W. Lance Bennett - Communicating the Future

Chapter 2uses the idea-flow model to show how to organize and share better integrated economic and environmental visions with the potential for broad political uptake. This entails recognizing the important ideas that have come from the environmental movement. At the same time, it is important to see how the movement has become spread out around different causes and different arenas of issue politics. The discussion provides keys for using communication as an organizational process to better align the environmental movement both internally, and with a broader spectrum of economic justice and political reform organizations to build a more effective politics for change. The task is made somewhat easier by the richness of many ideas already in circulation that just need more amplification and coordinated promotion.

Chapter 3shows how the idea-flow model was used effectively by the so-called neoliberal economics movement that gained broad political uptake toward the end of the last century. The reorganization of politics around ideas of limited government, restricted popular control over economies, privatization of many public services, and the deregulation of many business sectors, has subordinated modern environmentalism to a set of unfortunate political tradeoffs in which jobs and economic growth generally compromise stronger ecological economic policies. By many measures, the neoliberal brand of political economy has run its course, not least in terms of growing inequality, the rising environmental costs of doing business, and the perversion of its own ideals due to oligarchy and crony capitalism. Yet this idea regime remains widely in power, and increasingly antagonistic to liberal democracy. The question is how more attractive alternatives can become better positioned for political uptake. The idea-flow model allows us to compare the differences between the rise of this elite-driven neoliberal political economy movement, and the prospects for greater coordination of communication and ideas among environmentalists, economic justice advocates, and democratic reform groups. Even if we accept the idea that more effective communication involves communicating at the intersection of political, economic, and environmental ideas, we also must learn to package those ideas to improve flow across diverse networks, including politicians, parties, and business elites, which can help with the uptake of new economic ideas into higher circles of politics and power.

Chapter 4examines the current resistance to fundamental economic change among many business and political elites. In those circles, what is “realistic,” often means making environmental adjustments only at the margins, or talking about Green growth, without changing the basic economic practices that endanger a livable future. The irony is that environmental changes are already disrupting economies in many places, and are likely to make current production, work and consumption arrangements even more chaotic and less manageable. When such disruptions occur, they can be understood as political opportunities for change. Throughout modern history, social movements have helped spread new ideas in society and fueled passions for change. Among the reasons for hope today are the tens of thousands of civil-society organizations and millions of people already working for economic, environmental, or political change. As noted earlier, organizations promoting various causes are currently scattered across arbitrarily separated categories of action, and over an expanding array of problems. Developing the capacity to organize more aligned communication and action networks can change that.

Just what are the inspiring ideas around which more effective challenges can be based? Who will produce them? How can communication networks be strengthened across current issue and cause boundaries? Those are the questions addressed in Chapter 5. As noted in the Introduction, the good news is that there are already many well-developed ideas about ways to change our thinking about growth, investment, production, consumption, food supplies, wastes, and other basic aspects of living. So, the real goal is not to produce radical new ideas, but to design communication processes aimed at better developing and sharing existing models for change. This means improving the political alignment among diverse movement organizations, funders, research institutes, and think tanks. Organizations do not need to give up their primary missions. Rather, those missions can be enhanced by featuring values and goals already held in common: economic fairness, strong communities, social wellbeing, businesses that offer more value to workers, communities, and environment; addressing inequalities within and between nations; enabling different models of development in poorer nations; better management of resources and wastes by business and government; and better connecting political parties and publics who care about these things. The time is ripe for better produced, packaged, and networked ideas at the intersection of economy, environment, and political renewal, combined with pressure for uptake by political parties and leadership. Communicating the Future shows how creative communication can get us there.

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