Elisabeth Ellis (Political Science, University of Otago) will be giving a talk, entitled "Democratic Justice and Environmental Policy," on October 19 as part of the Department of Political Science's Political Theory Workshop.
We ask that you read the paper in advance if possible; please contact Eric MacGilvray (macgilvray.2@osu.edu) to request a copy.
Abstract: The failure of our present institutions to manage the environment is widely acknowledged: biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, higher energy and more unpredictable storms, increased droughts, desertification, air and water pollution, food insecurity and other environmental problems are already making our lives worse and will increasingly damage human prospects in the future. The structure of our political systems predictably generates failure to achieve environmental collective action, and in particular it fails to constrain elite free riding. Restructuring political institutions to reflect the real nature of environmental conflict will mean establishing systems that are more than superficially democratic. The past twenty years of democratic theory and practice have moved us in the wrong direction: away from majoritarianism and toward de facto minority rule. Minority interests in business as usual have nearly always prevailed, while most people continue to have interests instead in things like clean air, fresh water, and secure food. If any structuring principle for collective action can vindicate the interests of nearly everyone over those of the few, democracy can.
Bio: Elisabeth Ellis is a political theorist who teaches ethics, environmental philosophy, and philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Otago. She is the author of Kant’s Politics: Provisional Theory for an Uncertain World (2005) and Provisional Politics: Kantian Arguments in Policy Context (2008); she has also edited a volume of essays, Kant’s Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications (2012). Ellis’s current book project, Extinction and Democracy, asks how democratic practices interact with species conservation policies. Other recent projects include a defense of majoritarianism in environmental politics, a reception history of Hobbes’s political thought, and helping edit the Encyclopedia of Political Thought (2015). Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and the Ray A. Rothrock '77 Fellowship. She is currently serving as co-president of the Association for Political Theory and as political theory field editor for the Journal of Politics.
