Manuscript available upon request.
A transition that stands a chance of limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius would bring rapid change to virtually all areas of life, segments of society, and sectors of production. In our estimation, the implications of this for climate politics are not adequately reflected in contemporary political science, which remains premised on a technocratic conception of climate politics. We formulate an instrumentalist critique of technocratic statecraft on the grounds that it lacks the political means to (a) address the incommensurability of alternative collective futures and (b) to conceptualize individual preferences and interests as malleable and endogenous to political projects. Various forms of statecraft possess these means to varying degrees—we map them by introducing a typology organized around the two dimensions of democracy and mobilization.