The Democracy-Decarbonization Dilemma

• In Event: The Mass Politics of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate policies tend to be politically unpopular. Accordingly, democratically elected politicians tend to be reluctant to pursue decarbonisation. In response, some scholars have proposed delegating climate policy-making powers to technocrats. This suggests a trade-off between decarbonisation and democracy. But in the long-run, pursuing one without the other is likely to be self-defeating: failure to decarbonise will lead to runaway climate change that undermines the ecological and social foundations of democracy; while technocratically imposing stringent climate policies will fuel the rise of right-wing populist parties hostile to climate action. We call this the Democracy-Decarbonization Dilemma. We explore a possible escape route: deepening democratic deliberation about climate policy. Deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) in the form of citizens’ assemblies focused on climate change, i.e. Climate Assemblies (CAs), have been touted as a means to increase public support for climate policy and increase the perceived democratic legitimacy of the policy-making process, hence escaping the dilemma. We propose a theory-driven causal model that delineates the mechanisms through which CAs could have such effects among the wider public. We test our model against the growing empirical literature on CAs specifically and DMPs more generally. We find mixed but overall encouraging evidence: the evidence suggests that, under certain conditions, CAs could build public support and acceptance for ambitious climate policy. To create these conditions, governments should increase the publicity of CAs, expand citizens’ opportunities to engage with them, and commit to take seriously their proposals. We conclude with a research agenda for deeply-democratic climate policy.

Authors

• Fergus Green, University College London

• Michele Zadra, University of Southampton