The climate challenge and its contestation in democracies: Advancing the conceptual frontiers

The task of achieving rapid, sustained and equitable responses to the climate emergency poses significant challenges for decision-makers around the world. Established systems of decision-making and governance, including in Europe, have failed to deliver appropriate policy responses at sufficient scale and speed. This paper will present initial research undertaken within a new Horizon Europe RETOOL project - Strengthening Democratic Governance for Climate Transitions, which is commencing in February 2024. The project seeks to answer two overarching questions: (i) What systems of democratic governance enable and underpin fair, inclusive, and effective climate transitions? and (ii) How can responses to the climate crisis be used to strengthen and reinvigorate democratic governance? Drawing on a wide-ranging review and analysis of the literature on democratic theory and deliberative democracy, climate change and democracy, multilevel and polycentric climate governance, and challenges to democracy in Europe, the paper will undertake three main analytical steps. First, we will review the main conditions and characteristics of effective climate transitions, focusing on the roles that governance institutions play across types of democracy. Second and building on the previous step, we will identify the main conflicts arising from the climate challenge in terms of the key framework concepts of the RETOOL project: participation; knowledge; justice; accountability; and effectiveness. Third, we will examine the implications of these conflicts for democratic governance in the context of major challenges to democracy such as the rise of authoritarianism and populism. The paper will conclude by mapping the research terrain of the RETOOL project, discussing how the conceptual work presented will underpin our planned empirical research across diverse domains of democratic institutions.