Contesting Consent: Contemporary Democracy and Ecological Crisis

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues that ecological problems and potential ecological crises expose serious deficiencies in the procedural and normative contours of liberal democratic practice. The contemporary contexts of globalisation and accelerating ecological depletion put novel and unprecedented pressures on these liberal democratic polities. Democracy's traditional claims to consent and legitimacy are openly challenged and contested in the light of the emergent ecological trajectory. These issues will be explored through three broad sections. Firstly, ‘legitimation crises’ and problems of consent are examined in the context of ecological (and associated social) imperatives. Some parallels are also drawn from feminist theory. Secondly, the changed meaning of bounded territoriality and the implications it exposes are examined in the light of contemporary ecological, economic and political ‘transboundariness’. Finally, a more participative and discursive democratic alternative is sketched. The claim defended is that more (substantive) democracy, not less, is required in order to mediate the development of ecologically unstainable social visions.