The Collaborative Management of Sustained Unsustainability: On the Performance of Participatory Forms of Environmental Governance

Ingolfur Blühdorn and Michael Deflorian
Additional contact information
Ingolfur Blühdorn: Institute for Social Change and Sustainability (IGN), Vienna University for Economics and Business (WU), Welthandelsplatz 2, 1020 Vienna, Austria
Michael Deflorian: Institute for Social Change and Sustainability (IGN), Vienna University for Economics and Business (WU), Welthandelsplatz 2, 1020 Vienna, Austria

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: In modern democratic consumer societies, decentralized, participative, and consensus-oriented forms of multi-stakeholder governance are supplementing, and often replacing, conventional forms of state-centered environmental government. The engagement in all phases of the policy process of diverse social actors has become a hallmark of environmental good governance . This does not mean to say, however, that these modes of policy-making have proved particularly successful in resolving the widely debated multiple sustainability crisis. In fact, they have been found wanting in terms of their ability to respond to democratic needs and their capacity to resolve environmental problems. So why have these participatory forms of environmental governance become so prominent? What exactly is their appeal? What do they deliver? Exploring these questions from the perspective of eco-political and sociological theory, this article suggests that these forms of environmental governance represent a performative kind of eco-politics that helps liberal consumer societies to manage their inability and unwillingness to achieve the socio-ecological transformation that scientists and environmental activists say is urgently required. This reading of the prevailing policy approaches as the collaborative management of sustained unsustainability adds an important dimension to the understanding of environmental governance and contemporary eco-politics more generally.

Keywords: environmental governance; performance; politics of unsustainability; eco-political disability; simulative politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/4/1189/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:4:p:1189-:d:208601

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().