Stakeholderperspektivet och utestängandet av det politiska
Om stakeholderperspektivets begränsade möjligheter att förändra miljöpolitiken
Global environmental politicsThe stakeholder perspectiveThe politicalPoliticsDisplacement of the politicalPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics. The political is defined as a process in which society is instituted and can be conceived of as a process in which a particular demand is transformed into a stand-in for a universal demand. Politics is defined as a sphere of social reality that is the manifest result of the political. I also argue that politics is often organized in a way that displaces the political. Since the logic behind the stakeholder perspective, per definition, renders the universalization of the particular impossible, I argue that it should be conceived of as displacing the political. Since a realization of the political is necessary for fundamental change of society, I argue that the stakeholder perspective only has a limited potential to serve as a basis for changing environmental politics.