Goodin Enfranchising the Earth

Political Studies (1996), XLIV, 835-849

Enfranchising the Earth, and its Alternatives

ROBERT E. GOODIN* Australian National University

Greens have always favoured grass-roots participatory democracy, but it has never been clear in terms of their fundamental environmental ethic why they should. An argument for doing so is developed in familiar liberal terms of equal protection of interests. First it is shown that nature has interests as deserving of protection as anyone elses. Then it is shown that notions of encapsulated interests, discredited in other connections, are the appropriate way of conceptualizing those interests politically. Finally, it is argued that discursive participatory democratic practices are most likely to evoke such encapsulated natural interests and secure representation for them in political deliberations.

The green movement has much to say about democracy. It is committed to decentralization, and through that to participatory grass-roots democracy. It is committed to the social and political inclusion of excluded groups, ranging from gipsies to gastarbeiters to women. It is committed to open party structures and opposed to ossified oligarchies, in so far as it is prepared to countenance a properly green political party at all.

Much has already been written describing green views on these matters. My intention here is not to describe or explicate familiar green positions but, rather, to rationalize them. I shall be trying to link those familiar propositions about green democracy to the greens other more fundamental values. There are various particular ways of fleshing out fundamental green values. For the broader purposes of this article, it is best to be maximally noncommittal about that. It is enough for present purposes simply to say that greens, to be properly green at all, must necessarily attach value to naturally-occurring objects, independently of the values which we humans (presently; attach to them.2

The problem is this. None of the familiar green views about decentralized, inclusive, participatory democracy fall obviously or automatically out of that fundamental green value premise - either in its general form, or in any of its more specific formulations. On current accounts, the genuinely political aspects of green political theory really do seem only loosely linked to the distinctively

* I am grateful to John Dryzek for discussions out of which this paper has grown, and for further comments on it from him, Andy Dobson and the referees for this journal. Much of it was first drafted on the road, and my travelling companions to Urbana and Prague - Brian Barry and Diane Gibson, respectively - also left their marks. My own is set out in Green Political Theory (Oxford, Polity, 1992), but nothing in the present article turns on those particular formulations.

That formulation intentionally straddles everything from the deepest green ecocentrism to the shallowest green anthropocentrism of a temporally-extended sort. The argument to be developed here for green democracy ought be equally effective at hooking into green values anywhere along that broad spectrum. 0 Political Studies Association 1996. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK and 238 Main Street. Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.

836 Enfranchising the Earth

ecological ethic that lies at the logical core of that i d e ~ l o g y . ~ The aim of this article is to provide that missing link between green values and green democracy.

My argument rests on the familiar liberal notion of equal protection of interests, modified in two ways. On one side (in Section I), that familiar liberal value premise is buttressed by an expanded view of what sorts of interests should count. Specifically, natural objects are shown to have interests as deserving of protection as are those of natural individuals of the human sort. This is obviously crucial, given the nature of the environmental values which form the core of green concerns. On the other side (in Section 11), familiar liberal propositions about equal protection of interests are stretched to admit of novel mechanisms for politically securing that goal. Specifically, notions of encapsulated interests, discredited in other connections, are rehabilitated for purposes of.environmenta1 protection; and notions of discursive democracy are made to do work in unexpected ways in the service of that goal. We are left with a defence of green democracy - decentralized, inclusive, participatory in just the ways green theorists wish, but far more firmly linked to core green values than any of the others presently on offer.

I. Towards the Equal Protection of Environmental Interests Let us take as our starting point the broad green proposition set out above: natural objects have value. That seems to be the unexceptionable core of green value t h e ~ r y . ~ Let us then make a bridge from that value proposition to political conclusions through the following thought: in so far as those values are akin to interests, it follows from standard democratic theory that those values should be politically represented, along with all others.

That bridging proposition both deserves and demands elaboration, being at one and the same time non-obvious yet central to my argument. Certainly the sorts of objective values which even moderately deep ecologists see as inhering in natural objects differ radically from the sorts of things we ordinarily think of as interests. But here our habits of thought may simply mislead us. One reason may be that a powerfully mentalist notion of interests, though formally discredited and disavowed, nonetheless informally lingers at the back of our minds. One of the first moves in the modern analytics of interests is to draw a sharp distinction between interest in the sense of what one takes an interest in and in the sense of what one has an interest in. Eliding the two is a clear conceptual error. It empties the space between the notion of a want and an interest, thereby depriving the latter concept of any distinctive role or any independent analytic leverage. To do so is not only untrue to ordinary linguistic usage but also, and more importantly, counterproductive of any interest-based political theory more nuanced than the crassest form of hedonic (or, at best, preference) utilitarianism.

Kicking away those mentalist props, we are left with a notion of interests as much more akin to objective values. They may, on certain accounts, retain a

I defend that claim in Green Political Theory and will not elaborate it here, devoting my present efforts instead to the more positive task of supplying a linkage that I there bemoan is lacking.

