Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2007, Síða 8

14_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 07_007_FEATURE/ENVIRONMENT REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 07_007_FEATURE/ENVIRONMENT_15
Democracy and
Environmental
Rationality
GR
EE
N
Democracy is hailed as the best form of government,
but yet the countries that have been ruled by this best
form of government are responsible for the worst con-
sequences in the history of humanity: climate change
and other environmental crises threaten the very living
conditions of millions of people around the globe and
no part of the world will be unaffected.
Some people believe that democracy itself is respon-
sible for this severe situation – that democracy as such
undermines environmental rationality and plays into
superficial and unreasonable preferences while ignor-
ing long term consequences by making environmental
decisions subject to procedural standards.
In other words, since democracy is primarily about
procedures while environmental rationality requires
certain outcomes, democracy has no way of guaran-
teeing environmental rationality.
The Mismatch Problem
Why can the fundamental procedures of democracy
not guarantee or encourage suitable outcomes in
environmental issues? Stating that democracy is about
procedures but environmental rationality is about
outcomes hardly does more than hint at an answer
to that question.
One reason to think that democracy is not likely
to guarantee or encourage suitable outcomes stems
from different spatial and temporal frames, namely
the long range of environmental effects and the local
focus of democratic decision. This is obvious if we
consider issues like pollution: we drive cars, produce
household waste, and eat agricultural products which
are produced using artificial fertilizers. All of these
activities pollute. But even if everyone agrees that
these factors are partly to blame for the pollution,
it is not clear what should be done. The relation be-
tween possible action and preferred consequences
is rather loose and, as a consequence, it is difficult
to form definite preferences and to reach a general
consensus concerning environmental actions.
Democratic decisions, on the other hand, have a
narrow focus. What triggers the need for a democratic
decision is usually something pressing and present:
lack of employment, a hope for tax reduction, a need
for better roads, etc. Definite preferences are easily
discernible in these cases. Furthermore, the relation
between available action and possible satisfaction of
preferences is relatively tight.
It is easy for people to form definite preferences
concerning issues with a narrow focus. As the space
of effects becomes larger and less concrete, as is often
the case in environmental issues, forming preferences
becomes more difficult. Moreover, environmental is-
sues may demand a time frame extending far beyond
that of democratic decision-making. A hydroelectric
power project supplying energy to an aluminium
smelter may require decades of research, whereas
the decision to build an aluminium smelter is reached
within a short time span based on market conditions
and cyclical changes in the metal industry.
The clearest example of this mismatch between
environmental values and narrow preferences is the
struggle against climate change. By now, it has been
proven even beyond a reasonable doubt that the
climate is changing and that human produced green
house gases are to blame. Yet, we still buy big cars,
drive everywhere, and generally do little to reduce
our impact when such actions would require changes
in our everyday life.
The opportunity to invest in forestry to reduce the
amount of green house gases is taken as a solution
to a personal situation, even if it is obvious that the
practice of growing trees is (a) not a solution to the
problem and (b) is not sustainable (since suitable land
is a very limited resource). What makes investment in
forestry such a successful option is that it allows us to
do something about the problem without affecting our
ways of living. It allows us to respond to the present
environmental situation, however ineffectively,
without compromising our ways of living.
The conclusion is that while environmental
values may be strong in theory, they turn out to
be weak in practice because they interfere with
other preferences which, even if superficial, are
close to hand. I call this the mismatch problem.
Democracy as Aggregation of Preferences
What I have said so far does not really show that
democracy undermines environmental rationality.
It only shows that democracy, which focuses on
peoples’ preferences, tends to do so. But we should
take a moment to consider what democracy is – or
rather, what it should be.
In his influential book Democracy and its Critics, the
American philosopher Robert A. Dahl presents an
idea of democracy that fits the common concep-
tion of the term in many ways. Dahl suggests the
following four criteria for democratic procedure:
1) Effective Participation: Throughout the process
of making binding decisions, citizens ought to
have an adequate opportunity, and an equal op-
portunity, for expressing their preferences as to
the final outcome. They must have adequate and
equal opportunities for placing questions on the
agenda and for expressing reasons for endorsing
one outcome rather than another. (Dahl, p. 109)
2) Voting Equality at the Decisive Stage: At the
decisive stage of collective decisions, each citizen
must be ensured an equal opportunity to express
a choice that will be counted as equal in weight
to the choice expressed by any other citizen. In
determining outcomes at the decisive stage, these
choices, and only these choices, must be taken
into account. (Dahl, p. 109)
3) Enlightened Understanding: Each citizen ought
to have adequate and equal opportunity for discov-
ering and validating (within the time permitted by
the need for decision) the choices on the matter
to be decided that would best serve the citizen’s
interests. (Dahl, p. 112)
4) Control of the Agenda: The demos [i.e. those
who have the right to vote] must have the exclu-
sive opportunity to decide how matters are to
be placed on the agenda of matters that are to
be decided by means of the democratic process.
