Doughnut Economics

Abstract

With the concept of the doughnut economy, Kate Raworth has developed a framework that aims to fundamentally shift the focus of the climate debate: instead of GDP growth, the emphasis here is on socio-ecological well-being understood in a multidimensional way. The eponymous image of a double boundary—between minimum social standards and planetary carrying capacities—simultaneously highlights deficits and overshoots, offering an integrative framework that brings ecological stabilization and social security together.

This article reconstructs the context of the emergence and basic logic of the approach, analyzing its use in public and political debates as well as in concrete municipal applications. It describes how the doughnut can exert its influence in various ways: as a normative target, as a monitoring tool, and as a communicative framework. It is precisely this multi-faceted nature that explains its broad reception—but also carries the risk of harmonizing interpretations in which issues of distribution and power disappear behind seemingly neutral indicators.

Three potentially critical aspects of the doughnut economy are discussed in detail: first, an illusion of objectivity that obscures normative assumptions in the drawing of boundaries; second, a blindness to the governance structures that determine whose needs matter at all; and third, a structural silence regarding concrete paths of transformation and associated conflicts. The risk of purely symbolic use arises less from conceptual weaknesses than from the lack of political will to establish binding priorities, which are, however, necessarily linked to the concept’s participatory claim.