ABSTRACT
The previous chapter examined the ways in which theories emanating from the broad umbrella of economic liberalism have been transformed by the challenge of environmental problems and the question of sustainability. Rather than a conceptual transformation, though, it was shown that the engagement between liberals and the environment on economic terrain has resulted in an ‘accommodation’ of environmental problems through their redefinition as ‘economic’ problems’.1 This limits the effectiveness of liberal economic approaches because their focus on individual choice neglects the institutional configurations that support trading and organise human interaction with the natural environment.2 To be ecologically relevant it is necessary for liberal environmentalists to overcome their neglect of the ‘substantive economy’ or, as Lynch and Wells (1996: 10) put it, overcome their ‘political amnesia’ with regard to ‘the background of institutional and social arrangements which make . . . the foreground of individual choice . . . possible’. Redirecting the focus to this structural level draws attention to the normative and political character of sustainability which, in turn, raises the need to engage with social and political theory. This chapter will examine the responses to the ecological challenge emerging from liberal political theory which, although somewhat tentative, purport to offer an alternative to the economic strand that has dominated liberal engagement with environmentalism. Given the neo-liberal context, it is unsurprising that the dialogue between liberalism and environmentalism has been predominately shaped by ‘economics’. What is more surprising is the general neglect of environmental issues, until relatively recently, by theorists working in the political traditions of liberalism. During the ‘environmental decades’ of the post-boom period, economic liberals were in the ascendant. Liberal political theorists, meanwhile, were preoccupied
with the abstract moral principles underpinning liberal societies as debates on environmental problems developed somewhat ‘independently’ and predominately within the province of radical theory (Wissenburg 1998: 2). At the same time, the idea that environmentalism (ecocentric) and liberalism (anthropocentric) were incompatible became a well-accepted orthodoxy.3 However, beginning in the 1990s and gathering momentum over the subsequent decade, an embryonic literature oriented around political rather than economic theory emerged from within liberal ranks. These efforts have served to ‘soften’ the incompatibility thesis, but it remains in a modified form: ‘Environmentalism and liberalism are compatible, but ecologism and liberalism are not’4 (Dobson 2000: 165). The contemporary origins of the alternative ‘non-economic’ liberal engagement with the environment lay, in part, with Taylor’s (1992) claim that despite its anthropocentrism, modern liberal political thought may offer a basis upon which to establish arguments for conserving the environment.5 Taylor (1992: 279), following Singer (1988), challenged liberal theorists to begin a dialogue from which might develop a theoretical foundation for ‘protecting the environment and creating a sustainable society’. The ensuing literature, predominately from within the Rawlsian philosophical tradition, but occasionally signposting elements of a social liberalism, is exploratory in character and reflective of the diverse impulses within liberalism itself.6 Although belated, such theoretical experiments signal the flexibility or ‘structural tolerance’ of liberal ideology, being indicative of the conceptual reinterpretation and reconfiguration that is necessary when conditions (such as environmental crisis) weaken or threaten its ideological legitimacy (Freeden 1996: 177). It is therefore necessary to examine the extent to which these broader ‘intellectual resources’ might be deployed in creating an ‘ecological liberalism’ upon which to base alternatives to the sustainability framework offered up by economic liberalism (Dobson 2001: vii). These ‘alternative resources’ are often collapsed into a more generalised ‘welfare’ or ‘social’ liberalism by way of a juxtaposition with ‘classical’ or laissez-faire liberalism (cf. Wissenburg 2006: 23; Jones 1994a: 17). However, as with ‘economic liberalism’, there is diversity in the various non-laissez-faire positions that warrants careful attention. Of primary concern here is a major cleavage pointed to by de-Shalit (2000: 83) between the dominant contemporary American philosophical liberalism and a ‘social liberalism’ that is more praxis-oriented. The next chapter will explore the green potential of ‘social liberalism’, which has much in common with elements of environmentalism, yet has been generally neglected in contemporary scholarship. The current chapter will begin the consideration of ‘liberal alternatives’ by examining aspects of liberal political theory, and in particular, the greening of ‘political liberalism’, understood as that contemporary body of thought associated primarily, but not exclusively, with John Rawls.
