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political decision-making in liberal democracies is recognised even by
those who question its practicability.
60
However, its perceived weakness
(with which proposals for deliberation are tarred by association) lies in
its
disdain for the realities of power politics and its resulting
failure to offer guidance as to how current practices can be improved
upon.
61
As Dobson notes, it is an inconvenient reality that the idealised
conditions which communicative rationality requires
'
utopian
'
'
do not obtain in
actually existing democracies
the green-sounding
outcomes that seem guaranteed by the procedures of discursive democ-
racies are not at all guaranteed in real ones
'
, and therefore that
'
.
62
The obvious concern for
green political theorists for whom deliberation appears so attractive in
principle is whether the potential it seemingly offers to promote both
positive outcomes for the environment in decision-making and the
adoption of ecological values are, in fact, realisable.
In this section, I consider the potential dif
'
culties that have been
identi
ed with translating the theory underpinning calls for deliberation
into deliberative practice. Of the possible responses that Dobson suggests
for bridging the gap between the hypothesis and democratic societies as
they are currently constructed, I prefer the option of exploring how
institutions can be developed that would
'
push real democracies in a
discursive direction
rather than rejecting reform because the ideal and
the actuality are too far apart.
63
I adopt this approach as some means
must be found of altering popular attitudes if ecological governance is to
take hold. In addition, I am not convinced that the obstacles which critics
of deliberative theory have raised are insuperable. I accept that the ideal
is out of reach. Indeed, its full implementation, because of its emphasis
on undistorted debate, would not be desirable under a system of gover-
nance that seeks to give society a deliberate steer in an ecologically
responsible direction. I do however join with Baber and Bartlett in
arguing that
'
communicative contexts can be designed and developed
to supply incentives for a signi
'
cantly better approximation to commu-
nicative rationality than is usual in policy deliberations
.
64
Not to experi-
ment would, in any event, run counter to the central tenet of deliberative
'
60
Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger,
'
Deconstructing Communicative Rationality
'
, 1988.
61
Ibid
.; Baber and Bartlett,
'
Deliberative Environmental Politics
'
,p.142;Dobson,
'
Democratising Green Theory
'
,pp.140
-
1.
62
Dobson,
63
'
Democratising Green Theory
'
,p.141.
Ibid
.
64
Baber and Bartlett,
'
Deliberative Environmental Politics
'
,p.228.Smithalsoconcludes
fromhis studies of democratic innovations (see Smith,
'
Democratic Innovations
'
,p.162)
that
'
many of the challenges laid down by sceptics and critics of citizen participation
'
,
