Legitimacy, Development, and Green Transformation In the Global South: An Economic Sociology Perspective

Across much of the Global South, ambitious developmental and ecological transitions confront profound dilemmas of political legitimacy. Governments are expected to deliver development, welfare, and decarbonization under conditions of inequality, informality, fiscal constraint, and external dependence. How are developmental and green transitions legitimized? What social coalitions and narratives sustain—or undermine—their implementation?

These challenges are compounded by pressures on democratic governance and the reliance on technocratic economic management. While developmental and climate policies are often justified through expertise and efficiency, they frequently struggle to secure broad social legitimacy. Democratic governments, meanwhile, face powerful incentives to prioritize immediate welfare demands over longer-term structural transformation. The result is a new political dilemma: how can states pursue development and ecological transition while maintaining democratic legitimacy and social protection?

These tensions are further intensified by unequal integration into the global economy, renewed protectionism, and geo-economic competition. Currency vulnerabilities, balance-of-payments constraints, sovereign debt pressures, and dependence on foreign capital often limit the policy autonomy required for ambitious industrial and energy transitions. Developmental and green strategies are therefore shaped not only by domestic politics but also by international financial hierarchies, geopolitical rivalries, and shifting patterns of global production.

This session invites theoretical, comparative, and empirically grounded contributions examining the legitimacy of developmental policies and energy transitions in the Global South. We are particularly interested in how economic sociology can illuminate the social foundations of state capacity, developmental governance, business-state relations, climate politics, financial dependence, and processes of economic and ecological transformation.