The green state

In part arising out of ecological modernization and risk society debates, some have recently attempted to formulate theories and analyses of the Green state as a total complex (Barry and Eckersley 2005; Dryzek etal.

2003; Eckersley 2004). They do so in a nicely complementary manner. Dryzek et al. engage in empirical analyses of four states looking at the ways they are being transformed by responses to environmental questions, while Eckersley asks more normative questions about what a green state might look like and interprets contemporary developments as creating the possibilities for this transformation in more general schematic terms. For both however, contemporary shifts in the ways states operates are suggestive of the possibilities for the development of what both call a ‘Green state’.

Dryzek etal. focus on four industrialized states - the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Germany. They look at how these states have responded to environmental concerns and what has conditioned the possibilities and constraints on their ‘greening’. They use the four cases to suggest a typology of state-civil society relations which shows which sorts of conditions are most propitious for the emergence of Green states. Their typology has two dimensions - whether relations between the state and civil society (and especially the environmental movement) are inclusive or exclusive, and whether such inclusion/exclusion is passive or active. While clearly ideal types, they suggest that the four countries they analyse correspond to the four possible types this generates. Thus the US is passively inclusive, Norway actively inclusive, Germany passively exclusive, and the UK (at least through to the early 1990s) actively exclusive.

They argue on the basis of this typology that the most likely state form for the emergence of strong ecologically modernizing states is the passiveexclusive form exemplified by Germany.

This is because the passive-exclusive form enables ideas - both substantive ideas about particular policies, but also broader shifts in culture and values - to filter to the state through popular pressure, but keeps a distinct public sphere outside the state where such ideas can emerge unconstrained, and also makes an element of an oppositional culture possible, enabling diverse strategies by environmental movements. In particular, what it makes potentially possible, is the attachment of the goals of environmental conservation as what they call the economic ‘core state imperative’ via ecological modernization (2003: 2). As they put it, ‘environmentalist interest in pollution control and conservation of material resources can be attached to the economic imperative via the idea of ecological modernization. Demands to protect the intrinsic value of natural systems cannot make this link’ (Dryzek etal. 2003: 161). However, they are clear that it is only by linking green politics to the legitimation (and not just economic) imperative of the state that more radical and democratic green goals can be articulated and possibly achieved (2003: 193). These findings seem to vindicate advocates of a strong version of ecological modernization, as they underline the symbiotic relationship between an open political culture and capacity for environmental policy innovation.

By contrast, in passively inclusive states like the United States, while this structure did enable much early environmental policy development, and made the US a leader in the field during the 1970s, since environmental movements had relatively easy access to policy-makers, from the 1970s onwards, there was little critical development within the movement. It also meant that other groups similarly had easy access to policy-makers and could in time resist further gains by environmentalists. At the other end, in actively inclusive states like Norway, where the state directly sponsors civil society groups, there is effectively no public sphere outside the state where new ideas can emerge.

And in actively exclusive states, such as Britain, there is often a vibrant public sphere, but no channels through which ideas emerging from it can reach the state.

Eckersley provides a broader argument concerning the potential development of Green states. Her intention is specifically to develop an immanent critique, focusing on those elements in actually existing, and emerging, practices of governance which have the potential to be transformed by Greens in the direction of sustainability. Her key points for our purposes are that the two central elements in statehood where transformation will enabling the greening of the state are sovereignty and democracy. Regarding the former, it is shifts in the way that states regard their responsibilities to those beyond their borders which are a condition of possibility of the greening of the state, since the conditions of ecology mean that purely territorially based rule fails to generate policies and practices which deal adequately with its challenges. Regarding democracy, it is a radical reworking of democratic institutions and practices which will make possible the consideration of ecological concerns beyond the state’s territorial limits, but will also enable the development of ‘strong’ ecological modernization strategies. Her overall argument is well expressed in the beginning of her conclusion:

The anarchic state system, global capitalism, and the administrative state have served in different ways to inhibit the development of greener states and societies. In this book I have shown how three mutually informing counterdevelopments - environmental multilateralism, ecological modernization, and the emergence of green discursive designs - have emerged to moderate, restrain and in some cases transform the anti-ecological dynamics of these deeply embedded structures... This virtuous relationship, however, cannot be deepened without a move from liberal democracy to ecological democracy. (Eckersley 2004: 241)

The term ecological democracy is intended by Eckersley to refer to a form of democracy which differs from liberal democracy in two key respects.

