While debates about the character and scope of liberal theory tend to be
carried out at a high level of abstraction, this abstraction is again often driven
by pragmatic concerns. These draw upon two related views to reinforce a
focus upon liberalism. TheWrst is a belief that ‘‘liberal democracy is... here
to stay’’ (Barry and Wissenburg 2001 , 1 ). Here, political realism is used as a
basis for testing the ability of liberalism to accommodate environmental
change, whereas those less convinced of liberalism’s longevity often charac-
terize it in more rigid but also potentially more fragile terms (e.g. Ophuls
1997 ; Kovel 2002 ).
A belief in the stability of ‘‘liberal-democratic’’ political institutions is often
conXated with the view that public opinion in Western societies also reXects
liberal norms. Thus, even in a book in which he makes an extended case for a
‘‘post-cosmopolitan’’ form of citizenship as necessary in our globalizing
age—a form he presents in stark contrast to a liberal one—Andrew Dobson
next turns to the question of how liberal citizens can be educated and
otherwise encouraged to address environmental concerns. In making this
turn, he seems to presume that whatever ought to be the case, speaking a
liberal idiom is necessary for social criticism to be persuasive in a democratic
context (Dobson 2003 , 159 – 60 ). By contrast, those who reject liberalism’s
compatibility with environmental politics often do so on the grounds that
liberalism circumscribes eVective democratic accountability, often by disem-
bedding the process of capital accumulation from institutions of social or
political control (e.g. Benton 1998 ).
In this way, diVering interpretations of the boundaries of liberal theory can
be a surrogate for disagreement about whether environmental concerns
resonate with public attitudes. The core question, once again, is centered
upon the feasibility of democratic environmental change. In the debate about
liberalism, however, questions about power, the role of and control over the
economy, and the limits imposed by a dominant discourse upon the popular
imagination all must become vital.
The debates over nature and liberalism among environmental thinkers
also speak to the quest to connect this work to a practical eVort to eVect
social change. This eVort to connect theory to practice is intimately related
to the question of the role of eVective social criticism itself. Some political
theorists have argued that the Weld as a whole has become so highly
specialized and inwardly oriented as to have severed any meaningful con-
nection with existential political practice (Gunnell 1993 ; Ball 1995 , 39 – 61 ;
Isaac 1995 ). Seemingly by deWnition, environmental political theory
political theory and the environment 785