(Dahl, p. 113)
Dahl outlines a conception of democracy according
to which the main function of a democratic proce-
dure is to pool the citizens’ preferences together
and make binding decisions accordingly. In short,
democracy is concerned with the aggregation of
preferences. Dahl’s criteria are meant to guarantee
that the democratic procedure is free from coercion
and the unjustified elimination of people’s prefer-
ences, that the final decision is enlightened, and
that the agenda is controlled by those affected.
Against an Aggregative Conception
The first of Dahl’s four criteria for democratic pro-
cedure lists three conditions for effective participa-
tion: citizens ought to have adequate and equal
opportunities (i) for expressing their preferences,
(ii) for placing questions on the political agenda,
and (iii) for expressing reasons for endorsing one
outcome rather than another. The third condition
has little force on its own. The reasons people
have certain preferences do not count in the final
outcome, and there is nothing in the criteria which
says that a procedure would be less democratic if
these reasons were ignored. This is not because
the requirement as such is foreign to democratic
procedure – it should be important – but because
it does not fit well into the aggregative conception.
Effective participation means that people’s prefer-
ences get known, not their underlying reasons.
The ordinary person takes part in a democratic
procedure by casting her vote according to her
preferences, and effective participation means
that she understands what options best fit her
preferences and that she casts her vote so that it
gets counted.
Dahl might argue that if the citizens were not
granted equal opportunity to express their reasons
for endorsing a specific outcome their influence
on the political agenda, or even on the final deci-
sion, might be unequal. If someone has a better
opportunity to express her reasons for favouring
a particular outcome, then she is in a privileged
position to argue that some interests, that may be
widely shared, are best served by this particular
outcome. This would make her influence on the
final outcome greater than the influence of others,
which would violate the principle that all interests
be given equal consideration.
As appealing as this argument may be, it mili-
tates against Dahl’s conception of democracy rather
than supporting it. This argument undermines
the idea of democratic procedure as a pooling of
preferences, and supports the idea that democratic
procedure is a procedure in which preferences
are formed and transformed. This argument also
moves the emphasis from voting to the discussion
leading up to the final voting.
Political Justification
The conception of political justification that we get
from the aggregative conception of democracy is
too permissive; too much can legitimately be done.
According to the aggregative conception, demo-
cratic procedure is primarily about voting, which
yields a winner and a loser, and there is nothing
within the democratic standards which prevents
the winner from violating certain non-political
rights, such as religious rights, of those who lose.
In most democratic countries, various non-political
rights are protected, but from the point of view
of the aggregative conception their protection is
not a matter of democracy. The protection of such
rights is seen (from the aggregative point of view)
as an external hindrance to authoritative action,
be it an action driven by a simple majority vote or
the action of an elected individual.
It is interesting to consider the relevance of
future generations in this context. As a matter of
fact, the preferences of future generations cannot
be taken into account in the democratic process as
laid out by the aggregative conception, since those
preferences have not yet been formed. This fact
has severe consequences when decisions about
environmental issues are taken, since such deci-
sions usually have consequences which extend far
into the future. The example of Kárahnjúkavirkjun
should make this clear. The dam and the damage
done by the reservoir will be there for generations
to come and future generations will, when time
comes, have various preferences regarding the
whole Kárahnjúkar project. But those preferences
had no weight in the decision to go forward with
this project. To account for future generations,
it would of course be possible to impose certain
restrictions on the democratic procedure, such
as a demand for sustainability and respect for
certain enumerated rights. But such restrictions
would be external to the democratic procedure, i.e.
they would be external hindrances to what could
be subject to democratic decision and, hence,
democracy and concern for future generations
would be at odds.
