THEORY
which would require an extensivedemocratisationof existing institutions and
procedures – even if this falls short of pure participatory democracy.Critical question 4
Can a liberal democracy be ecologically sustainable?◗ Must a green polity be decentralised?
Goodin ( 1992 )observes that ‘If there is anything truly distinctive about green
politics, most commentators would concur, it must surely be its empha-
sis on decentralisation’ (p. 147). Decentralisation is a constant, oft-repeated
theme in party programmes and theoretical tracts. The green case for polit-
ical decentralisation, as with participatory democracy, draws on a range of
intellectual traditions, most notably anarchism, but greens again add a dis-
tinctive ecological slant.^7 They follow the anarchist tradition in favouring
decentralisation because it creates ‘human-scale’ political institutions. The
underlying assumption is that only in a small community can individualsBioregionalism:An approach that believes
that the ‘natural’ world (specifically, the local
bioregion) should determine the political,
economic and social life of communities.regain the sense of identity lost in the atom-
ised, consumerist society. This idea informs, for
example, the ‘small is beautiful’ philosophy of
Schumacher ( 1975 ), the‘bioregionalism’of Sale
(1980, 1991)and the ‘libertarian municipalism’ of
Bookchin ( 1989 :179–85). As Goldsmith et al. ( 1972 )put it: ‘it is probable
that only in the small community can a man or woman be an individ-
ual. In today’s large agglomerations he is merely an isolate’ (p. 51). Sale
(1991: 64) anticipates that the population of a bioregion will not exceed
10 ,000 people – small enough for individuals to feel sufficiently attached
totheir community to participate meaningfully. Citizens need to be able to
meet to discuss issues openly, suitably informed about the issues affecting
their community, able to understand the implications of their decisions and
knowing that their participation may have some influence (Goodin 1992 :
149). Thus a decentralised community is a precondition for a flourishing
participatory democracy. Greens hope that the combination of decentrali-
sation and participatory democracy will produce fulfilled, other-regarding
autonomous citizens prepared to accept the material sacrifices required of
alow-consumption sustainable society.
Greens make a further distinctive ecological argument for political decen-
tralisation, which holds that policy decisions made by the local commu-
nity should be more sensitive to the environment. Sale ( 1980 )takesthis
line furthest by arguing that we should learn from nature by basing the
decentralised community on the natural boundaries of the bioregion such
as mountain ranges and watersheds. In the bioregion, human communities
will become ‘dwellers in the land’: closer to nature and more respectful of
it, more knowledgeable about the capacities and limits of the immediate