Social choice in a sustainability perspective

We introduce explicitly here to evaluation, the age-old distinction between ends and means.

Economists speak of the opportunity costs of an action, this being defined as the value of the most attractive alternative foregone. The question here is the way or ways that this “value” can be articulated as “means” or as “ends” (and, moreover, we need to assess immeasurable means relative to incommensurate ends). From this standpoint, sustainability assessment (SA) is a variant of the famous “social choice” problem of post-WWII economics and political theory, which is to decide, for a society made up of many constituents having non-identical interests and value systems, what might be desirable within the bounds of the feasible, and why

Here we enunciate our second dialectical simplification. The typical sustainability social choice problem—characterised by distributional conflicts and uncertainty—leads to identification, for each and every stakeholder, of a moral/political bifurcation. The stakeholders in sustainability find themselves required to determine their positions with reference to two forms of discourse and action:

  • Domination, corresponding to Arrow’s (1963) notion of Dictatorship. This means the exclusion or discounting of any contradictory principles of what is good and right, and that interdependency with other parties is reduced to a purely strategic concern.
  • Co-existence, taking up a challenge of tolerance—proposing to search out “inclusive” possibilities based on respectful consideration of a plurality of agonistic considerations.

The formal treatment of the social choice problem led to a paradoxical result that, for some, has seemed like an impasse yet it opens up the possibility of a deliberative political model.  The apparent impasse consists of the so-called “Impossibility” results, which roughly speaking can be formulated as follows:

  • Either the attempt is made to advise on what is “best” for the society on the basis of a set of criteria, then the choice is between Dictatorship or Inconsistency; or
  • If both Dictatorship and Inconsistency are to be avoided by weakening the rule system, then either the advice may be indecisive or the possibility is opened to dishonourable outcomes.

Formal choice algorithms cannot guide us out of this “impossibility” situation. Terms such as “reasoned choice” and “rationality” have to be given complex meanings. O’Connor has proposed the formulation that reasonableness is not to be confounded with calculation, and that it can be “reasonable not to be rule-bound”. For an inclusive reasoned basis for action to be established, the challenge is to work with a permanent argumentation between several contradictory positions. An SA practitioner needs, in such circumstances, to be like a “midwife of problems”, helping to raise into visibility “questions and issues towards which you can assume different positions, and with the evidence gathered and arguments built for and against these different positions”.