The governance of unsustainability: ecology and democracy after the post-democratic turn

Abstract

Starting from the diagnosis of a profound reconfiguration since the second half of the 1980s of the normative foundations of contemporary eco-political discourses, the theory of post-ecologist politics has conceptualised eco-politics in advanced modern consumer societies as the politics of unsustainability. How the politics of unsustainability is organised and executed in practical terms is explored and the theory of post-ecologist politics is extended to suggest that, in the wake of a modernisation-induced post-democratic turn, democratic values and the innovative modes of decentralised, participatory government which, up to the present, are widely hailed as the key towards a genuinely legitimate, effective and efficient environmental policy are metamorphosing into tools for managing the condition of sustained ecological and social unsustainability. Analysis of this governance of unsustainability reveals a new twist in the notoriously difficult relationship between democracy and ecology.

Keywords:

• post-ecologism
• post-democracy
• politics of unsustainability
• politics of simulation
• governance

Notes

1. Deviating from Foucault's understanding of the concept as techniques for the exercise of power (Foucault 1979), the term here denotes a set of culturally embedded social norms and patterns of thought that facilitate and justify specific modes of political organisation and conduct.

2. For a much more detailed analysis of this post-ecologist value- and culture-shift see, in particular, Blühdorn (2007a, 2011).

3. For a detailed discussion of social movements as ‘theme parks of radical action’ see Blühdorn (2006, 2007b).

4. For a comprehensive comparison of simulative politics to what is commonly referred to as symbolic politics see Blühdorn (2007a).

5. Governance is understood here as a form of political agenda-setting, decision-making and policy-implementation that fuses elements of traditional-style, state-centred government with the social movements’ new politics ideal of autonomous, grass-roots democratic self-rule.

6. This applies even to Athenian democracy which was based on very modernist values, even though they could not be categorised as such at the time.

7. For a more extensive elaboration of the distinction between Crouch's polemical weak notion of post-democracy and the emancipatory strong notion suggested here see Blühdorn (2013, ch.3).

8. The widespread critique of democratic deficits, vociferous demands for radical change and ostentatious promises of citizen empowerment may all be seen as contributing to the project of simulative democracy (cf. Blühdorn 2006, 2007b).