Dissatisfied but Hopeful? Future-Oriented Attitudes and Climate Governance Preferences

Citizens widely perceive climate change as an existential threat alongside deep dissatisfaction with governmental responses. What does this combination mean for democratic attitudes? Existing research suggests crises and governmental dissatisfaction fuel demand for technocratic governance. Yet empirical findings on climate change are contradictory: studies document both heightened support for technocratic solutions and countervailing demands for democratizing climate politics through increased participation. This paper proposes that climate change's distinctive temporal character requires examining future-oriented democratic attitudes, not just current dissatisfaction. Climate change involves exceptionally long time horizons, high uncertainty, and demands for sustained commitment - features that may shape which governance arrangements citizens deem appropriate. We test two mechanisms: (1) beliefs about future governmental capacity to implement effective climate policies, and (2) collective hope, defined as shared belief that citizens working together can achieve meaningful climate action. Drawing on survey data from 1,500 respondents in Germany and Spain each, we identify distinct governance preferences and examine how future-oriented attitudes shape both whether and how strongly citizens prefer technocratic, participatory, or hybrid arrangements over representative decision-making. This research connects theoretical work on democratic futures and promissory legitimacy to empirical studies of institutional preferences, advancing our understanding of how citizens' hopes and fears about democracy's future shape their preferences for climate governance reform.