The shortcomings of liberal democracy
The apparent inability of the governments of liberal-democratic systems to deal more effectively with these environmental demands has been blamed on several shortcomings of these systems. First, liberal democracies are based on a political philosophy that assigns primacy to the (protection of the) rights of individuals, notably property rights. This means that collective (including environmental) interests tend to lose out when they (threaten to) impinge on private property rights. Regulations regarding the use of privately-owned land, for instance, to protect biodiversity, water quality and/or productive soils, often provoke fierce resistance from farmers and development interests. Second, related to the previous point, political representation in liberal-democratic systems tends to favour the most powerful interest groups in society (including “private” corporations and financial institutions) that have the resources to influence voters, political candidates, the policy-making process, the shape of institutions, and governments. By contrast, groups advocating for public interests tend to have relatively fewer resources at their disposal to get political representation and influence political outcomes. Third, the short-term political horizon linked to the electoral cycle (mostly between 3 and 5 years) of liberal democracies induces governments to give priority to often tangible political demands that can be met (even if partially so) before the next election, while long-term, anticipatory or preventative policies the benefits of which are less immediate and evident, but incur costs in the short-term, tend to draw much less public and government support.[1] Combined, these limitations make it not surprising that, with some variations over time and place, the protection of collective environmental interests by governments in liberal democracies has been at most half-hearted: aimed at accommodating environmental concerns but without alienating powerful interest groups or risking the chances of re-election.
These limitations imply that while, in theory, in liberal democracies, environmental groups and advocates have unrestrained opportunities to raise environmental issues, organise and campaign for environmental issues, policies and solutions, and mobilise public awareness, demands and support, their influence and power is severely restricted by the built-in bias of political institutions. This bias extends to the institutional frameworks by which policies are developed, including the relative power and resources of government organisations (government departments, advisory bodies) and the rules governing transparency/secrecy, accountability, and opportunities for public input. Government agencies advocating for industrial, agricultural, transport, and energy (business) interests are often well-entrenched and more powerful and better resourced compared to environmental agencies. Crucial from the perspective of advancing environmental integration but absent from the political-institutional framework of all liberal democracies, is an agency that has responsibility and adequate power and resources for long-term integrated planning and for overseeing environmental integration across policy sectors and institutions. As a result, environmental advocates are forced to focus on specific environmental issues that have already caused serious concern and that offer the potential for mobilising considerable public and political support, leading to mostly reactive policy responses to single issues.
The case for authoritarianism
These shortcomings and limitations of liberal-democratic systems have led some analysts and environmental advocates to conclude that, to address the environmental challenge more effectively, more constraints need to be put on individual freedoms, which is often portrayed as an argument in favour of (more) authoritarian government. However, it should be acknowledged that those who have often been referred to as advocates of authoritarian rule to save the environment or humanity, like Garrett Hardin, Robert Heilbroner and William Ophuls, were at most “reluctant authoritarians”.[2] They would rather like to believe that the environmental challenge can be resolved by democratic means, but for the reasons already mentioned above they do not think that this is possible. Moreover, although they are not very clear on how a regime of ecological guardians or rules would gain supreme power, they seem to keep open the possibility that people will grant them such power freely, as suggested by Hardin’s phrase that such a social arrangement would involve “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon”.[3] Hence, it is neither fair nor correct to refer to these authors as if they like authoritarian regimes.
