Abstract

Theorists of ecological democracy rely heavily upon the deliberative democracy framework for their understanding of what democracy is and what an ecological democracy should be. Existing critiques of this literature focus primarily on whether deliberation can produce green, democratic outcomes. I ask a different question: whether ecological deliberative democrats offer us a democratic theory in the first place. Drawing on the radical democratic theory of Sheldon Wolin, I argue that core features of the extant literature are not democratic at all, and offer a new approach that predicates ecological democracy on demotic formations.