ABSTRACT
How do liberal democratic institutions respond to the plurality of environmental values? How do they ensure that policy decisions effectively refl ect the array of values held by citizens? One of the most favoured appraisal techniques within contemporary political institutions is cost-benefi t analysis (CBA), which provides a comparison of economic costs and benefi ts of proposed policies, programmes and projects. CBA appears to have a number of advantages as a decision rule; in particular it realises two principles that are highly valued within contemporary polities. First, it embodies the liberal democratic desire that decisions should be based on the aggregation of individuals’ preferences (Miller, 1992: 54; Phillips, 1995: 149). As David Pearce argues: ‘That human preferences should count and be “sovereign” is the fundamental value judgement of CBA’ (Pearce, 1998: 87). Second, the method of aggregation of preferences within CBA generates results that embody the principle of allocational or economic effi ciency. ‘Value for money’ is the guiding decision rule.
