Wong, James Ka-lei
(2012)
Green visions and democratic constraints: the possibility and design of democratic institutions for environmental decision-making.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis addresses a recurrent question of our time – whether democracy can
secure environmental sustainability – by drawing on literatures in the normative
theory of democracy, social choice theory and environmental politics. I propose a
basic, yet substantial organising principle, the ‘dilemma of green democracy’, which
maps out the possibility of realising green outcomes under democratic constraints.
Interdisciplinary ideas from neighbouring disciplines are also imported for the
purpose of studying the design of good environmental-democratic institutions. The
analytical framework is an integrated one, comprising formal choice theory and
normative democratic theory.
The first part of the thesis focuses on the possibility of environmentaldemocratic institutions. Chapter 1 introduces the dilemma of green democracy – a
conflict between three plausible desiderata for environmental democracy – and
suggests several proposals for avoiding the dilemma. It concludes that, as long as the
dilemma is resolved, it is logically possible to construct environmental-democratic
institutions. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 assess the desirability of the different proposals in
terms of procedure and outcome. The general conclusion is that whether these
proposals are desirable depends on a number of conditions and/or contextual factors.
The second part of the thesis examines the substantive issues in designing
environmental-democratic institutions. Chapter 5 discusses how the discursive
dilemma in social choice theory and the normative ends of deliberation constrain the
inputs of such institutions. Chapter 6 demonstrates how the concept of distributed
cognition, drawn from cognitive/computer science, reconciles the tension between
technocracy and democracy. Chapter 7 suggests how the theory of cognitive
dissonance, drawn from psychology, challenges the epistemic performance of
practicable (environmental-) deliberative-democratic institutions.
The overall conclusion is two-fold. First, democracy can, at least in principle,
secure environmental sustainability, provided that the dilemma of green democracy
is resolved. Second, interdisciplinary ideas are useful for designing good democratic
institutions for collective environmental decision-making. This conclusion has
implications not only for intellectual enquiry, but also for institutional design in
practice.
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