by David Delaney
This valuable long (21 pages) paper on the prospects for democracy and "greenery" reviews and synthesizes many ideas about democracy in support of its thesis. Wilson is Professor of Politics at Oberlin college. He argues persuasively that sustainability is a condition of any continued democracy and that some democracy, at least, is a condition of sustainability. He also argues that the "urgency, irreversibility, invisibility, complexity, and uncertainty" of the ecological crisis cannot be addressed effectively by a democracy that is purely procedurally oriented with no overriding structural commitment to sustainability, a concept that does not seem consistent with the idea of democracy as no more than a peaceful conflict-resolution polity. Although the paper is positive in tone, the effect of its logic is disquieting.
Harlan Wilson, 2006
Paradoxes of Green Democracy
Western Political Science Association Meetings,
Albuquerque
Inside and Outside Images: Clara Natoli
