Representative democracy, empowered experts, and citizen participation: visions of green governing

Abstract

Reforming democratic political systems to handle environmental problems is one of the key political challenges of our time. Here, I analyse how local environmental officials in Sweden perceive the shortcomings of the current political system and what reforms they deem necessary to handle key environmental problems. While green political theory tends to focus on the need to deepen democracy through increased citizen participation, analysis of survey data shows that environmental officials, even though their perceptions of the current system's shortcomings are similar to those presented in the theoretical literature, are more likely to argue for increased expert influence than for direct citizen participation. This result is not easily explained as officials seeking to expand their power, as environmental officials have more complex perceptions of their roles in democracy. The different visions of green professionals and green theory highlight the importance of deliberation on green democratic reforms, including the potentially undemocratic consequences of empowering experts.

Keywords:

• green democracy
• green political theory
• environmental governing
• environmental reforms
• citizen participation
• local government officials

Acknowledgements

I thank the participants at the Sustainable Development Policy Research Seminar, Luleå University of Technology, 5 December 2011, and the Social and Political Studies of Climate Change Seminar, Örebro University, 15 December 2011, for their insightful and very helpful comments on earlier versions. I also gratefully acknowledge the very constructive comments of Jan Olsson, three anonymous referees, and the editors of Environmental Politics. This research was supported by the Swedish Energy Agency.

Notes

1. In this literature, scientific expertise is often described as positivistic, reductionist, instrumentally rational, and technical (Bäckstrand 2004). For an excellent discussion on the meaning of expertise, see Pellizzoni (2011).

2. For a more elaborated discussion of referendums compared to other deliberative forums, see Smith (2001).