Enlightened foresight and election campaign finance

This paper argues that the private financing of election campaigns violates the requirements of intergenerational justice by privileging citizens able to draw on capital accumulated via legacy industries such a fossil fuel extraction. Intergenerational justice requires the equitable representation of generations (older and younger voters, children not yet eligible to vote, and possibly future generations), and to achieve this vis-à-vis future voters, enlightened foresight is demanded of those currently enfranchised. Election campaign finance regimes that allow donations from private sources are structurally organised to privilege older generations who have accumulated capital via obsolete and soon-to-be-obsolete industries. Where this is the case, fossil fuel interests will have a disproportionate impact on election campaigns. This is likely to obstruct the exercise of enlightened foresight that takes account of environmental threats to younger and future generations. The paper will bring together two bodies of work: the literature on intergenerational justice, and that on democratic electoral institution design. Part I of the paper will review the concept of intergenerational justice and its link with generational representation, drawing on existing research. Part II of the paper will assess the relationship between electoral institutions and ‘enlightened foresight’, a concept to be developed in this paper. In Part III, the argument against private campaign finance will be presented from the perspective of enlightened foresight.