The Routledge Handbook of Democracy and Sustainability

Basil Bornemann, Henrike Knappe, Patrizia Nanz, Basil Bornemann, Henrike Knappe, Patrizia Nanz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780429656842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ökologie

This handbook provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the dynamic and complex relationship between democracy and sustainability in contemporary theory, discourse, and practice. Distinguished scholars from different disciplines, such as political science, sociology, philosophy, international relations, look at the present state of this relationship, asking how it has evolved and where it is likely to go in the future. They examine compatibilities and tensions, continuities and changes, as well as challenges and potentials across theoretical, empirical and practical contexts.

This wide-spanning collection brings together multiple established and emerging viewpoints on the debate between democracy and sustainability which have, until now, been fragmented and diffuse. It comprises diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives discussing democracy's role in, and potential for, coping with environmental issues at the local and global scales. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of arguments, claims, questions, and insights that are put forward regarding the relationship between democracy and sustainability. In the process, it not only consolidates and condenses, but also broadens and captures the many nuances of the debate.

By showing how theoretical, empirical and practical accounts are interrelated, focusing on diverse problem areas and spheres of action, it serves as a knowledge source for professionals who seek to develop action strategies that do justice to both sustainability and democracy, as well as providing a valuable reference for academic researchers, lecturers and students.

1General introductionDemocracy and sustainability

Basil Bornemann, Henrike Knappe and Patrizia Nanz

DOI: 10.4324/9780429024085-1

Relating democracy and sustainability

Democracy and sustainability are political ideas that have shaped the course of human history and continue to do so today. On a very general level, these ideas have multiple commonalities. Both have strong, universal normative implications (Dobson 1998; Sen 1999). They develop an image of the good society and, thus, also critically refer to a negatively evaluated other. The concept of democracy is oriented toward an equal and free society in which collective problems and conflicts are resolved by a demos consisting of equals in an ordered process of interest articulation and decision-making; it is the counter-model to highly asymmetrical authoritarian forms of rule, in which the suppression of freedom and autonomy of many members of society prevails (Dahl 2000; Saward 2007). Sustainability, on the other hand, refers to the negative consequences of the “unsustainable” (predominantly Western) model of development for the environment and equity of societies around the world (Christen and Schmidt 2012; Dryzek 2013). A sustainable society is imagined as one in which all present and future people have equal opportunities to satisfy their needs or even a good life in the long term (WCED 1987; Jackson 2017). The prerequisite for this is shaping human development in such a way that it remains within planetary boundaries, i.e., below tipping points for potentially sudden and severe environmental change (Meadowcroft 2012; Steffen et al. 2015). Another commonality is that democracy and sustainability are both fundamentally contested and dynamic concepts. This means that they have two levels of meaning: a relatively stable and universal first-level meaning, below which controversial debates about their respective meanings unfold on a second level (Jacobs 1999). Thus, there is general agreement that democracy means rule by the people and that sustainability requires compliance with ecosystem boundaries. However, how exactly the rule of the people and the compliance with ecosystem boundaries are to be realized and organized in concrete terms is subject to an ongoing debate. The empirical implication of this is that both democracy and sustainability do not exist in any kind of pure form but in manifold discursive, institutional, and practical manifestations that are subject to ongoing change (Hopwood, Mellor, and O’Brien 2005; Saward 2007).

Notwithstanding these basic commonalities, democracy and sustainability overall form relatively independent discourses, so that large parts of the political and scientific talk about democracy and sustainability are disconnected. Both discourses mainly move in their own ways and revolve around their own questions. Nevertheless, there is an area where the two discourses intersect and relate to each other. At the center of this interdiscourse are theoretical and empirical questions about the democratic compatibility of sustainability and, conversely, the sustainability compatibility of democracy (Lafferty and Meadowcroft 1997; Meadowcroft, Langhelle, and Rudd 2012; with a focus on climate change, see Burnell 2012). These questions are now part of the classical repertoire of green political theory and corresponding empirical research (Eckersley 2020). With some simplification, two basic positions regarding the relationship between democracy and sustainability can be identified.

