Reconciling democracy and sustainability: three political challenges and the role of democratic innovations

Governing sustainability challenges such as climate change or biodiversity loss presents aprofound democratic dilemma. although democratic practices and procedures are widelyregarded as essential for collectively addressing complex sustainability issues, liberaldemocracies have been criticized by some scholars for their inability to effectively tackleglobal environmental threats like climate change. We reconcile these positions by outlininghow the emerging field of democratic innovations can help to address the critical challengesthat democracies face when governing sustainability transformations. We focus on three issuesliberal democracies are confronted with: reformist incrementalism, (de)politicization, andimaginary boundaries. We then exemplify how democratic innovations such as deliberativemini-publics, participatory budgeting, and material participation can help address thesechallenges. Our review suggests that democratic innovations hold the potential to addresspolitical concerns, find compromises between extreme positions, reconnect people’s everydaylives with the grand sustainability challenges they face, and allow for alternative visions of adesirable future society. however, we also address cautionary tales, discuss the limitations ofdemocratic innovations, and outline avenues for future research, which we believe can helpfurther elaborate and develop participatory approaches to critical sustainability challenges.