Sustainable Development as a Policy Telos: A New Approach to Political Problem-Solving
| Author | Yoram Levy,Marcel Wissenburg |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00508.x |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Sustainable Development as a Policy
Telos: A New Approach to Political
Problem-Solving
Yoram Levy and Marcel Wissenburg
University Radboud Nijmegen, The Netherlands
The world seems to be characterized by political pluralization (the emergence of ‘polities’ other
than the nation state) in addition to an already existing state of moral pluralism. This severely
complicates political attempts at problem-solving on, for example, a global scale. One of the most
stressing potential problems is the coexistence of mutually effacing or contradictory systems
of political norms. To tackle such problems, we argue that policy teloi – shared conceptions
giving direction to cooperative political ventures (particularly sustainable development) – can be
helpful. The conditions of success for policy teloi in the case of environmental sustainability are
investigated.
Political Pluralization and Policy Teloi
The role of the nation state in modern society is changing, or so it seems. More
and more, politics takes place in arenas other than the traditional sovereign nation
state. International organizations, institutions administrating international regimes,
international down to local systems of ‘governance’ in which the state often plays
the role of an equal partner (or even no role at all), a multitude of border-
crossing forms of regional cooperation, and extra-governmental political coopera-
tion, all seem to be gnawing away at the authority and power of the state. In
theoretical terms, in addition to processes of internationalization or globalization (both
political and economic), we can observe dehierarchization – a change in the mode
of governance of nation states from direction of, to cooperation with, international
actors, civil society or relatively autonomous ‘minority’ nations. Within the context
of multifunctional transnational organizations like the EU, we can also observe hor-
izontal synchronization between ministries with similar competences ‘against’ their
respective national governments. We will refer to these processes as instances
of political pluralization, the emergence of ‘polities’ other than the nation state
(Wissenburg, 1999). Note that political pluralization does not imply that the state
is losing any real power; it may even be increasing its influence. Power itself is not
the problem.
Political pluralization can be a source of efficiency and effectiveness when the
newly created institutions are appropriately designed, especially where complex,
border-crossing, sometimes literally global problems like sustainable development
(SD) are concerned. Yet new institutions have to operate amidst other, older insti-
tutions that all claim their own spheres and responsibilities – particularly the
sovereign nation state. The result may be what Hillel Steiner (1994) called
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 785–801
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
786 YORAM LEVY AND MARCEL WISSENBURG
incompossibility of rules – the coexistence of mutually effacing or contradictory
systems of political norms. Political pluralization may also bring loss of polity (frag-
mentation of our reference group, the polis) and loss of identification: the loyalties
of individuals and groups to different political entities may clash.
The phenomenon of political pluralization is of particular relevance to the ques-
tion of environmental politics and SD. It is a field where many of the potential
competitors of the state have found a niche, both within and across the borders of
societies. SD seems to provide either a reason for or cause of political pluralization,
or a reason for or cause of its apparent success. An extra reason for discussing SD
in the context of pluralization is that the defence of ecological interests seems to
require a commitment to a morally substantive goal. But the dominant model of
the state – liberal democracy – is predicated on a morally neutral state (Dobson,
1998), and the international scene is even less ideologically coherent – we might
call it a moral anarchy. In a morally and institutionally plural world, additional
institutional arrangements will be insufficient to deal with global problems; diverg-
ing normative conceptions of (among others) sustainability are likely to hamper
any environmental policy.
In this paper, we explore non-institutional solutions to this problem, particularly
the recent suggestion (Take, forthcoming; Schmidt, 1999; Wissenburg, 2001) that
a non-institutional solution exists in the form of policy teloi – shared conceptions
giving direction to cooperative political ventures (for example, the SD policy telos).
Policy teloi are of particular interest in any context where no single actor (partic-
ularly the nation state) can define the terms of debate or rule supreme – for
example, in the context of global environmental policies.
Contemporary political theory offers countless non-institutional solutions for
incompossibility and other problems that accompany political pluralization. The
creation of a new, effective and powerful Hobbesian sovereign is one; others orig-
inate in liberal attempts to find shared ethical foundations in a morally plural world
(for example, Rawls’s overlapping consensus). The solution we want to explore
here, however – policy teloi – seems to form a necessary condition for any success-
ful solution strategy. No solution in terms of new institutions or rules can be suc-
cessful, it seems, unless we agree on the interpretation of rules. We will use the term
‘policy telos’ for such a consensus-supporting idea, to indicate its quasi-Aristotelian
function: by leading and directing action, it causes its own realization – in a way,
its own existence (compare Rawls’s (1972) notion of a just society practically
‘inventing’ itself).
In what follows, we assume that political pluralization has resulted in an interna-
tional ‘society’ made up of institutional actors, though not in the context of a
Hobbesian anarchy. We assume that these actors have varying degrees of relative
autonomy and independence, varying degrees of claims to formal-legal soverz-
eignty, and moral, economic, legal and other ties of varying strength among one
another – states, NGOs, international and supranational organizations, mobile,
regional or global economic actors, and so on. Despite their claims to sovereignty
and despite the different capabilities they may have (alone or in combinations)
relative to other actors, we assume that states are actors with roughly equal power,
thus precluding the successful use of brute force but allowing limited use of bar-
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