Welcome to a workshop on democracy and future generations at the Institute for Futures Studies (IFFS) in Stockholm 16-17 November
It is often assumed that future generations have has no direct bearing on democratic decisions, since democracy, both in theory and in current practice, can be said to be biased in favour of the present: it only takes into account presently existing people’s preferences. Yet, future people will be affected by our policies, especially our environmental and energy policies. Indeed, most of the people affected by a democratic decision taken today might be future people who didn’t have a say in the decision. This seems problematic from a democratic perspective. Should we include future people in present democratic decision making via proxy representation? If so, through which institutional mechanism or political body? The ambition of the workshop is to shed light on these questions. It invites papers that help us think about whether, and if so how, democratic decision making should be made more sensitive to the political preferences of future people. The participants are a mix of researchers on the project and external people.
This workshop is organized by Göran Duus-Otterström and Joe Roussos. The workshop will run as a hybrid between online and on-site participation. To attend in person, registration is mandatory. Contact goran.duus-otterstrom@iffs.se.