The Green State ─ Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty

What would constitute a definitively "green" state? In this important new book, RobynEckersley explores what it might take to create a green democratic state as an alternative to theclassical liberal democratic state, the indiscriminate growth-dependent welfare state, and theneoliberal market-focused state -- seeking, she writes, "to navigate between undisciplined politicalimagination and pessimistic resignation to the status quo." In recent years, most environmentalscholars and environmentalists have characterized the sovereign state as ineffectual and havecriticized nations for perpetuating ecological destruction. Going consciously against the grain ofmuch current thinking, this book argues that the state is still the preeminent political institutionfor addressing environmental problems. States remain the gatekeepers of the global order, andgreening the state is a necessary step, Eckersley argues, toward greening domestic and internationalpolicy and law.The Green State seeks to connect the moral and practical concerns of theenvironmental movement with contemporary theories about the state, democracy, and justice.Eckersley's proposed "critical political ecology" expands the boundaries of the moral community toinclude the natural environment in which the human community is embedded. This is the first book tomake the vision of a "good" green state explicit, to explore the obstacles to its achievement, andto suggest practical constitutional and multilateral arrangements that could help transform theliberal democratic state into a postliberal green democratic state. Rethinking the state in light ofthe principles of ecological democracy ultimately casts it in a new role: that of an ecologicalsteward and facilitator of transboundary democracy rather than a selfish actor jealously protectingits territory.