Organising environmental self‐regulation: Liberal governmentality and the pursuit of ecological modernisation in Europe

Abstract

It is widely believed that confrontation between business and environmental interests in Western Europe eased during the 1980s. Ecological modernisation, with its promise of re‐orienting technological innovation to reconcile economic development with environmental protection, was a key element in this shift, and its principles have been instrumental in shaping the recent turn to self‐regulation in European environmental policy. Yet ecological modernisation, like any major innovation project, involves both technical and political change, and it needs to be organised. Under the European Commission's Fifth Environmental Action Programme, obstacles to the adoption of clean technologies have not been tackled, and the promised inter‐relationship of management systems, product information, and price signals has not been delivered. The resulting under‐achievement of environmental performance targets is not just another case of implementation failure ‐ it threatens the survival of the discourse coalition on which political support for the strategy is founded.