Shortly before the 2004 presidential election, a provocative essay entitled "The Death of Environmentalism" appeared at a meeting of foundations. It argued that environmental advocates were "policy literalists," too focused on specific solutions to environmental problems and overlooking the hostile political context in which fights such as that over climate change would be won or lost.
Perhaps single-issue advocacy—a model that assumes voters adopt identities as environmentalists or civil liberties advocates rather than a broader political perspective—was appropriate in an era of consensus around problems and solutions. But conservative dominance at all levels of government now makes such an approach self-defeating. Yet most of the infrastructure of progressive social change, key national organizations, mass-membership advocacy groups, and philanthropy have been structured around the assumption that change is achieved by identifying specific issues and promoting narrow solutions. And the alternative is not always clear.
The Open Society Institute hosted a panel featuring observers and activists who have been critical of interest-group pluralism or recognized its limits in their own work. The discussion explored alternative approaches to building a more just society.
Participants included:
- Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change;
- Heather Booth, President of the Midwest Academy;
- Ted Nordhaus, Co-author of The Death of Environmentalism and the Birth of a New American Politics (forthcoming, Houghton Mifflin), and Managing Partner of American Environics;
- Rick Perlstein, Author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Hill and Wang).
- Mark Schmitt, Senior Fellow of the New America Foundation.
Gara LaMarche, OSI Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs, introduced the event.
"The End of Interest Group Liberalism?" was the first in a series of forums to mark the tenth anniversary of OSI's U.S. Programs.