Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality,

Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

2005), 288 pp., $24 paper.

It is striking how many contemporary po-

litical calamities involve an explicit ecolog-

ical dimension; famines, wars fought over

minerals, economies plunged into reces-

sion by fuel costs, ‘‘scorched earth’’ cam-

paigns, civil struggles over what it means

to ‘‘own’’ land and who is entitled to such

ownership, and the social costs of climate

change are merely among the more ob-

vious of these. In light of such calamities,

a lesson is gradually dawning on theorists

of political life—namely, that nature is not

the indifferent background against which

we ‘‘do politics.’’ Rather, it is the very stuff

of our politics, domestic and international.

This growing realization circulates in con-

temporary intellectual circles in the form

of two theses. The first is of a practical and

cognitive character; it holds that the inter-

action of human systems (markets, mili-

tary and civilian bureaucracies, and

cultural practices, for example) and natu-

ral systems (biomes and ecosystems, for

example) generates political and ecological

problems of such staggering complexity

that our ordinary tools for cooperative

problem solving are rendered inadequate.

The second is of a more explicitly ethical

sort; it holds that the ways in which hu-

man beings dominate each other are tied

in fundamental respects to the ways in

which they dominate various aspects of

the natural environment. Both theses

are alarming, and there is good reason

to think that they will only grow in

importance.

The authors of Deliberative Environ-

mental Politics, Walter Baber and Robert

Bartlett, assume the challenge of defending

an aspirational vision of democratic poli-

tics that takes these theses to heart. In do-

ing so, they stake their hopes on the claim

that a nondominating democratic politics,

one that accords pride of place to social

practices in which citizens exchange rea-

sons with each other in arriving at political

decisions, will also be one that generates

sound environmental policy. As befits its

content, the form in which they argue

their case has an almost ‘‘ecological’’ qual-

ity about it, integrating considerations

from a wide range of scholarly and prac-

tical fields. Indeed, one of the book’s most

edifying features is its authors’ un-

apologetic commitment to disciplinary

and methodological ecumenism. The vi-

sion of democratic politics offered here is

one that integrates insights from environ-

mental ethics, cultural criticism, political

theory, political psychology, law, decision

theory, management theory, policy studies,

and international relations in a generous

and wide-ranging way that does not place

undue demands on nonspecialist readers.

What motivates Baber and Bartlett’s

ecumenical and aspirational approach to

democratic theory and practice is a diag-

nostic claim that the instrumental forms

of rationality characteristic of modern

states and markets are deficient for dealing

with the complexity of what they call the

‘‘environmental problematique’’ (p. 29),

the interrelated ecological-political crises

that beset us today. An adequate response

to this problematique, they contend, re-

quires the practice of a distinctively ‘‘eco-

logical rationality’’ (p. 12). While this

alternative ‘‘form of rationality’’ is not

recent books on ethics and international affairs 531

developed in much philosophical detail, its

main features (including, most signifi-

cantly, a public exchange of reasons about

ethical and ecological ends) are reasonably

clear, and welcome. In order to give some

structure to this alternative practice of

public reasoning, the authors advance

what is surely the book’s most important

scholarly proposal: the integration of the

previously disparate literatures on envi-

ronmental ethics and deliberative democ-

racy. Drawing on the writings of major

theorists of ‘‘deliberative’’ or ‘‘discursive’’

democracy, such as Jurgen Habermas,

John Rawls, Amy Gutmann, Dennis

Thompson, and James Bohman, Baber

and Bartlett present an account of envi-

ronmental decision making based on citi-

zens exchanging reasons with each other

rather than on the mere aggregation of

their preferences through social-choice

mechanisms. Their presentation has two

principal merits: one is their pluralism

(different models of deliberation are

proposed according to the character of the

environmental problem requiring a deci-

sion); and the other can be called their

‘‘dialectical’’ approach (the authors move

back and forth between theories of deliber-

ative democracy and actual deliberative

practices of environmental decision mak-

ing, mutually enriching our understand-

ings of each).

This pluralist and dialectical vision of

environmental deliberative democracy is

followed by considerable attention to the

details concerning its implementation. The

authors present an integrated program for

institutional change, combining elements

of mass politics, political decentralization,

administrative reform, nongovernmental

civic activism, and global governance. The

roles of experts and social movements—

key actors in environmental consciousness

raising—are also examined in detail, as

are the cognitive, social, and institutional

requirements of ‘‘environmental citizen-

ship’’ (p. 165). Their study concludes with

a qualified defense of modernity’s political

possibilities and a call for a ‘‘fraternal atti-

tude toward political discourse’’ (p. 235),

without which neither a politics based on

the exchange of reasons nor an ameliora-

tion of our ecological crises is possible.

By far this book’s greatest strengths are

methodological: it displays commitments

to interdisciplinarity and pluralism, an

avoidance of reductive explanatory strat-

egies, and a welcome integration of both

theoretical and practical considerations.

Its limitations, in turn, are largely those of

the body of political theory upon which

the authors are drawing. Like Rawls, Hab-

ermas, Gutmann, and Thompson, the au-

thors express a great deal of concern about

public discourse being undermined by

‘‘dogmatic’’ citizens who espouse ‘‘compre-

hensive doctrines’’ and are possessed of a

‘‘traditional’’ or ‘‘conventional’’ moral con-

sciousness. Readers familiar with the heavy

criticism these categories have generated

in contemporary political thought will be

justifiably concerned that Baber and Bar-

tlett commit themselves to epistemological

standards of public discourse that are un-

duly restrictive. Against the background of

these standards, certain sorts of citizens,

including a number of those committed to

environmental consciousness raising, ap-

pear as lacking in good faith and/or cogni-

tive capacity. Unfortunately, Baber and

Bartlett appear to fall under the spell of

such a picture at times; in the book’s pe-

nultimate chapter, they seem to underesti-

mate the deliberative potential of

ecofeminists, practitioners of deep ecology,

532 recent books on ethics and international affairs

and certain kinds of religious citizens. Such

moments detract somewhat from what is

otherwise a work characterized by consider-

able charity, both toward the scholars the

authors interpret and toward their fellow

citizens.

—IAN WARD

Princeton University

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