The following is an extract from ‘Can Democracy safeguard the Future‘—By Graham Smith, Polity Press, 2021.
Participatory democracy would appear to be a counterintuitive approach to long-term governance. The short-sightedness of the public is widely viewed as a fundamental determinant of democratic myopia. However, as I argued in the first chapter, this is an oversimplification. The public’s perspectives on future generations are highly structured by the context in which they are articulated. A long-term perspective is rarely taken by people when they make immediate and everyday decisions – with the exception of those motivated by ‘lifetime-transcending interests’.[1] But everyday decisionmaking is a very different context from the kind of engagement that is structured to orient participants explicitly towards consideration of the future.
What is it, then, that participation can offer to long-term democratic governance? How can participatory democracy counter short-termism? First, participation can enable more inclusive judgements about the interests of future generations. Second, it can enhance the perceived legitimacy of political decision-making for the long term. And, third, it can foster a practice of democracy that is worth passing on to future generations.
A participatory politics for future generations recognises the limitations of most of the proposals for long-term governance that we have discussed in this book. These tend to have strong elitist and technocratic tendencies: they tend to restructure or create institutions that empower members of the established political class to safeguard future generations. Such approaches fail to engender inclusive judgements, fail to bolster the legitimacy of long-term governance, and fail to rejuvenate the practice of democracy. When we are faced with the dysfunctionalities of democratic myopia, a more radical solution is needed. A significant part of this solution is to embed forms of participatory and deliberative democracy in our political practices and structures.
The potential for public participation to bring to bear a diversity of voices and perspectives on the interests of future generations offers a creative response to the temporal plurality problem – the recognition that long-term policy requires us to balance different interests across and within generations. Since the unborn cannot be present to articulate their own interests, we require a second-best solution. Drawing on feminist insights, a second-best solution is to recognise that social groups would offer different perspectives on the interests of future generations that reflect diverse social, political, economic, and environmental experiences and identities. They would be sensitive to different vulnerabilities within and across generations. The widest possible participation of social groups – especially those whose voices are often not heard – would ensure that public judgements are informed by a diversity of perspectives on what those different future interests may entail. It would allow us to understand where agreement and divergence exist across social groups. This is not to discount the importance of scientific and legal expertise. Rather it is to recognise that richer judgements, which reflect more accurately the pluralistic character and interests of future generations, would emerge as a result of public participation strategies that engage with and across diverse communities. Otherwise judgements will simply reflect the limited perspectives of those who already exercise power, most probably reproducing existing imbalances of power across generations.
Second, participatory politics offers a way of legitimising difficult decisions. At the moment, critical decisions are being taken – or often not taken – by socially and politically remote institutions that are regarded by the public as out of touch and unresponsive. Distrust of established political institutions and representatives is a driver of uncertainty when it comes to long-term decision-making. The danger is that the proposed institutional designs discussed so far in this book will continue to reinforce this social and political distance. A participatory strategy promises decisions that better reflect the lived experiences, aspirations and concerns of communities. A participatory politics responds to the lack of a constituency for future generations. Through participation, such a constituency can be built, so that it may challenge short-term electoral motivations and the influence of vested interests.
Finally and relatedly, embedding a participatory politics in our democratic institutions will help people to realise obligations to future generations. If the maxim is that we should pass on to those who follow us a set of social and natural goods that are at least as robust as our own, then democratic practices are one element of realising that duty. As Dennis Thompson argues, our minimal duty is ‘to seek to preserve a democratic process that gives future citizens at least as much capacity for collective decision-making as present citizens have’.[2] He adds:
If we believe that the control that citizens now enjoy is inadequate, we may wish to adopt a more demanding version of the principle. It would stipulate that any current political generation should seek, up to the point that control over their own decision-making begins to decrease, to maximize the control that future generations will enjoy.[3]
Here is an opportunity to pass on something more valuable to our descendants. Democratic culture has been deteriorating in recent years, with less and less investment in democratic infrastructure and practices. A politics that is sensitive to the perspectives of, and empowers, diverse communities is the essence of democracy itself. What could be more valuable to future generations than a participatory politics that deals effectively with long-term challenges? What more can we offer than the governing capacity to make hard decisions in a way that realises democratic principles?
Such a participatory politics can be pragmatic in character or more radical. A pragmatic politics looks to embed participation in the decision-making processes of existing democratic institutions. For example, it would bolster the legitimacy of offices for future generations (OFGs) by enhancing both the inclusiveness of their judgements and their political standing in the eyes of politicians and the public. This is the argument of the previous chapter: an OFG that engages with and draws support from diverse communities makes for more inclusive decision-making and is harder to ignore. A pragmatic participatory strategy can democratise elite and technocratic institutions, both the ones that exist and the ones that are being proposed.
A more radical deepening of democracy can also be envisioned – one in which participatory institutions are empowered to make decisions in their own right. This may seem like an improbable, perhaps impossible dream – or, for some, a nightmare! The seeds of this more radical orientation are already present in current practice and social demands.
