Democracy for the Anthropocene? Future imaginations in the Swedish ‘Climate Parliament’

In this paper, we explore how climate activists imagine democracy as it faces a dual crisis in the Anthropocene: democratic states seem unable to address climate change while resulting climate disruptions threaten the foundations of modern democracies. At the same time, the climate movement struggles to overcome the contemporary ‘crisis of imagination’, which can be interpreted as general failure to present visions that at the same seem possible and legitimate from the point of view of the general population while addressing what necessarily needs to be done to stay within ‘safe’ limits of climate change. Through the case of the 2022 Swedish 'Climate Parliament' (Klimatriksdagen 2022), which brings together 137 proposals for addressing the current climate crisis, we explore how environmental organizations as well as engaged individual citizens consider the tensions between the ecologically ‘necessary’, the politically ‘possible’, and what is democratically desirable. While such questions have long been the terrain of specialist discussions between political theorists and public participation specialists, Klimatriksdagen 2022 provided a unique view into how engaged citizens themselves think about these tensions - particularly in terms of temporality and agency: who should do what to avoid a future of runaway climate change? What (if any) democratic processes and governance arrangements are proposed to realize envisioned societal transformations? In addition to the proposal texts, the analysis is based on observations of the Klimatriksdagen event and follow-up interviews with a selection of the proposal authors, in which they develop their thoughts on the democratic implications of their visions. A provisional finding is that in many proposals ‘the transition’ is perceived as a predefined goal, and that citizen engagement is largely imagined in terms of garnering support for that transition, or in terms of nudging citizens to no longer form an obstacle to the transition. However, some proposals and interviewees develop ideas about more open-ended democratic processes.