It is unexceptionable at least among greens themselves, which is all that is relevant here. Remember, what I here hope to establish is less the objective correctness and more the internal coherence of green political thought. f? Political Studies Aswridtion. 1996

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certain subsequent subjective component. That is to say, those things we now deem to be objectively in someones interests may be precisely those things in which we think s/he will, or may, later come to see as being subjectively of interest. But those subjective warrants for the present ascription of interests will come only later, if they come at all. The only warrant we can have in the present for asserting that something is in someones interests are considerations having to do with the objective attributes and values of those things, and with the ways in which those values and attributes relate to other values and attributes of other things in the world.5

Thus it seems fairly straightforward that all interests point to objective values.6 But perhaps not all objective values point to interests, or anyway not to interests that ought be politically represented. That proposition entails two quite distinct claims which ought be discussed in turn.

The latter claim - that there are certain interests which ought not be represented politically - can be dismissed relatively more summarily. The whole thrust of modern democratic theory is to reject arbitrary delimitation of the subjects whose interests are to be politically considerable. We may still tell ourselves fancy stories about some peoples interests being subsumed in and best represented by others, as we once did with wives and still do with childrens (more of which later, in Section I1 below). But the democratic slogan of the modern era firmly enjoins equal consideration of interest^.^ It is simply no longer acceptable to disregard certain interests, simply on account of whose interests they are (blacks or womens or whomsoevers).8

I shall not reargue that hard-won case here. I merely register the victory and piggyback on it to say that the same goes for environmental interests. In so far as natural objects have objective values that can properly be construed as interests, those ought be politically represented just as any others. To deny them representation merely on account of whose they are would be as unacceptable as it would be to deny other interests representation because of whose they are. It would, in the contemporary phrase, amount to sheer human chauvini~rn.~ That form of chauvinism is as offensive as any other, and for broadly the same

Among them, perhaps, human cognitive structures, in ways which will be explicated below. Most defensible theories of interests build on this connection, as does my relational version of green value theory. If you are attracted to that theory of interests (as I am) and you are also attracted to green values (as I am) then I submit that that is the way to construe your green values. But that is another story, told elsewhere. See: Goodin, Green Political Theory, pp. 41-54; D. H. Regan, Duties of preservation in B. G. Norton (ed.), The Preservation of Species (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 195-220; and, on interests more generally, Robert E. Goodin, Utilitariunism us a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995). ch. 1 and Goodin and Diane Gibson, Rights, Young and Old, Oxford Journal of LegulStudies, forthcoming. To all except postmodernists, perhaps - but for the sort of postmodernist tempted to deny that proposition, people would have no interests which are genuinely different from mere desires anyway. Represented in the professional discourse of political theory by, e.g., R. A. Dahl, Procedural democracy in P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (eds), Philosophy, Politics & Society, 5th series (Oxford, Blackwell, 1979), pp. 97-133 and C . R. Beitz, Political Equality (Princeton NJ, Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1989).

The partial, but discreditable, exception is foreigners; but even that disregard is typically, if perhaps disingenuously, justified, through the thought that those interests are represented elsewhere, and it would be wrong to double-count by including them here as well as there.

To employ the telling phrase coined by R. and V. Routley, Against the inevitability of human chauvinism in K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre (eds), Ethics and Problems of the 2fst Century (Notre Dame IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 36-59. 0 Political Studies Association, I996


reasons ~ to do with showing arbitrary preference for some things over others with interests of their own.'O

If we want to resist that conclusion, we must therefore fall back on the other challenge - that not all objective values give rise to interests at all. But why should that be so? Clearly, it cannot have anything to do with the peculiar powers of agency ordinarily possessed by humans but not by animals or trees or rocks. The notion of an interest was concocted legally precisely for use in fiduciary settings where beneficiaries of a trust (underage minors, mental incompetents and so on) lack ordinary powers of agency. If the notion of interests could not apply in such settings, then guardians and trustees would have nothing left legally to guide them in the exercise of their trust. Fiduciary duties and the law of trusts would simply disappear.

In the end, I suspect the reason we think of interests paradigmatically in connection with human beings (and perhaps cognate corners of the animal kingdom) is closely akin to the move dismissed so summarily above. We intuitively suppose that objective goods do not themselves constitute interests. Rather, other sorts of beings partake of those objective values which they embody, and it is this potential for a particular sort of interaction between objectively valuable object and subjectively equipped appreciator to which the notion of interest refers." This would explain why noasentient beings, or sentient beings lacking certain cognitive equipment, might be said to lack interests of their own, even if it is nonetheless agreed that they possess objective value.

But while those things lack interests in their own right, their objective valuableness (when brought into conjunction with other beings with the right cognitive equipment) is what causes those things to be in the interests of those other beings. Thus there is still a tight connection between objective value and interests even on this analysis which tries, with some success, to drive a wedge between them. Objective values are the sources - indeed, the only sources ~ of interests. Any objective value may potentially come to be in some agent's interests, and only objective values may do so.

It is not as if the interaction with the cognitive equipment of the value appreciator adds nothing in the process. In the parallel case in epistemology, it might credibly be claimed that truths are true independently of their being recognized as true.12 The case of objective values-cum-interests is not like that. The interaction with cognitively equipped appreciators does add something, over and above the sheer existence of objective value; and whatever it adds transforms objective values into interests. The question is just what is the character of that which is added. There may be many ways of answering that question. However we do so, my point is just this: in the case of objective values, what is added through interaction with the cognitively equipped appreciator - whatever it is - is nothing of value. All the values were already there.

l o The disanalogy, of course, is that all those other forms of chauvinism - racial or sexual or whatever - denigrate other people in some way or another. Perhaps what the principle in view requires is not equal consideration of interests tout court but merely equal consideration of each person's interests. I return to this issue at the end of this section.