The participatory turn has found support in mainstream political developments. Participation is one of the key principles of sustainable development as articulated by the United Nations and other international bodies. In 1992, the landmark Rio Earth Summit agreed on Agenda 21, which makes the case for systematic public engagement, particularly with vulnerable communities. The Aarhus Convention, referred to in the previous chapter, establishes a range of procedural rights in environmental decision-making. The UN Sustainable Development Goals call for the adoption of responsive, inclusive and participatory decision-making if the goals are to be realised and sustained. The Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, also discussed in the previous chapter, defines public involvement as one of the five ways of working expected by the Future Generations Commissioner and by the public bodies subject to the Act. The time is ripe for calls for participation to move beyond minority preoccupation and become a fundamental organising principle of long-term governance.
Designing participation for the long term
Participatory democracy for future generations does not assume that any kind of participation will promote long-term thinking. Many participatory processes are explicitly designed to respond to more immediate needs – especially of more vulnerable and marginalised communities. The much celebrated participatory budgeting that spread across Brazil and beyond is a useful example. The intention behind this participatory institution is to invert investment priorities in the name of social justice, budgets becoming more responsive to the needs of poorer communities. The annual round of investments in Brazilian participatory budgets has often generated important investments for the long term – for example the building of critical infrastructure such as roads and sanitation facilities in poor neighbourhoods. However, the annual nature of the available spend is less hospitable to long-term developments, which often need recurring and sustained funding. Participatory budgets have been less successful in mobilising poorer communities to participate in more strategic policy developments. Such forums tend to attract those who already are politically engaged and organized.[4]
What, then, do we know about participatory design for the long term? What design features of participatory process promote a long-term orientation?
A good place to start is the work of the Nobel economist Elinor Ostrom. She spent much of her career developing insights into how resources are best managed for the long term. Her answer was to empower local communities.[5] By giving communities direct control over the resources in their locality, the tragedy of the commons – the overuse of non-renewable resources to the detriment of public goods – can be overcome. Ostrom’s work focuses on direct control of resources by the local community, although in her later work she reflects on the capacities of higher levels of governance. The argument for empowerment remains the same: meaningful control exercised by the affected communities over matters that have direct impact on their lives.
Ostrom argues that such control needs to be exercised through inclusive communication among the participants. Better judgements emerge from hearing and reflecting on different forms of knowledge. The tendency is for specialist expertise and for the perspectives of established political actors to dominate. For Ostrom, these perspectives are partial and fail to reflect the lived experiential knowledge that accumulates within communities.
While she did not use the term, Ostrom’s ideas prefigure work on deliberative democracy that rests on the principle that, for any decision to be legitimate, it must be made through a process of free and fair deliberation among equals. Such inclusive decision-making is likely to be morally and epistemically more robust, since it draws on plural and diverse forms of knowledge and insights. Claus Offe and Ulrich Preuss argue that deliberation is not only fact-regarding and other-regarding, but also future-regarding.[6] Michael McKenzie suggests a number of mechanisms that come into play to orient deliberation towards the long term and to make us consider the interests of future generations.[7] First, from a psychological angle, deliberation activates our system 2 reasoning, that is, our ‘slow’ thinking. Recalling the distinction introduced in the first chapter, deliberation encourages participants to move from the rather automatic and reactive system 1 orientation and motivates them to adopt a reflective and considered mode of judgement. Second, deliberation requires mutual justification. With this condition in place, it is hard to defend publicly short-term and self-serving preferences. Through the act of orienting participants towards the common good, the interests of future generations become a subject of moral concern, to be considered and balanced against other demands within the deliberative process. Third, deliberation enables coordination. Responding to long-term challenges requires not only difficult decisions but also compliance from institutions and the broader population. Deliberation can empower the identification and achievement of shared goals and objectives. It creates a space in which credible commitments can be articulated, tested, and maintained over time. MacKenzie takes one step further, suggesting that deliberation can also promote coordination across generations. We cannot engage in mutual justification with future generations. However, through deliberation, the justification for our current actions will be transparent to those who follow. For Mackenzie, this transparency is an important condition for promoting compliance and coordination between parties separated across time.
References
[1] Janna Thompson, Intergenerational justice: Rights and responsibilities in an intergenerational polity (London: Routledge, 2009).
[2] Dennis F. Thompson, ‘Representing future genera- tions: Political presentism and democratic trusteeship’, Critical Review of International Social and Political
Philosophy 13.1 (2010): 17–37, here p. 26.
[3] Ibid., pp. 26–7.
[4] Graham Smith, Democratic innovations: Designing institutions for citizen participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 30–71.
[5] Elinor Ostrom, Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
[6] Claus Offe and Ulrich K. Preuss, ‘Democratic insti- tutions and moral resources’, in David Held (ed.), Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity, 1991),
pp. 143–71.
[7] Michael K. McKenzie, ‘Deliberation and long-term decisions: Representing future generations’, in André Bächtiger, John S. Dryzek, Jane Mansbridge, and Mark E. Warren (eds), The Oxford handbook of deliberative democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 251–69.
