Democratising Democracy for Future Generations

The dominant strategies to protect future generations tend to be elitist in character: focused on empowering or constraining elected politicians and/or legal and technical experts. Examples include constitutional clauses, independent commissioners, alternative electoral rules and composition of legislative chambers. The direct involvement of citizens is downplayed. Implicit is an assumption that the public must be protected from itself and cannot be trusted to make long term decisions. This paper explores the extent to which participatory and deliberative democracy offer strategies for promoting the interests of future generations. Drawing on disparate examples such as the Aarhus convention, experiments with mini-publics and the requirement for public involvement in the Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, the paper considers how participatory and deliberative reforms could be the basis of a more robust strategy for building the legitimacy and capacity of democratic governance to deal with long-term policy challenges. Significantly, it is also a strategy for reinvigorating democracy itself for the long-term.