Disciplining the Undisciplined? by Martin Brueckner Rochelle Spencer & Megan Paull

Author:Martin Brueckner, Rochelle Spencer & Megan Paull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

6 Conclusion

This chapter has undertaken a discussion of the problems associated with the promotion of Environmental Sustainability, Responsible Citizenship and Corporate Social Responsibility . While we have chosen deliberately not to provide a definitive approach regarding what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ politics in each case, we have discussed the difficult terrain these ideals face in terms of generating more positive, environmentally sound and just social outcomes. These difficulties revolve around the liberal-democratic approach to addressing the political imperative for order through the two dynamics that underpin social ordering. By situating the objectives of RC, ES and CSR in relation to pressuring and moulding in liberal-democracies we offer explanations for the limited extent to which these three collective objectives have been achieved in liberal-democracies, and especially Anglophone liberal-democracies, which might be thought to represent those in which (self-interested materialistic) individualism holds greatest sway. This is not to suggest that liberal-democracies are impervious to change. Our point is that achieving ES, RC and CSR in liberal democracies is difficult because liberal principles are characterised by resistance to the moulding and pressuring required to attain them.

Political cultures that privilege atomistic individualism will produce limited popular demand for the levels of moulding and pressuring necessary to achieve ES, RC and CSR . Even when these might be thought to necessary, they are unlikely to eventuate until citizens are moulded to demand public policies to promote and to place pressure on other citizens and corporations to participate in ES, RC and CSR . While this might be possible in autocratic polities, liberal-democracies (especially Anglophone liberal-democracies) are characterised by resistance to politically-directed moulding and pressuring. The processes through which they produce social order, then, make it hard to achieve ES and engender RC and CSR . A deeper shift in political culture in Anglophone liberal-democracies may be required to allow the level of politically directed moulding and pressuring necessary to achieve ES and engender RC and CSR . For political scientists in Anglophone liberal-democracies, like us, the crucial questions concern how such a shift in approach to social ordering will occur.

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