Other authors, like Westra, seem to be more ambiguous on this point. Westra assigns a primary and moral status to “environmental integrity” and argues that we should take a hard look at democracy “as it stands” and whether “it is right to have uneducated voters ultimately decide questions that might affect all life on earth?” and as “the majority of people will often prefer short-term gain over long-term safety.”[4] Democratic rights, she argues, “may better be viewed as means towards justice or other goods, rather than as ends in themselves.”[5] Similarly, Beeson argues that democracy is not an uppermost value in the East Asian region, where it lacks a strong tradition and where authoritarian rule has been commonplace and accepted, also because it is seen as more capable of responding to complex political and environmental pressures than some democracies.[6] He also argues that “there is no compelling evidence that democracy of any sort will necessarily promote good environmental outcomes”[7] and that some “good authoritarianism” might emerge “in which environmentally unsustainable forms of behaviour are simply forbidden” and that are “essential for the survival of humanity in anything approaching a civilised form.”[8]
Shearman and Smith are even less ambiguous. They depict liberal democracy as a failed system dominated by elites and predict that “like communism, [democracy] will be but a moment in human history”. They believe that historically and evolutionary, authoritarianism has been the norm and the “natural state”, and that “Humanity uses dominance and submission to organize society.”[9] They argue that the concept of democracy is incoherent “in some of its versions at least”,[10] and that “for us freedom is not the most fundamental value and is merely one value among others. Survival strikes us as a much more basic value.”[11]
The view that democracy is just one value among many others, and perhaps not the most important one at that, gets increasing currency. Internationally, actual liberal democracies are often depicted as conflict-ridden, ineffectual, hypocritical, and sometimes simply laughable. Brexit and the Trump presidency, both seen as symptoms of deeply divided nations, provided ample fodder for this view. There is no doubt that liberal democracy has come under threat, not only for environmental reasons but also because of developments in what could be regarded as the heartlands of democracy, including the United Kingdom and the United States. A growing literature on this topic has emerged, referring to the erosion of democracy,[12] the rise of “populism”[13] and “illiberal democracy”[14] or “competitive authoritarianism”[15], “post-democracy”[16] and the “twilight” and death of democracy.[17] Paradoxically, although nominally democracy has been adopted in some form or other in most countries around the world, it is also said to be in crisis.[18] Surveys indicate that there is growing dissatisfaction with democracies and that democracy is in a “state of malaise”.[19]
By contrast, authoritarian regimes are seen to compare favourably. For instance, China is increasingly referred to as a country whose authoritarian regime is not only capable of addressing environmental problems more effectively, to the point of becoming a model to the rest of the world, but that is also superior and more attractive on a range of other fronts, including delivering economic growth and rising living standards, safeguarding its economy from economic crises that regularly afflict the West, and for its political stability and pursuit of a harmonious society.[20] Not surprisingly, the Chinese government eagerly feeds such propaganda.[21] Similarly, Singapore has also often been referred to as a benign authoritarian city-state based on “Asian values” that has delivered a prosperous, stable and neat society.[22]
The case against authoritarianism
However, the argument that less democratic or authoritarian regimes are better able to cope with the many and often conflicting demands of a modern society, including the demands associated with the environmental challenge, is unconvincing. The argument is commonly based on one or more of the following grounds or assumptions. First, the environmental situation has reached the status of a crisis or emergency which makes it necessary to deal with it urgently and decisively. Second, decisions made by an environmentally committed authoritarian regime are likely to be based on superior knowledge and therefore will be more effective than decisions made in democratic systems. Third, it is possible to establish an authoritarian regime that will (continue to) assign the highest priority to environmental protection. Fourth, democracy is not the most important value – collective survival is – and historically democracy has not been a common or popular form of government. Finally, the (environmental) failings of (liberal-) democratic systems cannot be remedied by reform – the creation of authoritarian regimes is the only option. I will briefly elaborate on each of these grounds and assess their plausibility.
The first argument, that the environmental situation has reached the status of an emergency that requires immediate and decisive action that can only be taken by an authoritarian leader or system assumes that the environmental crisis is of the same nature as, for instance, a medical emergency or emergencies on a ship or a plane, which are often used as metaphors. However, such analogies are flawed. The emergencies referred to may require vital decisions to be taken within minutes or hours, whereas it would be very risky and foolish to make decisions aimed at addressing the environmental crisis (including the climate change emergency) within such a short time, even if that were possible. It is questionable whether it is even appropriate to use the term crisis in this context, for several reasons. The environmental challenge has always existed and is an enduring element of the human predicament that will never be solved by particular decisions taken at any one time (of crisis). Although I do not deny that environmental problems can reach crisis proportions (for instance, when water supplies run out or harvests fail in a series of subsequent years), such problems cannot be resolved enduringly by crisis decision-making, although this can provide relief in the short term. While it is understandable to feel alarmed by the scale and pace of environmental degradation and climate change impacts, and it is justified or even mandatory to demand from political leaders that they take urgent action, what this means or should mean is that they must assign the highest level of priority to these issues, not that they make rash and authoritarian decisions based on questionable expertise and ideas about what needs to be done. Addressing the environmental challenge effectively requires looking at fundamental roots and causes (more akin to disease or disaster prevention) than quick decisions in an ad hoc emergency by an “environmental captain”. This leads to the second point.
While in real emergencies or crises, it is or at least may seem rational to put one’s trust or faith in the expertise and experience of people who can be considered to know best what to do, and who may have been trained for dealing with such emergencies, it is far from clear who has the expertise to save humanity from the environmental challenge. Ecologists? Climate scientists? Given the multi-faceted nature of the environmental challenge in its manifestations, roots and causes, there simply is not one kind of expert to turn to. The assumption that decisions affecting the environment made by an authoritarian regime are likely to be superior to those made in a democracy is highly questionable. Given the broad and deep nature of this challenge, which touches upon all aspects of societies including their fundamental values, inevitably, the knowledge and views of any small group of environmental professionals will be limited and contestable, as reflected in the diversity of views that exists even among environmental advocates and experts. This does not mean that there is no place for experts in decision- and policymaking affecting the environmental challenge. There surely is and must be. But it is naïve, risky, and unwise to assign supreme power to a select group of experts and to assume that better decisions will be made by a group of environmental rulers (“ecological guardians”), let alone by one authoritarian leader (an “eco-philosopher king”). The smaller the group of decision-makers, the easier it may be to act decisively, but the greater the chance of getting it wrong in more than one sense.
Third, it is not clear how a select (self-selected?) group of ecological or environmental experts would gain or be granted authoritarian power. If existing liberal democracies are dominated by vested interests or elites that stand in the way of making better environmental decisions and policies, these may, to say the least, be reluctant to cede power to such a group, unless they are carefully selected to make it unlikely that their decisions would pose a threat to the interests of the already powerful. Where authoritarian leaders already exist (such as in “illiberal democracies”), it is also not very plausible that they will cede power to a group of environmental advocates or experts, or an environmentally minded competitor. More likely, authoritarian rulers or regimes (will) claim that they already are environmentally aware and committed. But even if a group of dedicated eco-authoritarian leaders were to get into power, how can we be sure that they will continue to give the highest priority to environmental values or imperatives and not to their own interests? In the light of history, Lord Acton’s saying that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”[23], implying that absolute rulers are likely to put their interests first at all costs, still seems more believable.
Fourth, the argument that democracy is not necessarily the most important value, and that therefore authoritarian regimes based on other values may be legitimate, raises some fundamental questions indeed, but cannot be detached from instrumental considerations. Ultimately, it is true that judgements of political systems depend on one’s values and their relative importance, depending also on the context. When their life is truly at stake or when people struggle to make a living, people may assign low priority to democracy. In other contexts, people sometimes risk or sacrifice their lives to fight for democracy and against dictatorship. For some, democracy has intrinsic value and stands for recognising the fundamental equality and dignity of all people and their right to have a say in how they are governed. Others may assign primarily instrumental value to political systems, including democracy, accepting any type of regime as long as it provides security, stability, and social order, enabling people to get on with their affairs and/or to meet their needs.
Yet, it is far from clear that authoritarian regimes are necessarily (better) guardians of these other values than democracies, however limited or flawed the latter are. History has shown that authoritarian regimes almost by their very nature trample on human rights and oppress and torture their citizens (especially minorities) in the name of order, stability and the general interest. Wealth protection has been the main priority of oligarchs throughout history, not the well-being of societies, let alone the environment.[24] They tend to exploit people and the environment to the benefit of the ruling few rather than let them get on with their lives. If they provide social order and stability, it is because they suppress dissatisfaction and use oppressive techniques to protect the power, values, and interests of the elite. Benign dictatorship is a contradiction in terms for anyone who disagrees with the leadership. Moreover, even if a majority of the people living under an authoritarian regime are dissatisfied with the leader and would like to replace him or her or introduce constraints on the leadership, this may prove to be very difficult, and increasingly so with the near-totalitarian surveillance powers that such states build up and deploy. Altogether, history provides little if any support for the view that authoritarian regimes better represent, protect, or advance the (collective) values and interests of their citizens than democratic regimes.
It is certainly true that, throughout history, democracy has not been the default political system and that even today, despite the prevalence of (more or less) liberal democratic systems around the world, it is far from secure and guaranteed to survive. But often people only start appreciating something after they have lost it. If, for environmental or any other reasons, an authoritarian regime replaces a liberal democratic system, people may soon regret it and pine for its restoration.
Fifth, advocates in favour of the creation of eco-authoritarian regimes all too easily assume that the (environmental) failings of (liberal-) democratic systems cannot be remedied by reform. Given those failings, authoritarianism is seen as the only alternative. Yet, we should not rule out the possibility that existing democratic systems can be changed significantly to deal more effectively with this challenge. One line of thinking is that liberal democracies should and can be transformed and strengthened, or even replaced, by more meaningful forms of democracy. Some have argued in favour of stronger, participatory, or more direct forms of democracy[25] to enable citizens to have a greater say in decision-making and policy selection. That meaningful democracy implies the existence of opportunities for citizens to debate the relative merits of ideas, proposals or options—on a “level playing field”— lies at the core of a school of thought centred around the concept of deliberative or discursive democracy.[26] Other ideas for improving democracy relate to the introduction or strengthening of environmental rights and ecological representation, sometimes linked to social justice issues under the label of “ecological democracy”.[27] More radical ideas involve the decentralisation of political power from nation-states to smaller political entities based on the assumption that local communities are more motivated and able to give environmental protection the priority that it deserves, accompanied by a belief that this will also create more democratic and better societies.[28] In my view, creating Sovereign People’s Authorities based on the principle of popular sovereignty (“radical democracy”) holds the best promise of addressing the environmental challenge more effectively.
A false dichotomy
Rather than giving up on democracy, we should focus on the actual limitations and shortcomings of the specific institutions which have been adopted to shape a particular democratic system. Some of these relate to the point often raised by advocates of eco-authoritarianism that certain rights or freedoms should be restricted. For example, explicitly prohibiting or restricting the freedom to cause serious social and environmental harm (and making “ecocide” a legal crime) does not constitute curtailing democracy or political or human rights.[29] Similarly, treating corporations as (legal) persons with (almost) the same political rights as individual citizens, is an aberration that was first introduced in the United States, the abolition of which would not weaken but strengthen democracy.[30] Democracy involves putting in place rules to regulate freedoms to prevent that some people negate the freedom of others. As Berlin noted, “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep”.[31]
Such changes would create a more level playing field between environmental and other demands and interests. Admittedly, the big question that remains is how such changes could be achieved in existing political systems. But arguing that we need an authoritarian system to do so presents a false choice or dichotomy. In their actual forms (in the past and the present), neither liberal democracies nor authoritarian systems are able to adequately address the environmental challenge. But given the (for me) intrinsic value of democracy, and the considerations above, I would not want to put a bet on authoritarian systems when it comes to introducing such changes. Rather, a more promising and rewarding approach is to fundamentally change liberal-democratic and authoritarian systems to make them much more(“radically”) democratic and to impose limits on environmentally damaging behaviour and practices.
In brief, all states struggle and have thus far failed to transform their political-institutional systems to better accommodate environmental demands in the context of their role to manage many and often conflicting demands. But to make environmental protection and integration a core function, all states, whether democratic or authoritarian, will require deep political-institutional changes.
References
[1] Dryzek, John S. (1992), “Ecology and Discursive Democracy: Beyond Liberal Capitalism and the Administrative State”, in O’Connor, M. (ed.) Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology. New York and London: Guilford Press, pp.176-197; Eckersley, Robyn (1998), “Environment Rights and Democracy”, in R. Keil, et al. (eds.), Political Ecology: Global and Local, 353-376, 353-355.
[2] Humphrey, Mathew (2007), Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory: The Challenge to the Deliberative Ideal. London: Routledge.
[3] Hardin, Garrett James (1968), “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science, Vol.162, No.3859, 1243-1248, 1247.
[4] Westra, Laura (1993), “The Ethics of Environmental Holism and the Democratic State: Are They in Conflict?”, Environmental Values, Vol.2, No.1, 135-136, 30-31.
[5] Ibid., 125.
[6] Beeson, Mark (2010), “The Coming of Environmental Authoritarianism”, Environmental Politics, Vol.19, No.2, 276-294, 276.
[7] Ibid., 282.
[8] Ibid., 289.
[9] Shearman, David J. C. and Joseph Wayne Smith, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 15, 101-102.
[10] Ibid., 4.
[11] Ibid., 133.
[12] Cerny, Philip G. (1999), “Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.36, No.1, 1-26; McChesney, Robert W. and John Nichols, People Get Ready: The Fight against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy. New York: Nation Books.
[13] Mudde, Cas (2004), “The Populist Zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol.39, No.4, 541-563; The Guardian (2019), The New Populism, https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-new-populism (Accessed: 3 April 2019); Mounk, Yascha (2018), The People Vs Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
[14] Zakaria, Fareed (1997), “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy”, Foreign Affairs, Vol.76, 22-43.
[15] Levitsky, Steven and Lucan A. Way (2002), “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism”, Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.2, 51-65.
[16] Crouch, Colin (2004), Post-Democracy. Malden, MA: Polity; Swyngedouw, Erik (2011), “Interrogating Post-Democratization: Reclaiming Egalitarian Political Spaces”, Political Geography, Vol.30, No.7, 370-380.
[17] Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt (2018), How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future. New York: Crown Publishing; Keane, John, The Life and Death of Democracy; Applebaum, Anne (2020), Twilight of Democracy. The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. New York: Doubleday.
[18] Freedom House (2018), Democracy in Crisis, Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2018 (Accessed: 22 January 2018); Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A. and R. Williams (2020), The Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report 2020 Cambridge, United Kingdom: Centre for the Future of Democracy.
[19] Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A. and R. Williams, The Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report 2020. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Centre for the Future of Democracy, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/DemocracyReport2020.pdf (Accessed: 2 December 2020).
[20] Halper, Stefan A. (2010), The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century. New York: Basic Books.
[21] The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China (2021), China: Democracy That Works. Xinhua. http://www.news.cn/english/2021-12/04/c_1310351231.htm (Accessed: 7 December 2021).
[22] Wee, C. J. W. L. (1999), “”Asian Values”, Singapore, and the Third Way: Re-Working Individualism and Collectivism”, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol.14, No.2, 332-358; The Guardian Editorial (2015), “The Guardian View on Lee Kuan Yew: A New Generation Should Build on His Successes, Not Rest on Them”, The Guardian, 23 March.
[23] Wikipedia (2019), John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton (Accessed: 25 October 2019).
[24] Winters, Jeffrey A., Oligarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[25] Barber, Benjamin R. (1984, 2003), Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press; Pateman, Carole (1970), Participation and Democratic Theory. London: Cambridge University Press.
[26] Dryzek, John S. (2000, 2002 ed.), Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Baber, Walter F. and Robert V. Bartlett (2005), Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Meadowcroft, James (2004), “Deliberative Democracy”, in R. F. Durant, et al. (eds.), Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 183-217.
[27] Morrison, Roy (1995), Ecological Democracy. Boston Mass.: South End Press; Eckersley, Robyn (2011), “Representing Nature”, in A. J. Kean and W. Merkel (eds.), The Future of Representative Democracy. Cambridge. UK: Cambridge University Press, 236-257; Pickering, Jonathan, et al. (2020), “Between Environmental and Ecological Democracy: Theory and Practice at the Democracy-Environment Nexus”, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Vol.22, No.1, 1-15.
[28] Kohr, Leopold (1978), The Breakdown of Nations. New York: Dutton; Bookchin, Murray (1990), Remaking Society. Pathways to a Green Future. Boston, MA: South End Press; Sale, Kirkpatrick (1996), “Principles of Bioregionalism”, in J. Mander and E. Goldsmith (eds.), The Case against the Global Economy. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 471-484; Dryzek, John S. (1987), Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, Chapter 16.
[29] Making ecocide a globally recognised crime, as advocated by Polly Higgins, has gained growing international support and some traction. Higgins, Polly (2012, Kindle ed.), Earth Is Our Business – Changing the Rules of the Game. London: Shepard-Walwin Publishers Ltd; Monbiot, George (2019), “The Destruction of the Earth Is a Crime. It Should Be Prosecuted”, The Guardian, 28 March; Bowcott, Owen (2020), “International Lawyers Draft Plan to Criminalise Ecosystem Destruction”, The Guardian, 30 November.
[30] Korten, David C. (1995), When Corporations Rule the World. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, notably chapters 4-6; Bakan, Joel (2004), The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. London: Constable.
[31] Berlin, Isaiah (1969), Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.xiv.
Humanity on Trial 