" This is to adapt to the context of interests arguments from Regan 'Duties of preservation' and Goodin, Green Political Theory, pp. 41 -54.

l 2 Others would deny that claim, of course. On these issues, see J. Dancy and E. Sosa (eds), A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992). 9 Political Studies Association. 1996


The question then arises, why should we respect interests, except because they are of value? And if all the value they contain is imparted by objective values, why respect interests rather than the values upon which they rest, in so far as those two differ? Interaction with cognitively equipped appreciators may be required to transform objective values into interests. But if no value, strictly speaking, is added in the process - and if the reason we respect interests is that they are of value - then that move has backfired. It has succeeded in driving a wedge between interests and objective values, but it has done so in such a way as to leave us with no reason to respect interests in preference to values. Quite the contrary.

At root, the issue comes down to this: why take political notice of what is of value to people rather than just what is of vafue? We started out looking for some principled defence of our political systems human chauvinism, of the insistent preference it shows for human values over all others. For a moment it seemed as if we had found that principle in the analytics of interests, for arguably only humans (and perhaps cognate corners of the animal kingdom) have the sort of cognitive equipment to transform objective values into interests. But while those analytics of interests succeed in distinguishing interests from objective values, they have left us without any ready reason for respecting interests over objective values - and, indeed, every reason for respecting objective values over interests.

Another way of stating that conclusion might be to say that while people (and others cognitively similarly equipped) have interests, objective values are interests. On that formulation the challenge that emerges is to justify why, if the protection of interests is to be our central concern in politics, such protection is afforded not to interests directly but to the people who serve as mere carriers of them.

There are of course pragmatic reasons aplenty for giving votes to people rather than interests. For one thing, disembodied interests are simply incapable of marking ballot papers. But if pragmatics were all that justified the practice - if respecting peoples expressions of their interests were justified merely as an indirect means of securing respect for as many potential interests as pragmatically possible - then it would be an open question whether there might pragmatically be some even better way of securing more respect for a broader range of potential interests. After all, our political theory is interest-regarding rather than merely want-regarding precisely because we know just how poor judges people can sometimes be of their own interest, and we institute various forms of indirect democracy and constitutional constraints to protect against just such fallible judgment^.'^ If the aim of our political theory and practice is to protect interests, then there must surely be a case - born of similar logic - for instituting mechanisms to protect them more directly, rather than through the fallible judgment of those who are, at one and the same time, possibly most involved and least informed. Both facts can, in different ways, bias perceptions of true interests.

The best principled defence for respecting interests via respecting the people whose interests they are has to do with the value of respecting people as something independently valuable, quite apart from any instrumental role it

l 3 See my Liberalism and the best judge principle, Political Studies, 38 (1990), 181-95 and Democracy, preferences and paternalism, Policy Sciences, 26 (1993), 229-47 and the further references contained therein. 0 Political Studies Association, 1996


plays in protecting other values-cum-interests. Let us concede without argument that autonomy and dignity are values, as objective and as compelling as any others. But dignity and autonomy are not, they cannot conceivably be, the only things with objective value in the universe.

The more heavily we weight that value against others, the more we would want to rely on traditional mechanisms of respecting interests via respecting people whose interests they are, and the more we would be willing to tolerate imperfections in that as a system for securing full protection for all potential interests. But unless we implausibly accord that value absolute priority over all others, we should still (to some greater or lesser extent) be sensitive to that models imperfections and be prepare& to switch to some other more direct mechanism for securing full protection of all potential interests if those imperfections are sufficiently great and the alternatives sufficiently promising.

11. Mechanisms for Representing Environmental Interests That long excursis into the analytics of interests and objective values serves to establish the first key step of my argument, which is that natures interests are as deserving of protection as are anyone or anything elses. The objective values which greens see in naturally-occurring objects can be seen as akin to interests of the sort which ordinary democratic theory demands be accorded equal consideration. l 4

At the level of political principle, the implications are clear enough. If (1) we are committed to a minimalist notion of democracy, understood merely as the equal consideration of interests, and (2) we agree with the minimalist green proposition that naturally-occurring objects have objective value of some sort or another, then ( 3 ) ordinary democratic theory commits us to equal consideration of natures interests.

At the level of political practice, however, implications are less clearcut. Even accepting that our principles require us to try to ensure equal consideration for natures interests, it is not at all obvious what might be the most appropriate political mechanisms for doing so.