First, there is the pessimistic position that assumes fundamental incompatibility between democracy and sustainability, claiming that sustainability and democracy are mutually exclusive. Both cannot be realized at the same time; democracy thrives at the expense of sustainability and vice versa. This strand of thinking goes back to the ideas according to which democratic states simply do not have the capacity to solve highly complex and urgent environmental problems (Ophuls 1977; for an overview, see Doherty and de Geus 1996). Contradictions and tensions arise, for example, between the goal orientation of sustainability and the process character of democracy. Democracy is a process that is necessarily open and not predetermined regarding its results. It aims at achieving a fair balance of different voices, opinions, and interests – a type of decision-making that can lead to the shifting of costs to non-involved future generations and, accordingly, to short-sighted decisions. In contrast, sustainability is about realizing certain objectively given and science-based functions, such as social-ecological resilience (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2006) or a safe operating space for humanity (Rockström et al. 2009), or long-term goals that span different election cycles, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Moreover, while sustainability concepts stem from the recognition of the need to limit resource use and other forms of industrial production and extraction, (liberal) democracies are seen to be trapped in impasse of economic growth and environmental exploitation (Lafferty 2012; Pichler, Brand, and Görg 2020).

Apart from these functional tensions, sustainability is also seen to be at odds with the normative logic of the majority rule characteristic for democratic governance. To keep human development within the carrying capacities of the earth and achieve the just distributions of resources and ability to satisfy basic needs, far-reaching and very impactful decisions will have to be made, ones that will be against the preferences of a generally myopic majority. Therefore, sustainability governance will need to rely on modes of governance that overcome the rule of the errant majority to enforce environmental protections and social justice. For sustainability issues such as the fight against climate change, the democratic process must be suspended, at least temporarily, and the relevant decisions must be handed over to nonelected but well-intended scientific experts and political elites who can make good decisions and implement them in an effective manner (Shearman and Smith 2007).

The second position is much more optimistic because it assumes a basically productive relationship between democracy and sustainability (Mason 1999). Sustainability depends on a functioning democracy; democracy provides fertile grounds for attaining a sustainable society. From this vantage point, democracy is not the only legitimate form of organizing political life. Democracy is also the only promising route for dealing with the complexity of sustainability issues in an adequate way. Only democracy can ensure that sustainability problems are sufficiently identified, articulated, and debated in such a way that the plurality of perspectives, knowledge, and values in society can be considered (Dryzek 2000; Eckersley 2000; Smith 2003). Compared with autocracies, democracies are more responsive to the articulation of environmental concerns. The current failure of the democratic process to deal with sustainability problems is not an expression of too much democracy, but of too little. Therefore, the answer to the sustainability crisis lies in the continued democratization of democracy. This conviction has given rise to claims for the democratization of modern democracies in light of environmental and sustainability issues. Rather than abolishing democracy, political systems must reinvent and deepen their democratic structures to deal with the sustainability challenge (Eckersley 2004).

Recent transformations of democracy and sustainability

Although pessimistic and optimistic positions are still important reference points in the debate, we believe that there are good reasons to begin discussions on the relationship between democracy and sustainability from a more open middle position, one that emphasizes contingency and ambivalence in the relationship. This means that questions regarding the relationship between sustainability and democracy can hardly be answered in a definite and unequivocal way (Burnell 2012). Rather, sustainability and democracy interact differently in different contexts, which makes open and context-specific clarification and analysis necessary. This position is not only supported by empirical research that points to mixed and sometimes contested evidence regarding the sustainability performance of democracies (Scruggs 2003; Saretzki 2007; Wurster 2013). It also reflects the fact that there have been important changes in both the democracy and sustainability discourses in recent years, which also affect the relationship between democracy and sustainability. The terms and their relationship have become more significant and “visible” in political life, and there are also developments in the ways of thinking about democracy and sustainability that make it necessary to take a fresh look at the relationship between the two.

