New release: “Transformation through virtue?” – Dissertation by Dr. Carolin Bohn now freely available as an e-book

On May 13, 2025, the dissertation “Transformation durch Tugend? ‚Grüne politische Urteilsbildung‘ als Schlüssel zu nachhaltigkeitsförderlichen Deliberationsverfahren“ (German for: Transformation through Virtue? ‘Green Political Judgment Formation’ as the Key to Deliberation Processes promoting Sustainability) by ZIN Managing Director Dr’in Carolin Bohn was published in the University of Münster's Scientific Writings series.

In her work, the political scientist focuses on sustainability-oriented deliberation processes, which she sees as a necessary building block for successful sustainability transformation in liberal democracies. She argues that a prerequisite for the success of such processes lies in critical reflection and the transformation of unsustainable preferences by those involved in the interests of the common good. In her book, Carolin Bohn shows that virtues are key to the success of this preference transformation, drawing on environmental virtue ethics and approaches to environmental citizenship. She explains why Aristotelian phronesis plays a central role in this context, but at the same time needs to be adapted in order to function in the context of sustainability-oriented deliberation processes. Following the development of this adapted version of phronesis, “green political judgment,” the bridge to practice is built through an empirical study of corresponding participation procedures.

The results show that some procedural elements currently counteract the realization of this virtue and need to be redesigned if participatory procedures are to enable “green political judgment formation” and thus preference transformation oriented toward the common good.

The full text is freely available at this link.

On December 6, 2024, Carolin Bohn was awarded the dissertation prize for the Department of Education and Social Sciences for her doctoral thesis (see press release).