written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
(find your bioregion/watershed)
(find your bioregion/watershed)
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written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
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[Editor's note: This was written as an explanation of Towards the Bioregional State, in terms of how it differs from existing democratic theory, pointing out the flaws and oversights in existing democratic theory that have let unsustainability and systemic unrepresentation be expanded with the rhetoric of democracy. The era of sustainability means an entirely different sense of democratic theory is required. Here are a few notes for that purpose: six separate points that lead to environmental degradation in all nation-state frameworks of citizenship so far. ]
This is a summary argument that the Bioregional State is an association of novel democratic political theory, ideas, and formal institutional design concepts for what formal democracy means in an age of sustainability.
In this Bioregional Letter I will discuss six flaws in existing humanocentric perspectives on democratic theory and how ecological democratic theory solves them all by being based on a more empirically demonstrable human/environment interaction premise.
The significance of the idea of the Bioregional State in democratic theory is that it is the first attempt to frame what formal institutional frameworks would facilitate sustainability and democracy, as well as to identify what impediments in existing democracies are required to change toward sustainability in this light. It's worth is that it is both a political theory of the origins of unsustainability as related to formal frameworks change, and, from this, useful prescriptively for drawing up a formal institutional praxis of how to organize a sustainable politics based on arresting or balancing against any formally facilitated environmental degradations.
For the past 10 years after the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been precious little inventiveness or investment in visionary prescriptive proposals for what do to about global world order issues, whether democratic or environmental. Whether we are referring to the widening decline of the meaningfulness of democratic procedure or the expansion of human health, ecological, and economic externalities that comes with environmental degradation and corporate led globalization known as "harmonization," it seems that it is a race to the bottom for democratic participation, regulatory arrangements, and environmental standards. Can it be a race to the top instead, based on raising standards through prescriptive adaptations to formal democratic institutions?
The issues around environmentalism are typically framed in the media, in academic work and even in activist circles as an issue of technocratic or economic management. Instead, I would like to address these issues in another way by updating democratic theory and institutional design for the age of sustainability by theoretically proposing certain formal institutional designs for governmental reorganization as a model for what global order can be if we are to value humanity, the environment and their interactions. I am proposing that it requires an adapted democratic theory and formal reorganization based on an awareness of what has been left out before: the durable, historical human/environmental interactions in all state politics that are influenced by the particularities of formal institutions. To consider democracy in a sustainable world order is to import into democratic theory a series of human/environmental interactions that have been left out in the past. I am offering institutional design suggestions for anywhere in the world. I consider these ideas transportable to any context.
Since November 2001, I have placed these ideas so far under the title Towards a Bioregional State addressing what I considered existing Western democratic theory and institutional design issues has ignored with regards to human/environmental interactions. It means popularizing the idea that ecologically sound formal democratic frameworks are required to address the innate environmental specificity of any state and its consumptive relations with the rest of the world.
I suppose you could call me an ecological Montisquieu, an ecologically minded political scientist interested in the growing shortcomings of any existing political and institutional theories of the democratic state when we turn to issues of environmental sustainability. This is because these existing ideas about democratic theory are entirely abstract and human-centric instead of based on durable, comparable and variegated human/environmental relations as their basis. Existing ideas on democracy in the West are inherited from an Enlightenment that was only interested in how to facilitate an abstract democracy from posited abstract individualized citizens, and interested in checking and balancing an absolute monarchy and its tyranny as the only danger to democratic durability.
The argument is that there should be subsequent additions to institutional democratic theory in order to have additional checks and balances to take us away from a decidedly ecological tyranny set up by existing democratic frameworks because of oversights in the previous theoretical proposals and institutional designs.
1. the false sense that the state is only a 'social' organization, the bioregional state is a developmental organization and a political feedback mechanism for making developmentalism democratic and sustainable.
Any additions to formal democratic theory that would make it a formal ecological democratic theory would first remove the false sense that the state is only a 'social' organization. An ecologically democratic state is instead more empirically described as a formal facilitation framework for economic developmental issues and a feedback mechanism against unrepresentative and unsustainable ones.
2. States are always situated within particular ecologies or across particular ecologies
Second, to keep this developmentalism on track for sustainability, it is important to consider from the beginning of any ecological democratic theory that a state is always situated either within a particular ecology or more typically includes multiple and varied ecologies, with the state manipulating them for good or ill.
When a state's politics contributes to its own ecological demise through expanding and underwriting externalities in human, ecological and economic health, it can hardly be called a ecological democratic framework or a sustainable democratic framework in all senses of the word sustainable, because this leads to a form of unsustainable ecological tyranny maintained perversely and sadly in the name of 'democracy,' as if there was nothing to improve upon; and this leads to unsustainable social democratic processes being eroded by corruption. Unless addressed from the beginning employing a more ecological and geographic appreciation of the formal checks and balances on state developmentalist power, nothing called democracy be sustainable--socially or environmentally.
