The political economy of biodiversity in representative democracy: Between the expressive and the instrumental domain

In this paper the politics of biodiversity is analysed. Biodiversity is identified as being an ideological key symbol within the expressive space of politics. Whereas individuals express themselves, their core beliefs, their ideologies, etc. for their own sake, political parties and nature conservation organisations use biodiversity to garner seats in parliament, private donations and membership fees. The success of biodiversity in stimulating expressive benefits induces co-occurrence between nature conservation organisations in the expressive space and ordinary pressure groups on the substantive floor. Co-occurrence boosts the effectiveness of both types of organisation and adjusts the results between the expressive space and the substantive floor. As a result, nature conservation organisations receive donations from ordinary pressure groups and obtain legislative and budgetary privileges. Without co-occurrence it would be difficult to sustain the various activities of nature conservation organisations. The implications of the findings are, first, that biodiversity is input-rather than outcome-oriented; it supports democracy as an impersonal social institution helping to find the overall consensus. Second in many specific forest management decisions expressive and instrumental concerns are not clearly distinguished. Where citizens place an emphasis on instrumental values there must be a strong case in favour of robust decentralized arrangements of political choice. Third, projects with very high expressive and low instrumental values are at best provided at the voluntary arena of the expressive space.