First it rejects liberal democracy’s presumption of pre-existing autonomous individuals, whose preferences and interests are therefore unquestionable. Second, it is constituted as a ‘democracy of the affected’ rather than (or more precisely in addition to) a ‘democracy of membership’. ‘Thus, the regulative ideal or ambit claim of ecological democracy is that all those potentially affected by ecological risks ought to have some meaningful opportunity to participate, or be represented, in the determination of policies or decisions that may generate risks’ (Eckersley 2004: 243). This thus means both that deliberation is a key element in ecological democratic practice (undermining liberal democracy’s separation of public and private) and that territoriality is unimportant (as well as species or temporality, although these are not the focus of her analysis) in determining who should get to participate in decisions.

Combined, the analyses of Eckersley and Dryzek etal. provide powerful arguments which suggest that the ‘green anarchist’ position is over-stated; that while there is much which is clearly anti-ecological in contemporary state practice and structures, these should be regarded as historically contingent rather than structurally inherent features of statehood. In sustaining this claim regarding the greening of the state, two elements are key. The first is whether or not states can be treated as having no key features or roles, but simply as evolving complexes of institutions/power which develop specific functions in response to different historical exigencies or pressures. The second is whether different elements in the roles/functions of states are structurally consistent with sustainability/ecological democracy as a role/ function.

For Dryzek etal., for example, there is nothing structural about the nature of the state’s responsibility for economic growth, say, outside of the historically produced and sedimented nature of that responsibility.

Dryzek etal. start their account with a ‘brief history of the state’ (2003: 1-2) which runs through a narrative of state development which is familiar in historical sociology (Manny 1986; Dryzek etal. draw explicitly on Skocpol 1979). The first ‘core imperative’ of states was then to protect its territory from external attack, and contained three elements: ‘domestic order, survival and revenue imperatives’ (Dyzek etal. 2003: 1).

Dryzek etal. suggest that the transformations currently underway in response to mobilizations by environmental movements can be interpreted in terms of the development of an ecological function for states. Eckersley’s argument similarly depends on a similar narrative regarding the functions of states. Her ‘three core challenges’ - interstate anarchy, global capitalism, liberal democracy - correspond broadly to the three historically evolved functions of states outlined by Dryzek etal. Eckersley’s theoretical move, principally developed in her chapter on interstate anarchy (2004: Ch. 2) is in her turn to constructivism (in International Relations) to suggest that the image of international politics as a realm of unremitting competition and hostility between self-regarding sovereign states is only one of a number of possible ‘cultures of anarchy’ (cf. Goodin 1990; Litfin 1998).

The second question, however, is that even if it is the case that the various functions of states are historically constituted and potentially transformable, then are these various functions (potentially) consistent with each other and with an emerging function of sustainability. In other words, how plausible is it to suggest that the functions of the state in pursuing territorial security through military power, or economic growth, are consistent with sustainability? Eckersley’s response regarding the former is to suggest that they are not consistent, but that militarism is neither a necessary feature of the state, and is in decline because of economic interdependence, and in particular because of democratization.

Her response regarding the latter is more evasive. She is rightly critical of weak ecological modernization as it only focuses on technological change and the fostering of ‘environmental services and industries’ by states (2004: 70-7), and infers that it is economic growth which is the central weakness in this strategy, invoking the standard argument that growth outstrips the efficiency gains technology can effect (2004: 76). Hence the need for ‘strong’ ecological modernization, which involves the development of discursive/deliberate mechanisms; such mechanisms enable a reflection on and decision-making about ends rather than simply means. But in developing this, she has a less than clear answer to the question about the potential compatibility of growth and sustainability:

On the one hand, the green state would still be dependent on the wealth produced by private capital accumulation, via taxation, its programs and in this sense would still be a capitalist state. On the other, securing private capital accumulation would no longer be the defining feature or primary raison d’etre of the state. The state would be more reflective and market activity would be disciplined, and in some cases curtailed, by social and ecological norms. (Eckersley 2004: 83)

The question arises as to whether the two hands in this sentence can be regarded as compatible with each other; i.e., if the green state is dependent on capital for taxes, and capital is dependent on accumulation for profits (out of which taxes would be paid), then how viable is a strategy of limiting overall accumulation (rather than simply redirecting it, as in weak ecological modernization)? For many state theorists the responsibility of the state for accumulation in capitalist society is more fundamentally structured than this formula by Eckersley suggests (e.g. Jessop 1990; Harvey 1990; Hay 1994; Paterson 2000). This thus takes us back to the historical narrative concerning state functions - an alternative reading is the co-evolution of the capitalist social form (wage-labour, market competition, the primacy of private property) with the political form of the modern state (territoriality/ anarchy, constitutional government, the rule of law) and that the former sets certain conditions of operation for the latter.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Hay Colin, Lister Michael, Marsh David (eds.). The State: Theories and Issues. Palgrave,2005. — 336 p.. 2005

The green state

More on the topic The green state: