Introduction
As environmental pressures and problems mount around the world, the question has arisen of whether we need more or less democracy to address the environmental challenge more effectively. A growing number of people argue that authoritarian political systems are better able to resolve environmental problems, while democratic political systems have been shown to be incapable of doing so. Here, I assess these claims and find that both democratic and authoritarian systems have proven incapable of addressing this challenge effectively, but that “more democracy” holds greater promise of doing so while being the more preferable option.
The shortcomings of liberal democracy
The apparent inability of governments in liberal-democratic systems to address mounting environmental problems has been attributed to several shortcomings of these systems.
First, liberal democracies are grounded in a political philosophy that prioritises individual rights, notably property rights. This means that collective interests (including environmental ones) tend to lose out when they (threaten to) impinge on private property rights. Regulations governing 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, building on 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 the public interest tend to have relatively fewer resources to secure 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 prioritise often tangible political demands that can be met (even if only partially) before the next election, while long-term, anticipatory or preventative policies, whose benefits are less immediate and evident but incur short-term costs, tend to draw much less public and government support.[1] Taken together, these limitations make it unsurprising that, with some variations over time and place, the protection of collective environmental interests by governments in liberal democracies has been at best half-hearted: aimed at accommodating environmental concerns without alienating powerful interest groups or risking re-election.
These limitations imply that, while in theory environmental groups and advocates in liberal democracies have unfettered opportunities to raise environmental issues, organise and campaign for policies and solutions, and mobilise public awareness, demands, and support, their influence and power are severely constrained 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, more powerful, and better-resourced than environmental agencies. Crucial to advancing environmental integration, but absent from the political-institutional framework of all liberal democracies, is an agency with responsibility, 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 issues that have already caused serious concern and offer the potential to mobilise 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, additional constraints on individual freedoms are needed, often portrayed as an argument in favour of (more) authoritarian government. However, it should be acknowledged that those often referred to as advocates of authoritarian rule to save the environment or humanity, such as Garrett Hardin, Robert Heilbroner and William Ophuls, were at most “reluctant authoritarians”.[2] They would rather believe that the environmental challenge can be resolved by democratic means, but for the reasons already mentioned, they do not think this is possible. Moreover, although they are not very clear about 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 favour authoritarian regimes.
Other authors, such as Westra, seem 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 at whether “it is right to have uneducated voters ultimately decide questions that might affect all life on earth?” and at “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 East Asia, where it lacks a strong tradition and authoritarian rule has been commonplace and accepted, partly because authoritarian rule is seen as better able to respond 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, perhaps not even the most important, is gaining currency. Internationally, actual liberal democracies are often portrayed as conflict-ridden, ineffectual, hypocritical, and sometimes even laughable. Brexit and the Trump presidency, both seen as symptoms of deeply divided nations, have 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 growing dissatisfaction with democracy and that it is in a “state of malaise”.[19]
By contrast, authoritarian regimes are seen to compare favourably. For instance, China is increasingly described as a country whose authoritarian regime is not only capable of addressing environmental problems more effectively, to the point of becoming a model for the rest of the world, but 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 maintaining political stability and pursuing 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 claim that less democratic or authoritarian regimes are better able to cope with the many and often conflicting demands of modern society, including those associated with the environmental challenge, is unconvincing. This claim is commonly grounded in one or more of the following assumptions. First, the environmental situation has reached a crisis or emergency level, necessitating urgent, decisive action. Second, decisions made by an environmentally committed authoritarian regime are likely to be based on superior knowledge and therefore more effective than those 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 requiring immediate and decisive action that only an authoritarian leader or system can take, 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 within minutes or hours, whereas making decisions aimed at addressing the environmental crisis (including the climate change emergency) within such a short time would be very risky and foolish, even if that were possible. It is questionable whether it is 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 over a series of subsequent years), such problems cannot be resolved sustainably through crisis decision-making, even though this can provide short-term relief. 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 that political leaders 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.
In real emergencies or crises, it is, or at least may seem, rational to place trust in the expertise and experience of those who know best what to do and may have been trained to deal with such emergencies. Yet it remains far from clear who has the expertise to save humanity from the environmental challenge. Ecologists? Climate scientists? Given the multifaceted 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 all aspects of society, including its fundamental values, the knowledge and views of any small group of environmental professionals will inevitably be limited and contestable, as reflected in the diversity of views even among environmental advocates and experts. This does not mean that there is no place for experts in decision-making and policy-making 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 assume that better decisions will be made by a group of environmental rulers (“ecological guardians”), let alone by a single 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 unclear 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 better environmental decisions and policies, they may, to say the least, be reluctant to cede power to such a group unless it is carefully selected to make it unlikely that its decisions would threaten the interests of the already powerful. Where authoritarian leaders already exist (such as in “illiberal democracies”), it is also unlikely that they will cede power to a group of environmental advocates or experts, or to an environmentally minded competitor. More likely, authoritarian rulers or regimes will claim that they are already environmentally aware and committed. But even if a group of dedicated eco-authoritarian leaders were to come to power, how can we be sure that they would continue to give the highest priority to environmental values or imperatives rather than to their own interests? In 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 fundamental questions, but it cannot be detached from instrumental considerations. Ultimately, judgments of political systems depend on one’s values and their relative importance, which also vary with context. When their lives are truly at stake, or when people struggle to make a living, they 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, and accept any type of regime as long as it provides security, stability, and social order, enabling people to get on with their affairs and/or 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 may be. 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 them or impose constraints on the leadership, this may prove 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 do.
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 remains far from secure or guaranteed to survive. But people often only appreciate 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 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 significantly reformed to address this challenge more effectively. One line of thought holds 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 on 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 decentralising political power from nation-states to smaller political entities, based on the assumption that local communities are more motivated and better able to give environmental protection the priority it deserves, and accompanied by the 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 adopted to shape a particular democratic system. Some of these relate to the point often raised by advocates of eco-authoritarianism, namely 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 a curtailment of democracy or of political or human rights. Similarly, treating corporations as (legal) persons with (almost) the same political rights as individual citizens is an aberration first introduced in the United States, and its abolition would not weaken but strengthen democracy.[29] Democracy involves establishing rules that regulate freedoms to prevent some people from undermining the freedom of others. As Berlin noted, “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep”.[30]
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 within existing political systems. But arguing that we need an authoritarian system to do so presents a false dichotomy. In their actual forms (past and 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 bet on authoritarian systems when it comes to introducing such changes. Rather, a more promising and rewarding approach is to fundamentally reform 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 so far failed to transform their political-institutional systems to better accommodate environmental demands, given their role in managing many often-conflicting demands. But to make environmental protection and integration a core function, all states, whether democratic or authoritarian, will require major 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] 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.
[30] Berlin, Isaiah (1969), Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.xiv.