At first brush, the ordinary democratic impulse might seem to be of little help here. Over the years we have heard any number of arguments for extending the equal consideration of interests to an everwidening range of subjects. The action implication standardly associated with those arguments has invariably been simply to extend the suffrage. If there are excluded subjects whose interests deserve equal consideration in political deliberations, then the obvious solution is literally to include them in those deliberations. The standard way to include excluded interests, politically, is simply to enfranchise them.15

Following that familiar formula would seem to suggest that we ought literally enfranchise nature in order to secure equal political consideration for its interests. To many that will look almost like a reductio ad absurdum. Ballots for whales? Absurd, they will scoff. Whales do not talk: not to us, anyway. They

l4 Akin here serves to straddle identity and analogy. Of course, it has been argued above that insofar as natures objective values differ from interests, they actually command more rather than less respect - so little harm will be done conflating the two cases in this way.

l5 For examples, see R . E. Goodin, Motivaring Political Morality (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), ch. 5 and R. Bendix and S. Rokkan, The extension of citizenship to the lower classes, in R. Bendix (ed.), Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York, Wiley, 1964). pp. 14- 104. R Political Studies Association. 1996

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do not mark ballot papers. They do not have interests - or anyway, they do not communicate them to us clearly enough for us ever to know whether someone entrusted with representing them is discharging that fiduciary responsibility well or badly. Or so cynics might say.

The first two propositions are true enough, but the third does not follow from them. Christopher Stones rejoinder is a powerful one: it is a lot easier for my lawn to communicate to me that it would be in its interests to be watered than it is for the United States to communicate to the Attorney General that it is in its interests for A1 Capone to be prosecuted.16 Like the Attorney General, those entrusted with protecting natures interests can often enough surmise those interests tolerably well and act upon them politically with some confidence.

Representation of natures interests by others who are entrusted with their care will indeed be required. We cannot literally enfranchise nature and let it tend its interests for itself politically. A direct democracy of the birds and bees and boulders is simply not on the cards. But the reason is much the same as the reason that a direct democracy involving all generations (Burkes living and dead and not yet born) is not on the cards, or that direct democratic representation of the interests of infants and mental incompetents is not on the cards.

In all those cases - and the environmental one as well - the barriers to directly enfranchising those subjects are ones of practicality, not desirability. It is not as if those interests are less deserving of consideration. It is merely that their carriers cannot, for one reason or another, speak for themselves in pressing those interests politically. What is absurd is to suggest that they can - to suggest that we could read votes off the babbling of infants or of streams, either. But the absurdity of that suggestion does not translate into any absurdity in the idea that their interests ought be represented, by others as necessary.

Thus, enfranchising nature is indeed the ideal which we should hold firmly in view. We should do so in full knowledge that it is an ideal in the strongest sense of the term. It is infeasible, taken literally. But it is none the less desirable for its being infeasible in any literal sense. And that recognition, in turn, should lead us to start looking for mechanisms by which we might - less literally, less directly - approximate that ideal.

Incorporating Natures Interests in those of Others The vision of that infeasible ideal of literally enfranchising nature leads us to start thinking through forms of second-best democracy, tailored to realizing that unattainable ideal as best we practically can. My first proposal, here, is that we ought actually warm to a class of mechanisms we have historically learned to loathe. Those, generically, are mechanisms that involve incorporating or subsuming the interests of one agent within those of another. The basic idea is just this. Suppose that As interests are wholly encapsulated within Bs: everything in which A has an interest is also in Bs interest, as well. Suppose,

l 6 Should trees have standing? Southern California Law Review, 45 (1973), 450-501 at 471. Or as John Dryzek puts it, If the topsoil on which my crops depend is shrinking, then clearly nature is telling me something, Rational Ecology (Oxford, Blackwell, 1987), p. 207.

They all have interests which we ought to protect, whether or not they might be said to have rights strictly speaking. See J. Feinberg, The rights of animals and unborn generations in W. T. Blackstone (ed.), Philosophy & Environmental Crisis (Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1974), pp. 43-68. 0 Political Studies Association. 1996


now, that B is enfranchised but A is not. Does that matter? Arguably not, because B - in using Bs own vote to further Bs own interests - will also, in effect, be looking after As interests as well.

Historically, this model has found some distinctly disreputable uses. Slaves and servants interests were, in just such ways, encapsulated within those of the master. Pre-Edwardian wives, having no independent legal personality apart from that of their husbands, saw their interests incorporated within those of their husbands. Thanks to this model of incorporated interests, politics - far from providing a remedy to those unfortunate facts of sociological subordina- tion - served merely to reinforce them. The political inference drawn via that model from those sociological facts was that, so long as the subordinates interests really were fully incorporated in those of an enfranchised master, then the master could be entrusted to exercise that franchise in such a way as to protect subordinates interests as well as the masters own.

We rightly baulk at those examples, on various grounds. We baulk at the political inferences. Even if subordinates interests are wholly encapsulated in their masters own, it is preposterous to suppose that the master will weigh those other interests fully on a par with the masters own in exercising the franchise. It may well have been in the interests of slave owners not to destroy their property by killing their slaves, but that did not stop them from beating and abusing them in a variety of less dramatic ways; and much the same would hold true for the sort of political protection extended to them through their interests being incorporated politically within their masters own.

Moreover, we baulk at the sociological facts being stipulated. There is something deeply wrong with social arrangements which allow one person - slave or servant or wife - to be so wholly subordinated to another as to make that model of subsumed interests plausible. And we may well reject the political implications drawn by the model as a strategy for altering those sociological facts. We may well want to extend the franchise to presently subordinated groups in the hopes that giving them electoral independence will eventually lead to their greater sociological independence as well. Votes are, or can be, levers for forcing social change.

