Democracy, Autonomy, and Future Generations

Democracy is the answer to the question of how members of a polity should decide important collective questions, such as questions about justice, especially, but not only when they disagree about them. Democracy, we hold, is based on the value of personal autonomy, which is more fundamentally based on the values of freedom and equality. Autonomy grounds the right to make important decisions for oneself, but also, importantly, to take part, on equal terms, in those collective decisions that concerns oneself. This view of democracy is in line with the All affected principle of voting rights and has implications for whether future generations should be included in the demos. Future generations are clearly affected by many of the decisions that are made today. However future generations are not (yet) autonomous. If democracy is based on autonomy, future generations are not part of the demos. It could still be the case, though, that future generations must be taken into account in the sense that the preconditions for their autonomy should be secured.