SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE FOR DISCURSIVE DEMOCRACY?

Abstract

This paper explores how different collective types of actor (for example, business, policy or social movement representatives), with distinct systems of beliefs, category schemes and institutional projects, have become engaged in the production of a variety of symbolic representations of ‘sustainable development’. Sustainable development has become a shared concept amongst certain actors, allowing a minimum level of consensus to prevail. Minimum consensus has facilitated the cultivation of a more structured argumentation space with regard to this issue and the potential for attainment of a new level of discursivity between types of actor who now share common ground with respect to certain themes. However, actor differences become apparent when institutional logics which condition behavioural practice and mediate ongoing communicative interaction on sustainable development are studied more closely. Taken together, a number of factors can form a barrier to meaningful discursive exchange and limit the potential for ‘discursive’ democracy. This paper examines such factors as they relate to the themes of technological innovation, the principle of subsidiarity, and preferred means of environmental regulation.