Slaves and servants and Victorian wives certainly do represent an unacceptable - illegitimate - side of incorporated interests. It is unacceptable (illegitimate) for them to be so wholly subordinated that their interests are wholly encapsulated within those of the master; and, furthermore, it is unacceptable (illegitimate), even given that fact, for their interests to be politically represented wholly through the votes of those whose interests incorporate their own.

There is, however, another side to the story. In a variety of other cases it seems perfectly acceptable and legitimate, if oniy because it seems absolutely inevitable, for one persons interests to be both sociologically encapsulated and politically incorporated within anothers. We have no objections to one persons interests being politically represented by another is that persons interests truly and legitimately are somehow wholly incorporated within the others.*

Sometimes (as with almost-mature children or colonies) there is a developmental case to be made for giving people the vote as a means of perfecting their skills, even if it makes no practical difference (in the short term) to political outcomes. Such Millean considerations are, however, absent in the case of nature. G Poliiical Studies Association, 1996


Consider in this connection the example, as classical as any of those others, of under-age children. Minors (very young minors, anyway) are virtually nowhere enfranchised. That is not to say that they have no interests of their own. Nor is it to say that those interests are properly considered by the political process. It is merely to say that we assume that parents speak and act on their behalf. Their parents have the vote, and we trust them to use it (at least in part) to protect their childrens irlterests as well as their own. Parents are presumed (as husbands alone once were presumed) to cast their ballots on behalf of the whole household. l9

Parental actions and choices, in politics as elsewhere, may serve well or badly those other interests which are subsumed within their own. Sometimes (perhaps often) we might suppose that the childs interests are better served by altering social arrangements so as to reconstitute the caring unit, substituting for the nuclear family extended families or foster care or collectivist child rearing. In so far as we suppose that parents are inadequate representatives of their childrens interests, in more political settings, we might concoct notions of childrens rights to be promoted by courts and others, acting as guardians of childrens interests.

My point here is not that parents are perfect protectors of their childrens interests, or that they are perfect political spokespersons for them either: it is merely that someone has to take on that role. The incapacity of minors to be politically included in their own right, to speak for themselves in collective affairs, is not socially constituted to any important extent. There is nothing illegitimate in the social arrangements that lead to their interests being politically incorporated within and subsumed by someone elses. There is nothing illegitimate, in those circumstances, in letting such others speak on the childs behalf.

Another even more dramatic example in much the same vein concerns future generations. The problem of trying to get a sensible statement of their interests from the merely immature pales when compared to the problem of getting any such statement from those not yet born. Transparently, they cannot speak for themselves. Their interests can only be made felt in current political deliberations by being incorporated into the interests of, and forming the basis of votes by, presently extant people.20

Both in the cases of young children and of future generations, the model of incorporated interests seems legitimate largely because it seems inevitable. Assuming the interests of those people deserve to be taken politically into account at all (and it seems hard to argue that they do not), and given that those people (by reason of immaturity or nonexistence) are unable to speak for themselves, someone else simply has to be assigned to speak for them. Incorporating those (young or nonexistent) peoples interests within someone elses may be decidedly second-best. But since the first-best solution of letting them speak for themselves is infeasible, our choice seems to be either to settle for some such second-best solution or else to resign ourselves to the even worse situation of their interests going unrepresented altogether.

l9 F. Schoeman, Rights of children, rights of parents and the moral basis of the family, Ethics,

*O Likewise, perhaps the interests of foreigners can only or anyway best be made to be felt domestically only by being incorporated in the interests (through, for example, playing on the conscience) of those who are electors inside our own country.

91 (19801, 6-19.

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The purpose of these examples is to break down the view of democracy as necessarily entailing one person, one vote, with each person representing his or her own interests and trusting to the aggregation process alone to yield the right result for us all. That is a familiar model, with many attractions but also many familiar problems.* I do not want to belabour any of those familiar problems, which have grown increasingly fancy and complex. Nothing fancy or complex is required for my purposes here. The problems in that model to which I point do not derive from peculiarities of the institutional processing of peoples preferences. They derive instead from the antecedent conceptualization of persons and preferences.

At root, I query the image of democracy as necessarily entailing each person representing his or her own interests, and those exclusively. It might be empirically more realistic, as well as being morally and politically preferable, to think instead of democracy as a process in which we all come to internalize the interests of each other and indeed of the larger world around us.22 Incorporat- ing the interests of others within our own might not be such a bad thing, at least in so far as the alternative is that those interests would otherwise simply be ignored.

That would seem to constitute the best hope, practically, for environmental protection. Much though natures interests may deserve to be enfranchised in their own right, that is simply impracticable. People, and people alone, can exercise the vote. The best we can hope for is that natures interests will come to be internalized by a sufficient number of people with sufficient leverage in the political system for natures interests to secure the protection that they deserve.

