Leveraging Democratic Innovations to Overcome Sustainability Challenges

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt has been made to dig out how democratic innovations can be leveraged to overcome sustainability challenges. In contemporary world, Liberal democracies of global north have failed to address the sustainability challenges with the urgency and commitment required for such a mammoth challenge. On the one hand, democratic engagements are important for collective actions, yet on the other hand, many critics state that existing democratic engagements struggle to effectively respond to the sustainability threats. Particularly, this paper focuses on how democratic innovations can address three sustainability challenges including the tendency towards Path Dependent Gradualism, the dynamics of Technocratic Political Dialectic and the restrictions levied by the Cognitive Governance Constraints. We have given examples of participatory budgeting, material participation and deliberative mini-publics to show that these democratic innovations have the capacity to go beyond facilitating the political discussions. These democratic innovations can help reduce polarization, turn sustainability objectives into reality by adopting them in daily practices, and enable the society to forecast alternative future pathways. In addition, we present critical assessment of these democratic innovations. This research recommends that democracy and sustainability can be reconciled by transcending beyond purely technological fixes of sustainability issues and actively placing citizens at the core of every political debate. We have also given various avenues for future research to dive deeper in participatory forms of sustainability governance.