Democratic Authority and Institutional Innovations for the Future

The question I shall address in this paper is how, if at all, democracy can be redesigned to better secure the demands of intergenerational justice, given the (apparent) incompatibility between the ideas of democratic authority and those of institutional innovations that impede or run counter to the will of the majority. In order to secure the interests of future generations, proposals for how democracy can be redesigned to better secure the interests of future generations have been devised under the assumption that fulfilling the will of the majority will not necessarily satisfy the demands of intergenerational justice. Several proposals put forward thus far call for introducing institutional innovations that will impede or run counter to the will of the majority. For instance, one proposal argues that there should be administrative bodies or agencies that have the power to exercise a veto to laws or policies if those laws or policies are contrary to the interests of future generations. Another proposal defends the idea of a trusteeship under which a commission or a citizens’ assembly is empowered to delay laws or policies that risk damaging the democratic capacity of future generations. Although these proposals for redesigning democracy are attractive in their potential to safeguard the interests of future generations, it is not immediately clear that they are compatible with conceptions of democratic authority. The claim that democratically-made decisions have authority is widely accepted and has recently gained support. In other words, the claim holds that the democratic provenance of laws and policies at least sometimes confers a duty to comply with those laws and policies on the citizens and officeholders of a democratic state. Furthermore, some believe that citizens and officeholders should comply with laws and policies even if those laws or policies are somewhat unjust. If this view is correct, the injustice of the outcome of a democratic decision-making procedure is not sufficient to justify impeding the will of the majority. It is, therefore, unclear whether or not it is morally permissible to actively prevent democratic states from implementing a law or policy on the basis that it is intergenerationally unjust. To answer the question of how democracy can be designed to better secure the interests of future generations, I summarize a number of proposals for redesigning democracy that introduce institutional innovations that impede or run counter to the will of the majority for securing the demands of intergenerational justice. Then, I discuss the plausibility of the conceptions of democratic authority that require the citizens and officeholders of a democratic state to comply with laws and policies even if they are somewhat unjust. Finally, I explore how democracy can be redesigned by balancing the demands of intergenerational justice and the ideas of democratic authority.