Exploring 'Sustainable Justice': an Analysis of the Intersection of Social Justice and Sustainability in Italian Policy Discourse.

The relationship between social justice and sustainability is receiving increasing attention in the academic debate. Since 2015, following the UN's Agenda 2030 publication, the number of academic articles using both the terms "sustainability" and "justice" has quadrupled. However, several studies point to the limitations of global sustainability agendas and policies in promoting concrete action towards social justice. Sustainability can acquire a weak, strong, or very strong meaning, depending on how economic, environmental, and social resources are distributed. The analysis of political discourses on sustainability, particularly those addressing the distribution of these resources, provides valuable insights into the strength and nature of its meanings. This research aims to analyze ideas of social justice related to sustainability policies in Italy in order to understand the different connotations that "sustainable justice" acquires in a specific case study: The Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS), a country-level relevant knowledge network due to the influence that it has on policy framing at multiple scales, its active participation in the dissemination of the 2030 Agenda and the development of national and local sustainability policies. Political sociology analyzes how expert actors can influence policy framing through their discursive capacities, including on sustainability issues. The discursive neo-institutionalist approach allows for the identification of the normative (values) and cognitive ideas (pathways to political action) that these discourses can convey. The analysis took into account theories of degrowth and social justice, as well as studies on decolonization and environmental justice. The analysis was based on interviews and ASviS reports and was conducted using an interpretive approach that allowed the identification of four policy pathways - cognitive ideas - through which social justice can be achieved. The analysis shows that the idea of "sustainable justice" conveyed by ASviS tends to be limited to procedural justice pathways, moving away from "very strong sustainability."