That is to say, in the first instance, that natures interests must, of necessity, be represented by people qua voters.23 It is to say, in the second instance, that natures interests will be represented by people only if those people come to internalize and incorporate natures interests within their own ~ only if, in the weakest sense of interests, people come to take an interest in natures interests. That is not to say that people will necessarily internalize natures interests completely or represent them perfectly. Still less is it to say that natures interests are necessarily limited to the overlap that they have with human interests, even the interests of the most sympathetic humans. Slippage between the two is inevitable. But politically it is also unavoidable. There is simply no other way in which natures interests can find political representation except through being politically incorporated within the interests of sympathetic humans capable of bringing political pressure to bear on natures behalf.

The further Consequences of Participatory Democracy The goal, then, is twofold. We want to find some way of inducing people to internalize the interests of nature, and we want to find some way of inducing the political system to be maximally responsive to those expressions of interests. In

2 Among the latter are problems of agenda-setting, boundary drawing and gerrymandering together with the raft of irrationalities which social choice theorists have exposed in virtually all aggregation rules.

22 In ways suggested in, for example, J . J . Mansbridge (ed.), Beyond Self-intrrrsr (Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 1990).

23 And in other fora as well, as in the case of friends of nature being empowered to sue in the courts (Stone, Should trees have standing?). C Political Studies Association. 1996


what follows, I shall offer reasons - not previously adduced by green theorists themselves - for believing that preferred green forms of direct, grass-roots participatory democracy do just that.

Participatory democracy, of course, does many things. Perhaps the most important is that it serves, in the first instance, to break down concentrations of power. The simple fact that the franchise is extended widely and exercised vigorously in such a system means that, in a participatory democracy, the powerful cannot insulate themselves from the consequences of their action.24 At the very least, it means that they cannot reliably get their own way without being called to question. People have to justify themselves to others in a participatory setting.

Two things follow, one at the systemic level, the other at the individual level. Both have potentially important consequences for the incorporation of natures interests in the political process through participatory democracy.

Participatory democracy makes the political system more responsive to green values because the more others there are who have to be given an explanation, the more likely it is that there will be someone among them who internalizes the interests of nature. The larger and more diverse the electorate, the more likely is there to be some nature-lover who is going to ask, What about the effects of all this on nature? If in a participatory democracy advocates must answer all comers, and if in a participatory democracy there is more likely to be someone coming at problems from natures perspective, then a participatory democracy would indeed be more likely to incorporate natures interests.

That first system-level point presupposes almost nothing by way of empirical sociology. Instead, it works through the analytics of participatory democracy and the law of large numbers. The analytics of participatory democracy are such that, at least in the idealized limiting case, every proposal has to be justified to everyone: a unanimity (or virtual unanimity) rule prevails. The law of large numbers serves to guarantee that, at least among very large electorates, virtually every point of view is likely to be represented.

Of course, such quasi-analytic truths can sometimes be empirically false. Real electorates are not so large and diverse as that: there may, empirically, be no friends of nature in any given constituency (though reasons will be given below for supposing that participatory democracy will also evoke those values, among others). Furthermore, even the staunchest advocate of participatory democracy would allow us to close off discussion and come to a decision well before absolutely everyone has been satisfied, well before complete unanimity has been achieved. Where those limits of realism begin to bite, and how hard, perhaps amount to contested facts of a broadly empirical sort. But at least in the limiting case it seems clear enough how participatory democracy might make the political system more responsive to green ends, among others.25

The second mechanism works at the individual level and requires rather more elaboration. At first brush, it might seem more dependent upon empirical

24 Goodin, Motivating Political Morality, chs 5 and I . 2s Intuitively, we might suppose that unanimity rules are most useful in blocking environ-

mentally destructive action but that some less demanding decision rule would be more useful where environmental protection requires active intervention. Remember, however, that not doing something is itselfjust one option among the many that must be voted upon: it should in no way be a privileged default position which will win if nothing else does. See D. W. Rae, The limits of consensual decision, American Political Science Review, 69 (1979, 1270-94. 0 Political Studies Association. 1996


speculations about personal and social psychology. In the end, however, what at first seemed to be mere psychological speculations turn out to be central to the analytics of how interpersonal communication works at all.

This second, individual-level argument for putting participatory democracy in the service of green ends goes like this. Among advocates of discursive democracy, i t is a familiar proposition that having to defend our positions publicly makes us suppress narrowly self-interested reasons for action and highlight public-spirited reasons in their place.26 We must do so, at least in our public explanations, if we want to give reasons to which we expect anyone besides ourselves to assent.*

That depends, once again, upon the composition of the constituency in the forum in which actions are being advocated and defended. It depends, specifically, upon the forum containing spokespersons for the whole range of interests which we want to see represented in our deliberations. The mechanism ordinarily in view for driving discursive democracy from particular to generalized interests is some person shouting up from the back of the room, Why should I care about that?28 If this were all there was to the second argument, it would simply collapse back into the first.

The further fact to note - and what distinguishes this second mechanism from the first - is that there will always be a certain amount of anticipatory internalization in such settings. Those choosing actions and knowing that they will have to be defended in the public forum will ask themselves, How would I justify this to X?, even before X asks for an explanation.

To a certain extent, that sort of anticipatory internalization is nothing more than good political strategy. Certainly that is so where the X in question is someone (or rather a representative of some interest) likely to be present in the forum in which the action will have to be defended. But such anticipatory internalization might work even for things (such as inanimate nature) that would not or maybe even could not actually ask for an explanation. Even things that cannot ask for an explanation might be peremptorily considered, once people get used to making their choices with a view of having to justify them publicly to all and sundry.

