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Innen_Schneidewind_Leben_engl.indd 2 10.07.14 16:02
Uwe Schneidewind,
Angelika Zahrnt
The Politics of
Suffciency
Making it easier to live the Good Life
in cooperation with
Valentin Zahrnt
translated from the German
by Ray Cunningham
Innen_Schneidewind_Leben_engl.indd 3 10.07.14 16:02
Translator’s note:
One of the defning features of post-war German politics is ‘Ordnungspolitik’, a
key term in ordoliberal theory and in the operation of the ‘social market economy’.
There is no universally accepted standard term for this in English. To quote a
contemporary German economic theorist, it is ‘a term that can roughly be translated
as “Institutional Policy” or as “Constitutional Political Economics”. The term refers
to the legal and organizational means governments can use to infuence the
institutional framework of the economy. Within this framework, the economic actors
are free to pursue their own goals.’ (Roland Kirstein, in an article entitled ‘Law and
Economics in Germany’, published in 1999). In this book, I have generally translated
it — and associated terms such as ‘ordnungspolitischer Rahmen’ — using variations
on ‘institutional economic framework’ and ‘institutional political framework’,
depending on the emphasis in the original.
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7 Foreword
What this book is for
11 Introduction
The politics of suffciency — Why the Good Life
is a political issue
31 Chapter I
Framing — The prospects for a new institutional politics
49 Chapter II
Orienting — The right measures for time and space,
property and the market
69 Chapter III
Shaping — Mobility, Housing, Food: implementing policies
for the Good Life in practice
Innen_Schneidewind_Leben_engl.indd 5 10.07.14 16:02
111 Chapter IV
Enabling — Creating resources for suffciency through
employment, education, health and consumer policy
135 Chapter V
Civil society, business, and research as agents
of the politics of suffciency
157 Conclusion
How to contribute to the politics of suffciency
160 References and further reading
163 Acknowledgements
164 About the authors
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Foreword
What this book is for
This book is intended to provoke discussion. It out-
lines a new feld of politics, one which today’s politicians
still steer well clear of: the politics of ‘the Good Life’. What
we mean by this is policies which make it easier to practise
a sustainable lifestyle and thus to fulfl our global respon-
sibilities at the beginning of the 21st century. We call this
feld ‘the politics of suffciency’. So this is a political book.
It is at the same time a book based on scientifc re-
search and analysis, because the detailed confguration
of our consumption habits and lifestyles is infuenced by
many different cultural and institutional factors. It is im-
portant to understand this, and to recognise how many of
the hard-won achievements of modernity – from political
freedom and participation to social solidarity – are jeop-
ardised by the reduction of politics to a blinkered and ex-
clusive focus on the support of economic growth.
A book promoting policies to make it easier to live
the Good Life must do two things. Firstly, it must demon-
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Foreword What this book is for
strate that such policies are necessary; secondly, it must set
out how such a policy programme is to be implemented.
In other words, it has to show that the politics of suff-
ciency is feasible. It is often claimed in the wider debate
that neither of these preconditions can be met. On the frst,
the objection is that consumption and lifestyle habits are
purely individual choices, outside the domain of legitim-
ate state intervention, and that politics must therefore not
intrude. On the second, the argument is that a politics of
suffciency cannot be implemented in practice.
This book deals with both of these preconditions, or
claims of feasibility, and with the objections to them. It
demonstrates that a politics of the Good Life can be both
justifed and legitimated in modern free democratic societ-
ies – indeed, that it is an essential condition of such soci-
eties. The main section of the book sets out in detail how
such a politics can be implemented, organised along four
political dimensions.
At the same time, this book can only represent a be-
ginning, and that is its aim – a starting-point for a broad
discussion over the coming years. It is an invitation to join
the debate. It is addressed to a range of very different read-
ers: to people already practising lifestyles based on suff-
ciency, who want to link these with the political dimension
of their lives; to activists for sustainability, in communities,
in politics and in business, who are looking for ecological
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