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Is the environment a polluter of democracy?

January 20, 2003

Sverker C. Jagers' dissertation Justice, Liberty and Bread-For All?, is based on a unique interdisciplinary collaborative effort between political science and physical resource theory. It applies new theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze whether sustainable development is possible within the framework of liberal democracy. The dissertation will be publicly defended January 31 at Göteborg University, Sweden.

Jagers shows that the alleged contradictions between the two largely stem from incomplete analyses of what sustainable development would entail in terms of social change and political decisions. Another factor that has consistently been ignored is the fact that there are different forms of liberal democracy.

Since environmental problems started to come to the fore in the 1960s, many social thinkers have maintained that sustainable development cannot be achieved in the prevailing political system of industrialized countries-liberal democracy. Support for this has been gathered from two sources: on the one hand, from reality, for example by identifying deficient institutions or unsuccessful /abrogated international environmental agreements in which western democracies have been involved, and, on the other hand, from theoretical arguments such as that positing that liberal democracy is based on values and principles, like individual liberty and ownership rights, that would be threatened if industrialized countries tried to attain sustainable development. Instead of liberal democracy, therefore, alternative political systems have been proposed. Several experts have claimed that an authoritarian political system is a precondition for achieving sustainable development. More democratically oriented thinkers have rather defended political systems in which citizens and interested parties are allowed to participate in the decision-making process to a much greater extent than is the case in liberal democracies of today.

In his dissertation Jagers calls into question the claim that sustainable development can never be combined with liberal democracy. Instead he draws the conclusion that in purely logical terms sustainable development can only be seen as totally irreconcilable with the form of liberal democracy that is based on classical liberalism. A strong social-liberal democracy, on the other hand, could readily encompass sustainable development within the framework of its fundamental values and principles.

This does not mean that sustainable development will actually be carried out under the aegis of liberal democracies. Besides the political will of citizens and politicians, what is required is that a series of social institutions be transformed and newly created. Whether this can be realized, however, is a practical political matter, and only time will tell whether it can succeed.

VetenskapsrÃ�det (The Swedish Research Council)

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