The introduction of a fuel tax-however small it was-highlighted the ways that important segments of French society feel their standards of living have slipped and future economic opportunities have dried up. These concerns were again on display during the Yellow Vest demonstrations that gripped France for over a year. People have grown increasingly skeptical of political institutions they perceive to prioritize financial interests over social resilience-thereby exacerbating the concentration of economic power and political decisionmaking in the hands of an unaccountable minority.

Beginning with the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged from it, deep unease turned into a profound democratic rift of confidence. Social contracts have been on increasingly fragile ground in democracies over the last decade. It is on the back of this relational change that different political redesigns can take place and give birth to new reflections on democratic engagement and resilience combined with climate ambitions. One thing the Doughnut model gets right is how economic relationships need to change as part of climate transitions. However, it still falls short of what is needed to democratically usher in systemic transitions that go beyond decarbonization. Their focus on economic remodeling is opening up new areas of debate about the transition. That’s why cities including Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Cambridge are experimenting with Kate Raworth’s Doughnut model-a new framework for regenerative development-in their efforts to tackle the climate crisis and ecological collapse. These processes must also better define what open societies should evolve toward. The transformations needed have to arise from new types of consultation and democratic processes that take stock of the changes already taking place as a result of climate transitions. There is no template available, nor should there be. With natural, financial, economic, and political shocks testing the bounds of democratic resilience, trust between citizens and the state needs to be reinvented along with a new paradigm proposition for political economies fit for an age of climate disruptions. The stakes are nothing short of a societal transformation for which alternative visions are needed and have yet to come about. But democratic reflections on the climate transition have generally been limited in scope and ambition, failing to rethink governance, economics, and social contracts beyond the single issue of energy substitution. States have resorted to ad hoc mechanisms, such as climate assemblies, to support climate transitions-with relative success.

Spurred by the rising costs of oil extraction and the urgency of decarbonization, volatile energy prices are becoming more common and social contracts increasingly stand on unstable ground. The climate transition is challenging the relationship between economics and politics in liberal democracies.

Donut economic model