With sustainability issues currently attracting increasing political and policy attention, this paper examines the impact of the rise of ecological economics in the policy world and its potential influence on the decision-making process. This study emphasises that ecological economics development is coevolved with, and modified to fit, specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts. As a policy science, ecological economics is context-sensitive and action-oriented. Explaining why it is so, and what to do about it, has become imperative for ecological economists. This paper attempts to address the questions such as: What are the macroeconomic conditions and political processes that make the formulation and implementation of ecological economic policy possible? How should this alternative social reality engage with the dominant decision-making process? Does ecological economics provide the necessary means for prescribing policy measures to achieve sustainable development? Endeavouring to understand these dimensions of ecological economics has been a dynamic social process, and understanding this complex process might provide an opportunity to bridge the divide between policy rhetoric and reality in practice rather than maintain the status quo. In order to achieve an improved decision-making process on sustainability, it highlights the imperative to explicitly study the institutional setting through which sustainable development policy discourse is mediated.