Political Science and Environmental Sustainability, Responsible Citizenship and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

At its heart, politics addresses the perennial problem of maintaining social order, which it treats as the highest public good. Political scientists, then, study the processes that hold societies together. We assume that ES, RC and CSR represent putative public goods associated with maintaining social order and discuss problems related to their recognition and promotion in liberal-democracies. We argue that, though ES, RC and CSR are public goods, governments in liberal democracies cannot bring individuals and leaders of firms to pursue them. This results from basic principles of ordering in liberal democracies, which limit a government’s capacity to cause people and those responsible for firms to accept and pursue ES, RC and CSR.