (or “deep”) state.
Second, new disputes over populism, free trade, and regulation have prompted new reflections on the relationship between government and the economy. Sociologist Liliana Doganova argues that policymakers need to rethink the “political technology” of discounting. Theorist Wolfgang Streeck defends a version of economic nationalism as a necessary bulwark for progressive democracy. And the editors of “Deep Transformations” make the case for abandoning the growth model of economics altogether.
Third, because political action on the first two problems will require new levels of citizen engagement, we need to recognize that governments around the world have adopted, officially and unofficially, harsher measures against nonviolent protest. Reports from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, CIVICUS, and the School of Policy Studies at the University of Bristol detail these developments and their consequences.
Finally, the results of the 2024 election made clear that the proponents of aggressive climate action failed to make their case, or even try to make their case, to groups thought to be sympathetic to the cause – or even to groups directly impacted by the warming climate. While not focused on communicating climate change, the last three books address the need and the challenge of bridging the nation’s political divides. But here the very real problem dis/misinformation presents a difficult wrinkle. How can we call out dis/misinformation without deepening the divides we’re trying to bridge?
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.
Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. Into a Manufacturing Powerhouse by Colleen A. Dunlavy (Polity Books 2024, 240 pages, $29.95)
We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows, many everyday goods—from batteries to printer paper—are available in a finite number of “standard sizes.” What makes these sizes “standard” is an agreement among competing firms to work with the same limited dimensions. But how did these competing firms reach such collective agreements? Historian Colleen Dunlavy reveals that it was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes—orchestrated by the federal government—that competing firms were able to transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, 20th century American capitalism would have looked very different.
Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better by Jennifer Pahlka (Metropolitan Books 2023/2025, 336 pages, $19.99 paperback)
Just when we most need our government to work—to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats—it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, widening the gap between what we intend and what we get. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy without regard for the details of implementation. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today’s world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must consider what it would mean to not just update but truly recode American government.
Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum (Princeton University Press, 2024, 280 pages, $29.95)
In this unsettling book, political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum trace how ungoverning—the deliberate effort to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work—has become a malignant part of politics. Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that requires administration. The administrative state is made up of departments and agencies that conduct the essential business of government, from national defense and disaster response to implementing and enforcing public policies. Ungoverning chronicles the reactionary movement, which is not limited to Trump, that demands dismantling the administrative state. To resist this threat requires that we first recognize what ungoverning is and what it portends.
Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology by Liliana Doganova (Zoon Books 2024, 336 pages, $28.00)
Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of discounting. Discounting means valuing things through the flows of costs and benefits that they are likely to generate in the future, with these future flows being literally discounted as they are translated in the present. How have we come to think of the future, and of valuation, in such terms? Building on original research in the historical sociology of discounting, Doganova takes us to sites and moments in which discounting took shape and then argues for an understanding of discounting as a political technology, and of the future as a contested domain.
Taking Back Control? States and State Systems After Globalism by Wolfgang Streeck (Verso Books 2024, 416 pages, $34.95)
The ‘New World Order’ proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combination of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalization gave rise to political counter-movements that ultimately stopped the upward transfer of state authority. Exploring the possibility for states and the societies they govern to take back control over their collective fate, this book outlines a state system that allows for democratic governance within and peaceful cooperation between sovereign nation-states.
Deep Transformations: A Theory of Degrowth by Hubert Buch-Hansen, Max Koch and Iana Nesterova (University of Manchester Press 2024, 176 pages, $36.95 paperback, free download)
As a research field, social movement and political project, degrowth is a multifaceted phenomenon. It brings together a range of practices including alternative forms of living and a variety of initiatives in civil society, business and the state. Yet no comprehensive theory of degrowth transformations has so far been developed. Deep Transformations fills this gap. Drawing on insights from multiple fields of knowledge, it develops a theory of degrowth. The book offers a holistic perspective that brings into focus transformation processes on various scales and points to mechanisms that can facilitate degrowth. These include ecosocial policies, transformative initiatives in business and civil society and alternative modes of being in and relating to the world.
