Ecological Modernisation as Cultural Politics

This chapter investigates some similar dynamics in contemporary environmental politics. It argues that environmental politics is now dominated by a discourse that might be labelled ecological modernisation. The chapter presents an outline of this policy- or regulation-orientated programme and gives a brief account of its history. Subsequently, it also presents three ideal-typical interpretations of what ecological modernisation is about. The interpretation of ecological modernisation as cultural politics takes the contextualisation of the practices of ecological modernisation one step further. The chapter then discusses the social dynamics of ecological modernisation. Extrapolating from the developments in some countries where ecological modernisation is now put into action, it tries to grasp the socio-political tendencies in the environmental domain in the years to come. The most widespread reading of the developments in environmental discourse interprets the course of events as a process of institutional learning and societal convergence.