That argument thus rests on more than an empirical sociological or psychological generalization. Plausible though they may be, such generalizations always constitute infirm foundations for elaborate theoretical structures. That which is only contingently true might always, at some point or another, turn out

26 The inspiration is of course the work of Habermas, as best applied to the ecological sphere through a series of works of John Dryzek, Rational Ecology, esp. ch. 15; Discursive Democracjj (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1990); and especially Ecology and discursive democracy: beyond liberal capitalism and the administrative state, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 3 (1 992), 18-42. Cf. Goodin, Motivaiing Political Morality, ch. 7 and J. Elster, The market and the forum in J . Elster and A. Hylland (eds), Foundations of Socicrl Choice Theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 103-22.

27 Logically, of course, it is perfectly possible to be utterly duplicitous in this matter, choosing actions for reasons of self-interest but defending them publicly on grounds of public interest. Psychologically, however, that seems hard to sustain over the long haul. Ultimately, talking continuously in terms of the public interest leads us almost inevitably to start thinking in terms of public rather than private interests as well. See Goodin, Morivating Political Morality, ch. 7 .

28 Note that the generalized versus particular interests which Dryzek, following Habermas, sees emerging from discursive interactions are purely human interests in nature rather than the interests of nature as such; Dryzek, Rational Ecolog.~, pp. 207-8. T Political Studies Association. 1996


to be contingently untrue. The crucial step in this second argument - the proposition about anticipatory internalization - has more analytical depth. Some such mechanism is central to our understanding of interpersonal communication as such. The appeal here is not to the elaborate apparatus of discourse theory. The appeal is merely to ordinary analytical perspectives on how conversation is possible at all, given the inscrutability of other minds. Confronted with the insoluble problem of looking into anothers mind to surmise the exact intentions behind the others utterance, analytic philosophers inevitably analyse language in terms of principles of charity and convergent conventions, of mutual knowledge and conversational imp l i ca t~ re .~~ These analyses are many and varied. But the common theme running through them all is just this: we converse with one another by thinking the others thoughts for ourselves, to the point of completing the others thoughts in our own heads. Given the problem of literally getting inside anothers head, we cannot do otherwise.

Suppose these mental gymnastics of putting oneself in the place of the other are as central analytically as they seem to be to ordinary conversation when the other is present. It is hardly much of a leap at all to suppose that similar processes might occur when the situation is such as to call some absent other to mind. That is precisely what, on my second argument, discursive democracy in the public sphere can do. It creates a situation in which interests other than your own are called to mind. Sometimes the bearers of those other interests will be actively engaged in the discourse, other times they will stand mute. Whether conversationally active or passive, though, the process of internalizing the others thoughts, attitudes and interests is, on the standard analytic account of conversation itself, quite literally the same.

There are concrete illustrations of just such processes at work. Consider, for example, the evidence from studies of the office administering the American wage-price freeze in the early 1970s: appeals which would have been rejected out of hand, had they come in writing, got a far more sympathetic hearing when presented in person.30 Or consider the surprising findings from experimental psychology that players of Prisoners Dilemma games, allowed to discuss their situation among themselves before choosing their moves, play the cooperative move significantly more often purely because of that prior discussion p e r i ~ d . ~

29 D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford, Clarendon, 1980). D. Lewis, Convention (Oxford, Blackwell, 1969). H. P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1989). Political scientists are coming increasingly to appreciate the importance of these analyses for their own theoretical and methodological activities; see P. M. Sniderman, The new look in public opinion research in A. W. Finifter (ed.), Political Science: The State of the Discipline 11, (Washington DC, American Political Science Association, 1993), pp. 219-45 at

30 R. A. Kagan, Regulatory Justice: Implementing a Wage-price Freeze (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1978), p. 152. This will come as no surprise to lobbyists, who have long regarded direct personal communication as their preferred strategy; L. W. Milbrath, Lobbying as a communication process, Public Opinion Quarterly, 24 (1960), 33-53.

3 1 R. Dawes, J. McTavish and H. Shaklee, Behavior, communications and assumptions about other peoples behaviour in a common dilemma situation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35 (1977), 1-35. J . M. Orbell, A. J. C. von de Kragt and R. M. Dawes, Explaining discussion-induced cooperation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54 (1988), 81 1-9. R. M. Dawes, A. J. C. van de Kragt and J. M. Orbell, Cooperation for the benefit of us - not me, or my conscience in J. J. Mansbridge (ed.), Beyond Self-interest, pp. 97-1 10. B. S. Frey and I. Bohnet, Cooperation, Communication and Communitarianism: An Experimental Approach, Journal of Political Philosophy, 4 (1996), forthcoming. 0 Political Studies Association, 1996

pp. 236-7.


Or consider the anthropological report of discussions among villagers, whose positions were initially self-interested but came to be substantially more public- spirited as the discussion p r ~ g r e s s e d . ~ ~

Perhaps the best concrete illustration of the sort of group decision process which defenders of deliberative, discursive democracy have in mind is the jury. There is a considerable body of jurisprudential thought (and, indeed, legal opinion) on juries which mirrors the larger concerns of democratic theory itself.33 There is a recurring concern with the representativeness of juries, both with a view to members of minority communities exercising a veto over unjust verdicts (after the fashion of my first, system-level argument) and with a view to such persons bringing distinct points of view to bear in jury deliberations in such a way as to inform and persuade other jurors (after the fashion of my second, individual-level argument).

