This book uses the challenges posed by environmental issues to explore and test speculations about institutional change, and about the character and effectiveness of the political system as a whole. In other words, it focuses on the particular issue of whether or not political institutions and organisations can contribute to addressing concerns about the deterioration of the environment, and on the broader issue of whether or not these institutions are capable of dealing with all manner of challenges. This is not to underestimate the complexity of matters: in some instances political institutions and organisations may play a constructive role and in others a less than helpful one in dealing with environmental and other concerns. Hence an important consideration in this book will be to identify some of the obstacles that prevent effective policy-making. These obstacles may include the varying levels of power (say, between government, industrial and business interests, labour organisations, the bureaucracy and the legislature), the different interests (for instance, of labour unions and environmental groups) and the distinct logics of action (for example, of the political system, the economy and the legal system).

Another consideration will be to explore the possibilities for overcoming these obstacles and for achieving political consensus. The notion of consensus is closely tied to the notion of dialogue or, in the words of writers like Habermas, to the notion of conversation or rational communication. Habermas (1981a) has focused on what promotes and hinders communication, and has drawn the distinction between instrumental and communicative rationality.