The legitimation crisis of democracy
Emancipatory Politics, the Environmental State and the Glass Ceiling to Socio-Ecological Transformation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5056086 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ingolfur Blühdorn (0000-0003-1774-5984, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability (IGN), Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 38-57 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0964-4016 • E-ISSN: 1743-8934 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09644016.2019.1681867 |
| OpenAlex | W2981716084 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 39 |
| References cited | 63 |
The democratic legitimation imperative of the modern state has been conceptualised as the barrier that stops the environmental state from developing into a green or eco-state – and thus as the glass ceiling to a socio-ecological transformation of capitalist consumer democracies. Here, I suggest that this state-theoretical explanation of the glass ceiling needs to be supplemented by an analysis of why democratic norms and procedures, which had once been regarded as essential for any socio-ecological transformation, suddenly appear as one of its main obstacles. I conceptualise the new eco-political dysfunctionality of democracy as one dimension of a more encompassing legitimation crisis of democracy which, in turn, has triggered a profound transformation of democracy. Ultimately, exactly this transformation constitutes the glass ceiling to the socio-ecological restructuring of capitalist consumer societies. It changes democracy into a tool for the politics of unsustainability, in which the legitimation-dependent state is a key actor
Biology · Capitalism · Democracy · Ecological crisis · Economic system · Economics · Glass ceiling · Legitimation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Restructuring · Sociology · State (computer science) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Ecology · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law · Political Economy and Marxism
The dialectic of democracy
Scraping the demos. Digitalization, web scraping and the democratic project
The republican sustainable state as a framework for democratizing sustainable consumption governance
Revisiting Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World
Exploring Complexities of Political Ecology in the Research and Practice of Environmental Education
Another world is possible? – Climate movements’ bounded politicization between science and politics
Democratising sustainability transformations
Expertocracy as thin-centered ideology
Street level bureaucracy in response to environmental pressure. Insights from forestry and urban green space governance in Poland
Winds of change in Swedish energy policy - The limits to neoliberalism as policy paradigm and as political rationality
The Dakota Access Pipeline in Illinois
For security or sustainability? Investigating the global nexus of nuclear power, democracies, and civil society
The paradoxical (post-)politics of scale
The Responsibilities of Social Work for Ecosocial Justice
Decarbonization and the Capitalist State
The state and the environment
The political trilemma of contemporary social-ecological transformation – lessons from Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation
Authoritarian environmentalism in Vietnam
Global environmental assessments and transformative change
Community Energy in Germany – Bowling Alone in Elite Clubs
Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit auf der Suche nach einer politischen Form. Konturen der demokratischen Postwachstumsgesellschaft
Communities at Risk for Mobilization
A Polanyi-inspired perspective on social-ecological transformations of cities
Environmental Justice and Dissent for Postcolonial Urban Sustainability Transitions
The rise of digital eco-technocracy
Liberation and limitation
Emancipatory Politics at its Limits? An Introduction
Does emancipation devour its children? Beyond a stalled dialectic of emancipation
Refiguration und Transformation. Theoriearchitekturen für die Diagnose des gegenwärtigen sozialen Wandels
El Acuerdo de Escazú, la democracia ambiental y la ecologización de los derechos humanos
The paradox of representation
Democratization beyond the post-democratic turn
Politicisation beyond post-politics
Imagination and critique in environmental politics
Exploring the politics of degrowth - first evidence from two cases of repair policies in Austria and Sweden
Everything we do matters
Progressive selection and the erosion of Canadian environmental governance
Doubling down on Dapl
A climate fit for capitalism
Counterrevolution and revolt.
Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect
Green States and Social Movements
Science and Public Reason
Designs on Nature
After Europe
Science, Truth, and Democracy
Science in a Democratic Society
Ökologische Kommunikation
Hatred of democracy
There Is No Alternative
The Performance of Democracies
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
The Post-Political and Its Discontents
The Politics of Unsustainability
Democracy and Its Critics
Kritik der reinen Vernunft
Risk as globalizing ‘democratic’ discourse? Framing subjects and citizens
Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies
Social Acceleration
Consumer Culture and Postmodernism
The Green State
The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy
Planetary boundaries and earth system governance
The New, Green, Urbanization in China
Post-capitalism, post-growth, post-consumerism? Eco-political hopes beyond sustainability
Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism
Scientisation vs. Civic Expertise in Environmental Governance
Where is the epistemic community? On democratisation of science and social accounts of objectivity
How Will Capitalism End
Geopolitan Democracy in the Anthropocene
Who Supports Populism and What Attracts People to It
Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties
The dialectic of democracy
Rethinking depoliticisation
Carbon Democracy
States and Social Revolutions
Postcapitalism
Rise of the Trumpenvolk
Singularity
Deliberative democracy meets democratised science
The environmental state and the glass ceiling of transformation
Therapeutic Songwriting in Music Therapy
Sustaining the unsustainable
Beyond the environmental state? The political prospects of a sustainability transformation
The governance of unsustainability
The coming of environmental authoritarianism
Planetary Boundaries
Counter-Revolution and Revolt
Consumer Culture and Postmodernism
Climate Leviathan
Rethinking Populism
Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern
States and Social Revolutions
| Unique citing works | 39 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,88 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 37 |