Of course, social scientists are not allowed to observe actual juries directly, much less experiment upon them. But there are various ways of indirectly inferring facts about jury behaviour from the public record;34 and there are even more ingenious possibilities for observing and experimentally manipulating mock juries to explore various alternative hypotheses about the way they actually behave.35 Examination of transcripts from these deliberations show just how seriously people take the task of the jury, even a mock one: the quality of the discussion is surprisingly high.36 Unsurprisingly, majority factions within a jury acquire increasing converts over time as deliberations progress toward an eventually unanimous ~e rd ic t .~ What is, perhaps, surprising is the group polarization effect: over time, average group opinion (in juries as elsewhere, according to other experimental psychological findings) becomes more extreme in the same direction as the initial average opinion of the Among the many possible explanations of this phenomenon, the most promising seems to be tied to the fact that persuasive arguments are given (or, in one experimental variation, merely surmised) over time and the course of group discussion^.^^

Those studies of jury deliberations confirm the various other evidence just cited in suggesting that, at least in tolerably small groups, people listen to what one another says, internalize those new views and revise their own opinions

32 J . M. Bilmes, The evolution of decisions in a Thai village: a quasi-experimental study, Human

33 J . Abramson, The jury and democratic theory, Journal of Political Philosophy. I (1993),

34 H. Kalven and H. Zeisel, The American fur?. (Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 1966). 35 For surveys see K. C. Gerbasi, M. Zuckerman and H. T. Reis. Justice needs a new blindfold:

a review of mock jury research, Psychological Bulletin, 84 (1977), 323-45 and J. H. Davis, R. M. Bray and R. W. Holt, The empirical study of decision processes in juries: a critical review in J. L. Tapp and F. J. Levine (eds), L a w Juslicc and the Individual in Society: Psychological und Legal Issues (New York NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1977). pp. 326-61.

36 R. Hastie. S . D. Penrod and N. Penington, Inside /he Jurr (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983), ch. 5.

37 Hastie, Penrod and Pennington, Inside the Jury, ch. 6. This phenomenon led early com- mentators (Kalven and Zeisel, The American Jury. p. 496) to comment, quite wrongly in light of subsequent research, that jury deliberation was a facade behind which majorities bullied minorities into agreeing to their preferred verdict. Hastie, Penrod and Pennington, Inside the Jury, ch. 4. D. G. Myers and H. Lamm, The group as a polarizer of attitudes, Psychological Bulletin, 83 (1976), 602-27.

39 E. Burnstein and Y. Schul, Group polarization in H. H. Blumberg e / a / . (eds), Small Groups and Social Interaction (Chichester, Wiley, 1983), vol. 2, pp. 57-64. 1 Political Studies Association, 1996

Organization, 38 (1979). 169 78.

45-68 and We, the Jury (New York, Basic, 1994).


appropriately. It is questionable, of course, how well such findings from small group research generalize to larger groups, be they political parties or whole polities. Psychological experiments show a clear trend toward less cooperative play in larger groups; and in actual political decision-making, there is an analogous shift away from consensual and toward majoritarian decision practices the larger the group, a trend which becomes marked with groups as small as twenty persons.40 So size effects may well really matter, here.

Still, while greens do hope to bring discursive, participatory principles to bear within their own parties, which (at national levels, anyway) are well beyond the size of a small group, their larger aspirations are toward something smaller. The larger green goal is to decentralize social decisions to units sufficiently small to approximate juries. Should they succeed in that task, discursive practices could indeed help move people beyond narrow views of their own interests, taking them to a fuller appreciation of others interests and perhaps even natures

111. Conclusion: Right for the Wrong Reasons The upshot of my argument is that standard prescriptions of the green theory of agency might be right. Direct, participatory, grass-roots democracy might indeed lead to the equal consideration of natures interests, in ways which I have shown to be morally incumbent upon us if we subscribe simultaneously to green values and democratic values. The arguments I have adduced for thinking that those mechanisms will indeed have such effects are not the greens own. None the less, the arguments I offer are arguably closer to the greens own core environmentalist concerns than any which greens themselves traditionally adduce.

(First submitted: 17 November 1994; jinully accepted: 26 February 1995)

40 J. Fox and M. Guyer, Group size and others strategy in an n-person game, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 21 (1977), 323-39. J. Steiner and R. Dorff, A Theory of Political Decision Modes (Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 83.

41 Whether they can succeed in decentralizing to that extent is a separate issue, to be debated elsewhere. Certainly there will be a problem as to how all these small units will coordinate effectively among themselves; Goodin, Green Political Theory, pp. 147-56. That problem is well illustrated by Mikael Skou Andersons discussion of how Denmarks democratic tradition kept local authorities small to maintain democratic participation, but they then turned out to be too small to take on local farming interests which were the principal causes of water pollution; see his Governance by Green Taxes (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994). A, Political Studies Association, 1996