Suchergebnisse

Hélène Landemore and Ana Tanasoca have recently proposed two different approaches to deepening the deliberative dimension of democracy. InOpen Democracy(2020), Landemore introduces a novel paradigm of democracy—open democracy—which grants ordinary citizens access to an actual exercise of political power through innovative forms of democratic representation. InDeliberation Naturalized(2020), Tanasoca develops a naturalized normative theory of deliberative democracy which stresses the role of citizen deliberation in what she refers to as 'naturalistic' settings, i.e., the public sphere. Both texts invite us to stretch our imaginations of how contemporary democracy can be deepened in deliberative ways.

Can democracy secure environmental sustainability? This article proposes a basic, yet substantial organising principle – the 'dilemma of green democracy' – which maps out the possibility of realising green decision outcomes under democratic constraints. The dilemma posits that there is no logical or unconditional relationship between democratic decisions and environmental sustainability. More specifically, three plausible conditions for collective environmental decision making – robustness to pluralism, consensus preservation and green outcomes – are mutually inconsistent, meaning that they cannot be satisfied simultaneously. To construct a logically possible environmental-democratic institution, we must avoid the dilemma by relaxing at least one of the conditions. This article explores a number of escape routes from the dilemma, and discusses each proposal by drawing on democratic theory and empirical examples in environmental politics. It concludes that as long as the dilemma of green democracy is resolved, democracy can, at least in principle, secure environmental sustainability.