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Gareth Fearn

The ‘Authoritarian Turn’ in Environmental Governance? Examining the (Re)politicisation of Shale Gas Fracking in the U.K.

My research focuses on a ‘political moment’ for environmental governance. It examines the case of shale gas fracking in the U.K. through discourse analysis and interviews, drawing on literature that characterises planning as ‘post-political’ and recent work on the (re)emergence of authoritarian tendencies in governance more generally. It seeks to understand how the anti-fracking movement has politicised the issue and the state response, as a basis for theorising if and how neoliberalism hegemony is being maintained over both planning and governance more generally.

Supervisors: Simin DavoudiAnthony Zito, Richard Davies