Deliberative Democracy
Because of the above problem (and various others)
philosophers have looked for a different concep-
tion of democracy, one of which is the so called
deliberative democracy. Under this heading are
various theories, but common to all of them is a
conception of the political process as involving
more than self-interested competition governed by
bargaining and aggregative mechanisms (Bohman
and Reg, p. xiii). A further common underlying
idea is a conception of the state as a cooperative
venue for the citizens to set themselves goals and
to work towards them. Understanding the role of
the state in this way raises questions about the
legitimacy of state action in general, in particular
its monopoly on the use of force. The need for
democracy derives from the fact that the citizens
must take collective, binding decisions concerning
various issues, and such decisions will favour the
preferences of some people at the expense of the
preferences of others. The basic question then is:
How can a state action, which goes against the
preferences of some people, be seen by those very
people as an action belonging to a cooperative
venue to which they belong?
If a state action can only be justified on grounds
which are incompatible with people’s basic values
and rights, such action will be deemed illegitimate
irrespective of its consequences. A ban on smok-
ing in public places justified in terms of a lesser
worth of smokers would be illegitimate, whether
or not such a ban would be in violation of any
rights or fundamental values. The illegitimacy of
such a ban derives from an unacceptable justifica-
tion which depicts some people as having lesser
worth than others. However, a similar ban justi-
fied in terms of health risk towards non-smokers
would be legitimate. According to the aggregative
conception, majority vote is usually a sufficiently
good justification for action, but according to the
deliberative conception, people’s basic rights and
fundamental values are assigned such weight that
a majority vote may not suffice as a justification
for action.
According to the deliberative conception of
democracy, the requirement of political justification
makes substantial demands concerning people’s
rights and liberty and ultimately their sense of self-
worth. This means that the protection of various
non-political rights, such as religious rights, is inher-
ent in the deliberative conception of democracy. It
is not an external hindrance to democratic decisions
as seen from the aggregative viewpoint.
Deliberative Democracy and the
Mismatch Problem
The mismatch problem derives from the fact that
people may have definite preferences concerning
local matters, but in matters where the space of
effect extends into the distance, either because
it concerns remote regions or consequences that
will only become relevant decades later, prefer-
ence orderings becomes much trickier. This leads
to the conclusion that trivial local preferences may
outweigh fundamental preferences in matters that
are more distant and elusive.
Solving the mismatch problem seems to re-
quire giving certain interests and preferences more
weight than others by constructing barriers that
are not part of democratic procedure in the ag-
gregative sense, i.e. hindrances that constrain what
issues can be put on the local political agenda, what
political and social rights must be upheld, which
principle to impose, etc. However, if the situation
is viewed from the deliberative perspective, as-
signing different weight to different interests and
preferences need not be foreign to a democratic
procedure but may follow from the requirement
that persons should be shown equal respect. In
particular, showing special concern for the interests
of future generations, say by imposing a require-
ment of sustainability, need not involve factors
that lie outside the democratic procedure.
Showing people equal respect will directly
involve future generations in so far as they will be
affected by the decisions in question. Moreover,
showing equal respect to individuals belonging to
the present generation may require indirect concern
for future generations, since individuals living now
may derive their meaning of life from the thought
that they may have children one day, and these
children may, in turn, have children themselves. In
the deliberative framework there are means to take
such distant values into account. This is particularly
relevant in the case of the environment, especially
when it comes to unspoiled nature which is gener-
ally regarded as an important source of a meaning
of life while being possibly, at the same time, an
important provider of raw materials for industry
which is driven by the immediate here and now.
The mismatch problem does not support the
view that there is a fundamental conflict between
democracy and environmental rationality. Why
people have thought so lies partly in an unaccept-
able conception of democracy – the aggregative
conception. Once democracy is seen as a delib-
erative procedure based on the assumption that
the state is a cooperative venue for the pursuit
of happiness, the appearance of such a conflict
vanishes. And in general, the idea that democracy
might undermine environmental rationality because
the former is about procedures while the latter is
about outcomes, is not justified since the delibera-
tive conception of democracy makes substantial
claims about outcomes.
References
James Bohman and William Rehg (eds.) Delibera-
tive Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics,
MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 1997.
Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1989.
The author is an assistant professor of philosophy
at the Iceland University of Education. He has
recently published a collection of philosophical
essays called: Náttúrua, vald og verðmæti (Nature,
Authority and Value) on the subject of envrion-
mental philosophy.
One reason to think that de-
mocracy is not likely to guar-
antee or encourage suitable
outcomes stems from different
spatial and temporal frames,
namely the long range of en-
vironmental effects and the
local focus of democratic de-
cision.
If a state action can only be
justified on grounds which
are incompatible with peo-
ple’s basic values and rights,
such action will be deemed
illegitimate irrespective of
its consequences.
Text by Ólafur Páll Jónsson Photo by Gulli