Transformations of democracy

Regarding democracy, we can observe both declining and reviving tendencies. Antidemocratic right-wing politicians and political agendas have emerged in all parts of the globe, and almost simultaneously, many prodemocratic and emancipatory movements have mobilized large parts of populations. Both tendencies can be linked to a growing politicization, which is understood as the opening of issues to public scrutiny and contestation (Zürn et al. 2012) that were formerly treated as purely administrative or technical issues. Sustainability issues are one area in which politicization went in both directions – the strengthening of democratic culture through vivid and controversial public debate, popular protests making visible groups and voices unheard before, and a growing awareness of the political interests and social implications behind seemingly “neutral” or technical sustainability politics. On the other hand, the politicization of sustainability issues has also led to the erosion of democratic practice and democratic systems through, for example, the use of climate change denial as a tool for authoritarian politics, the distortion and closing down of public discourse areas through disinformation campaigns, and the growing violations of environmental activists’ citizen rights through threats by corporate, private, and state actors across the globe.

With these current developments and in the broader context of a globalizing world, democratic theorists and democracy scholars have proposed new concepts and tools to think about democracy by reinventing institutions or by shifting toward a more practice-oriented approach in democracy studies.

When we look back at the most recent history of democracy, we can see the decline and revival of democracy in different places and materialized as different phenomena. In Europe, for example, the governments in Poland and Hungary are actively dismantling democratic principles, such as the balance of power or citizen rights. The authoritarian populism of Donald Trump not only eroded democratic attitudes in the US (Wodak and Krzyżanowski 2017), but also mobilized a right-wing and right extremist movement that led to devastating demonstrations around and inside the Capitol in January 2021. Political leaders such as Trump, Bolsonaro, or Putin were and are explicitly questioning democratic values, in their political communication and practice. The rise of right-wing populism and disinformation campaigns in many countries around the world even reached a new level of coalition building and extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries such as Brazil, the UK, or the US suffered from high infection rates, their citizens were kept from appropriate access to health care because their political leaders initially or partly denied the danger of the virus. Similar forms of science scepticism can also be observed with regard to the climate crisis.

At the same time, democratic values have been fought for by many social movements that were partly initiated as a reaction to those antidemocratic developments. Three emancipatory movements may serve as examples here: the women’s rights movement in South America, the global climate justice movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and Europe. Mobilizing against femicides and gender-based violence, many women first gathered in Argentina in 2015 after a young girl was murdered. Under the slogans “Ni una menos” (Not one [woman] less) and “Vivas nos queremos” (We want us alive), they organized mass demonstrations that quickly spread into other countries of the region, such as Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Guatemala, and Mexico. The Women’s March in Washington in January 2017, which occurred after the election of Donald Trump, was inspired by the Argentinian Ni Una Menos movement. In 2020, Argentina legalized first trimester abortion, which signaled success in the fight for women’s rights. The global climate justice movement is a second example of how democratic values are revitalized. Since 2018, when Greta Thunberg started her school strikes, there has been a growing Fridays for Future movement that not only managed to mobilize mass demonstrations worldwide in 2019, but also managed to put the climate crisis center stage in UN negotiations, EU elections, the World Economic Forum, and many more arenas of high politics decision making. Fridays for Future activists and other young activists also challenge elected governments with climate litigation cases. By (partly successfully) suing governments to stick to the Paris Agreement goals they have signed, they fight for the democratic rights of future citizens. The Black Lives Matter movement mobilized mass protests in a momentum of rage and fear after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in May 2020. This movement symbolizes the growing awareness of the tremendous violations of the citizen rights of black people in the US and beyond. Like the other movements, we can see the Black Lives Matter movement in the US as an emancipatory movement, here...