Environmentalism and Parliamentary Democracy: A New Theory of Ecosystems and Future Generations as Subjects of Political Representation

Abstract

In order to effectively respond to the endemic and global environmental crises of late modernity, states must politically prioritize the preservation of planetary systems as a bedrock principle of political order and legitimacy while upholding other democratic tenets such as popular sovereignty and liberal rights provisions (freedom of speech, assembly etc). The political framework I propose in order to truly meet this aim includes a reorganized state government with a reconfigured legislature. In addition to members elected to represent traditional democratic constituency groups, the new form of democratic parliament I propose includes members specifically elected to represent entities and issues such as “natural systems,” “persons and systems affected by global warming”, “future generations”, and principles like “sustainable development” and “ecological preservation.”

In the proposed institution all representatives in the legislature would continue to be elected democratically. However, those voting in legislative elections would vote twice every time they send members to a parliamentary body (be it a nationally authoritative legislature or a state assembly or city council). First, the citizen would vote for a representative to stand for his or her own interest, and second, he or she would vote for a “Green Representative” to represent future human generations, natural systems, or a principle of ecological action such as sustainable development or survival. This cognitive division of labor on the part of voters, it is argued, would allow for a new genre of regular electoral campaigns to emerge in our societies that continually politicize and draw attention to ongoing ecological crises, as well as affording civil society a permanent political device with which send representatives to legislatures with the specific constitutional responsibility to address ecological crises in all their actions. The system, it is argued, would also accomplish this in a psychologically astute manner. By allowing voters to two elect two kinds of representatives—traditional representatives and “Green” representatives—the system is organized explicitly to make it less likely that voters will feel Green Representation comes at the expense of their more immediate interests.

In the course of the dissertation, I shape my theory by drawing upon foundational texts of political philosophy, including the writings of Hobbes, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Burke, and Madison—each work an intellectual precedent for past forms of representative government with great relevance for further transformations to parliamentary democracy—as well as engaging with contemporary democratic theory. My work is also informed by a careful and extensive analysis of past and current “Green” forms of political theory, both specifically dealing with issues of legislative reform and general questions of environmental justice and policy efficacy. This dissertation offers a novel and robust approach to Green Political Theory and marks a departure from the utopic, unidimensional, and, at times, historically negligent academic efforts that have been prevalent in the field.