Ingolfur Blühdorn - The sustainability of democracy On limits to growth, the post-democratic turn and reactionary democrats
Emancipation, the central demand of democracy, has come to mean liberation from restrictive social and ecological imperatives. Before proposing radical participatory solutions we need to ask how democracy itself serves the politics of unsustainability
how much confidence should we have that empowering the democratic citizenry will really move contemporary society closer towards sustainability? What are participatory-democratic approaches able to achieve exactly? More broadly, how are the conditions of contemporary modernity reconfiguring democracy?...
It has often been pointed out, for example, that democracy is anthropocentric and has only limited potential to represent that which has no political voice. Notably, electoral democracy has a strong fixation on the present, in other words it prioritizes the interests of today and is structurally inclined to discount those of future generations. Moreover democracy encourages compromise, although compromise solutions are often ecologically ineffective. Democratic procedures are time- and resource-consuming and therefore inappropriate wherever fast and decisive action is necessary.
The question of the sustainability of democracy has two dimensions: first, that of the sustainability of democracy itself, which has been debated ever since the "crisis theories" of the 1970s;[1] second, the question whether democratic structures are capable of managing the sustainability crisis, which is most commonly associated with the finiteness of natural resources and the phenomenon of climate change, but also has a whole range of other aspects. The first dimension has recently received much attention. In the light of globalisation, political cynicism and diminishing trust in democratic institutions, there has been much talk about the coming of "post-democracy".[2]Nevertheless, democracy has time and again proven its impressive adaptability to diverse and changing societal conditions.
Much less debated is the second dimension – not least because established democratic commitments make it extremely difficult to even consider the possibility that democracy might fail to deliver. Early suggestions, made in the wake of the Club of Rome's Limits to Growthreport, [3] that the scarcity of resources would render the suspension of democratic rule and the adoption of eco-authoritarian policies a necessity of human survival,[4] have been robustly refuted. Yet the issue as to whether democratic systems are really capable of effectively addressing the sustainability crisis has remained unresolved. With the powerful re-emergence of the debate on the finiteness of resources and the post-growth economy,[5] this question is more urgent than ever.
Yet, for all their undeniable achievements, techno-managerial policy approaches have so far been unable to bring about anything like the profound structural transformations that are required if internationalised consumer society is ever to become sustainable. After the fiasco of international climate politics in Copenhagen, after international investment banks were declared too big to fail, and after the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it is clear how unambiguously priorities are set. There is little evidence that this will change in any substantial way in the foreseeable future... read more:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2011-07-11-bluhdorn-en.html#footNote18
how much confidence should we have that empowering the democratic citizenry will really move contemporary society closer towards sustainability? What are participatory-democratic approaches able to achieve exactly? More broadly, how are the conditions of contemporary modernity reconfiguring democracy?...
It has often been pointed out, for example, that democracy is anthropocentric and has only limited potential to represent that which has no political voice. Notably, electoral democracy has a strong fixation on the present, in other words it prioritizes the interests of today and is structurally inclined to discount those of future generations. Moreover democracy encourages compromise, although compromise solutions are often ecologically ineffective. Democratic procedures are time- and resource-consuming and therefore inappropriate wherever fast and decisive action is necessary.
The question of the sustainability of democracy has two dimensions: first, that of the sustainability of democracy itself, which has been debated ever since the "crisis theories" of the 1970s;[1] second, the question whether democratic structures are capable of managing the sustainability crisis, which is most commonly associated with the finiteness of natural resources and the phenomenon of climate change, but also has a whole range of other aspects. The first dimension has recently received much attention. In the light of globalisation, political cynicism and diminishing trust in democratic institutions, there has been much talk about the coming of "post-democracy".[2]Nevertheless, democracy has time and again proven its impressive adaptability to diverse and changing societal conditions.
Much less debated is the second dimension – not least because established democratic commitments make it extremely difficult to even consider the possibility that democracy might fail to deliver. Early suggestions, made in the wake of the Club of Rome's Limits to Growthreport, [3] that the scarcity of resources would render the suspension of democratic rule and the adoption of eco-authoritarian policies a necessity of human survival,[4] have been robustly refuted. Yet the issue as to whether democratic systems are really capable of effectively addressing the sustainability crisis has remained unresolved. With the powerful re-emergence of the debate on the finiteness of resources and the post-growth economy,[5] this question is more urgent than ever.
Sustainability from below?
Ever since the emancipatory social movements of the 1970s and 1980s forced environmental issues onto national and international political agendas, the assumption has become deeply entrenched that ecology and democracy are inextricably linked. Political ecologists, in particular, have argued that the liberation of the environment and the empowerment of citizens are two sides of the same coin, and have engaged in a struggle for radical democratisation even in established democracies. Disempowerment of political and economic elites and the devolution of power to the citizenry were proposed as the best means for securing both ecological integrity and civic self-determination. From the mid-1980s, the paradigm of ecological modernization gradually depoliticised ecological issues. Incrementally, these were reframed as technological and economic questions as well as matters of efficient management. The way in which the ecological issue has been appropriated by scientific experts, technological pioneers and the expertocratic state is most visible in Nicholas Stern's report on the Economics of Climate Change,[6] in the assessment reports of the IPCC, or in the widely promoted Green New Deal policies, which are supposed to generate sustainable jobs and ecologically benign economic growth.Yet, for all their undeniable achievements, techno-managerial policy approaches have so far been unable to bring about anything like the profound structural transformations that are required if internationalised consumer society is ever to become sustainable. After the fiasco of international climate politics in Copenhagen, after international investment banks were declared too big to fail, and after the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it is clear how unambiguously priorities are set. There is little evidence that this will change in any substantial way in the foreseeable future... read more:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2011-07-11-bluhdorn-en.html#footNote18
