Introduction

Can democracies make good long-term decisions? In this chapter, I focus on three general problems, viewed through the lens of democratic theory, and aimed at building out democratic theory so that it might help to specify this question more closely. First, there is the problem of temporal boundaries: how can we include future beings, including our future selves, who cannot participate in decisions that will affect them? Second, if we can find ways of including non-present, non-existing others, how can we know what they might want or choose, so that we might represent them? And, third, what kind of incentives might we have to attend to the interests of future beings, especially if attending to the future is costly in the present?

Long-term problems encompass collective decisions and collective omissions that affect the long-term futures of people who exist today, those who will come into existence, as well as societies, institutions and our environments, both built and natural. The range of such problems is enormous: how can we limit the extraction and burning of fossil fuels so that climates and their supporting environments do not become unliveable? How can we secure nuclear waste that will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years? How can we ensure that social services and social safety nets will be there for future generations? How can we secure trustworthy institutions that have the capacity to organise and follow through on long-term plans and promises? Some kinds of long-term issues result from intentional decisions, such as building nuclear power plants. Others are the result of collective drift, or they are simply not intended at all, such as climate change. Or they are the result of self-serving and unaccountable elites, particularly, but not only, in authoritarian contexts. Some are the result of perverse practices that despoil environmental commons, such as overfishing, destructive fishing or polluting ocean waters. Still others result from the externalities of market forces. Many are consequences of growing populations that squeeze out natural habitats and result in species extinctions. And still others are the results of insecurities resulting from violence-rationalising ideologies and theologies that will find fertile conditions in poverty, sectarian cultures, injustices and hubris for generations to come. Of course, many long-term issues combine these factors, making them extremely difficult to solve.