Robyn Eckersley - The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty

1. Introduction

1.1. Why the Green State
• Two usual meanings: 1. Benevolent state, ecotopia; 2. Authoritarian state, ecological controls → division among environmentalists about the role and future of the nation-state in managing ecological problems
• Need for more fundamental normative theory, account of the basis of state legitimacy
• Legitimacy in the past: military and domestic security, regulations and enforcement of contracts; Nowadays: appeal to democracy - representative democracy
• Liberal democracy - against it the alternative normative accounts of the state are usually compared and evaluated
• Aim of the book: develop a political theory of the green state through critical debates about the changing role of the liberal democratic state
• Green state: not a liberal democratic state with green party government and environmental goals, but a democratic state whose regulatory ideals and democratic procedures are informed by ecological democracy rather than liberal democracy; postliberal state
• 18th and 19th century: bourgeoisie created the liberal democratic state
20th century: labour movement formed the social democratic state