Happy new year! Yes, 2024 was the hottest year on record. The United States once again elected a climate denier to the presidency while authoritarian China is increasingly seen as the global leader fighting climate change. Is there a case that democracy itself is to blame for the world’s inadequate response to the climate crisis?
Climate change had long been a topic at the periphery of political science, with many calls to study it but relatively few substantive works actually appearing in political science journals. However, over the past decade, political scientists have published more and more articles and books on climate change, including on the “big question” of democracy and climate change. The discipline’s flagship journal, the American Political Science Review, published perhaps the most prominent example of the latter, an article by theorist Ross Mittiga titled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change,” that also was subject of a subsequent viral Twitter backlash.
A closer look at this debate
The Journal of Democracy’s January 2025 issue includes a debate on whether democracy can solve the climate crisis. A series of articles in this issue interrogate current thinking on the subject. Nomi Claire Lazar and I acknowledge that democracies and democratic institutions are not doing enough to respond to the serious threats posed by climate change, but we argue in our article that authoritarians have, if anything, a worse track record. Diving into the politics of climate mitigation and adaptation shows how challenging climate change can be under democratic circumstances.
Yet while it may seem as if the climate politics grass is greener on the other side of democracy, authoritarian governments have politics, too. While the Chinese government may be more forceful and successful in pushing through transmission line construction than the United States, for instance, the politics of implementing policy shifts that put thousands of coal miners out of work is not that much easier in China than it would be in India or the United States. We zoom in on the language of “climate emergency” as legally confusing and opening the door to more authoritarian practices down the line. We conclude with the following lines:
Climate change confronts us with an existential situation. Any successful approach to handling it will have to grapple with those baleful twins, inertia and fear. These are natural responses to massive, unpredictable change. But as the denial wears off—the denial of the merchant who fears lost trade, of the governor who fears lost votes, of the majority who fear the loss of a way of life—only democracy has the proven resources to help citizens sort out how best to balance their interests and address their fears. Imposed solutions without democratic engagement are notoriously fragile.
Finally, one of democracy’s central benefits is that public criticism and free and fair elections give leaders potent, immediate incentives to learn from failure. Democracies far exceed authoritarian regimes at spreading accurate information to decisionmakers. And democratic institutions are flexible enough to change course as circumstances shift. In the climate age, we must defend democracy so that democracy can live to defend us.
Rounding out the discussion
The reflections from other authors offer alternative perspectives. Political theorist Lisa Ellis sees my article with Nomi Claire Lazar as both understating the ordinariness of climate change as a political problem and the need for more radical political changes to the status quo, inside of democracy. Ross Mittiga defends his characterization of climate as an emergency and reads my article with Lazar as too timid in the face of the scale of the challenge. Thea Riofrancos points to a distinct challenge in navigating climate mitigation: The systems of long-term state planning and administrative capacity that are a key component powering China’s emerging energy transition may be perhaps difficult to reconcile with the electoral cycles of democracy. And Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Matto Mildenberger, Michael Ross, and Christina J. Schneider argue that the fossil fuel industry is a “common enemy” that needs to be confronted more forcefully. They note that if one flips the analysis, climate change-induced disasters and subsequent political responses seem to harm democracy. Lazar and I offer a reply as well.
This forum is far from the final word on the evolving politics of climate change and democracy in political science. I do think that the Journal of Democracy articles showcase the increasing breadth and depth of engagement in climate politics by political scientists – and suggest these important discussions will continue in 2025 and well beyond.
