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The Age of Monitory Democracy and the Greening of Politics

Originally published in Taiwan Journal of Democracy, volume 15, no. 1 (July 2019), pp. 35-58

Abstract

The unprecedented greening of democracy during the past half-century runs far beyond spreading public talk of sustainability and climate justice and is more consequential than disputes about species extinction and the details of carbon pricing and emissions trading schemes, Keane argues. Proposing a new way of understanding the relationship among bio-environments, energy regimes, and democracy, he asks why people with green sympathies might be expected in our times to embrace democracy for more than tactical reasons, whether democracy (an anthropocentric norm that has always supposed self governing humans are masters and possessors of “nature”) and democratic principles can be “greened,” and what that redefinition might imply for the way people imagine to be the “essence” or “spirit” of popular self-government in the age of monitory democracy.

Keywords: Bio-regional assemblies, democracy, energy regimes, green politics, Heidegger, monitory democracy, representation, representative democracy.