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Deliberative democracy and climate governance

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 411–413 (2019)Cite this article

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Against those who believe democracy is unable to address climate change effectively, we argue that a more deeply deliberative democracy can better equip the world to meet the challenge.

Democracy might seem ill-equipped to meet the challenge1, especially given its own crisis of growing populism and declining trust. Elections produce lurches between radically different agendas. Climate change exposes gaping deficiencies in all existing governance institutions, though the balance of evidence suggests that democratic systems do better than their authoritarian alternatives on environmental problems in general and that their degree of democracy is positively associated with both commitment to climate change policies and performance in reducing greenhouse gas emissions2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    John S. Dryzek & Simon Niemeyer

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  1. John S. Dryzek
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  2. Simon Niemeyer
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Correspondence to John S. Dryzek.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Dryzek, J.S., Niemeyer, S. Deliberative democracy and climate governance. Nat Hum Behav 3, 411–413 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0591-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0591-9

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