Sustainable Prosperity and Democratic Theory and Practice

As environmental crises, most notably climate change, become ever more severe, voices are reappearing that call for authoritarian solutions: Democracy, so the argument goes, has proven to be too slow to respond to urgent threats, and so a stronger, authoritarian hand is needed to push through the necessary socio-political changes. In this paper, we respond to this charge by revisiting the role of democracy within a transition to sustainable prosperity. We argue it is not democracy as such that is the problem, but rather democracy in its current form is itself constrained by structural and discursive forces including the almost hegemonic status of capitalist politico-economic discourses and tendencies towards short-termism in political decision-making. Thus, instead of advocating further constraints on democracy, we explore new institutional and societal spaces that can revitalise democracy, ameliorating existing constraints and infusing sustainability politics with new ways of thinking. In particular we highlight the potential promise of participatory and deliberative innovations, prefigurative politics, reform of established structures and institutions, and deliberative systems and cultural change.