3. Nothing called an abstract or individualized citizen in practice: citizenship and its politics are historically bioregional and watershed specific, influenced by human health, ecological, and economic externalities that are shared ecologically and which impinging upon them
A third point is that there is nothing called an abstract or individualized citizen in practice. We live in different bioregional arrangements which have to a large degree of their own history that makes them very durable human/environmental contexts of politics that are geographically specific, within an overarching ideal of an abstract state over them all. Plus, we experience a great deal of human health, ecological, and economic externalities based upon the watersheds in which we live. If citizenship is only a particular arrangement dealing with formal rules and prescriptions, a relationship that Charles Tilly has described as only another framework of contract, then we require a kind of post-Rousseau Social Contract, or "Ecological Contract," for understanding how citizenship is changed and how the responsibilities of the democratic state are changed in an era of sustainability.
In short, an ecological democratic politics is an institutional endeavor facilitating existing affirmative feedback from watersheds/bioregions into the democratic state. It is a formal facilitation framework that checks and balances against corruptions in state developmentalism whenever the process becomes self-destructive of a state's own ecology and destructive of democratic feedback about developmentalism issues. However, presently we have democracies that are mostly underwriting ecological degradation. How do we instead facilitate democratic politics formally as a seamless form of ecological feedback?
4. A people's self-interest is additionally geographically specific and protective of a particular geography, leading to an environmental proxy based politics where human health, ecological, and economic externalities from ecological degradation are effected in human political pressures.
Fourth, this is done by understanding that a people's self-interest is additionally geographically specific and protective of a particular geography, similar to an ecological understanding of the state and bioregion mentioned above. Citizen feedback is always in and from particular geographic spaces and human/environmental contexts. There's nothing called an "abstract" citizen pressure on government, and formal arrangements should reflect this. As such, citizenship pressure from wherever it is located is innately a form of 'environmental proxy' politics that concerns itself with removing the interlinked externalities of health, ecology, and economics in its particular geographic area. Thus, facilitating the environmental proxy politics that is already empirically there innately can set state political economic developmentalism on a course to sustainability, only when people from particular geographies can check and balance against state imposed or protected externalities that demote human health, ecological health, or economic health. Without this feedback, it would undermine the very essence of a democratic state unless facilitated from the very beginning.
5. An environmental proxy based politics is part of the human condition, instead of a novelty of the 20th-21st century. It has only been expressed through other discourses and manners in the past with the ideas and techniques available.
In the past 20 years, European sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted our whole political outlook has moved into a 'risk society' framework. He describes a nexus of politics that has moved from merely fighting for a distribution of material goods, into one more and more fighting to get rid of 'environmental bads.' I believe I am the first to take these ideas and apply them to formal institutional democratic theory: what kinds of additions to democracy would be required to facilitate an ecologically sound democracy, in order to let democracy as a process get rid of these 'environmental bads' through facilitating an ecologically sound democratic politics?
As mentioned above, in the issue of environmental proxy there is an the innate geographical and ecological caretaking quality of people as part of their self-interest. In other words, I am arguing that this environmental politics is already nascently there informally. It is only divided, conquered, and disorganized because of the presently existing formal frameworks (including jurisdictions and voting districts) have been designed by intellectuals raised on false ideas about abstract "Descartian space," intellectuals from an era that had yet to think ecologically about the developmentalism inherent in formal institutions of the state, or had yet to think about maintaining the ecological soundness of the state, or of maintaining democracy in the long run through assuring an environmental proxy feedback as a check and balance against environmentally degradative state developmentalism.
In addition to an ecological Montisquieu promoting additional checks and balances to existing formal democratic theory, I would consider myself a bioregional Publius in two senses. In terms of my academic research and publications, I am a comparative historian and political sociologist documenting how environmentalist politics can be seen in many places in the historical record instead of only in the later 20th century onward. Once territorial states developed, it has been divided and conquered within a particular state instead of facilitated by it. To facilitate it, environmental proxy can provide a means to work towards sustainability formally and to provide for durable democratic processes. I have been working on this topic of analyzing the formal institutional and formal policy frameworks of environmental degradation that are maintained by existing democracies. I am analyzing environmental degradation in other societies and eras, in a comparative historical vein as well. An environmentalist politics is integrally a part of human history in territorial states, from these types of states that developed around 3000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia) or in other parts of the world where states developed in their own isolation. Instead of thinking of an environmental politics as only a phenomenon of the past 20 or 30 years, it has only been expressed through other discourses and manners in the past with the ideas and techniques available. I have several articles under academic peer review presently dealing with this topic. Please see my enclosed curriculum vitae.
Second, I am as a bioregional Publius since November 2001 when it comes to popularizing these ecological democracy ideas on my own, with a website. I am enclosing a text copy of the entire website at present as documentation, as well as other related materials including an unsolicited online encyclopedia essay on "bioregional democracy" in which someone else inspired by and championing my writings has provided some text concerning the novelty of what I was doing. Why the name Publius? Publius was the pen name adopted by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison as they made their arguments in popular newspaper editorials for their popularizing of the United States Constitution in the 1780s. The work they did became known as the Federalist Papers which is still seen as a useful tract for explaining and legitimating that type of unecological democracy and for understanding what they were considering were important institutional design issues in that moment in history.
However, I am a novel bioregional Publius since we as a country and together as a planet have novel challenges to address. I am a bioregional Publius who wants democracy in practice instead of democracy in the abstract, and one who wants sustainability instead of unsustainability. I am calling these political theory and institutional design explanations The Bioregional Letters as a slight nod to connecting them as an ecologically updated Federalist Papers.
We are facing a similar project presently as the people in the late 1700s were facing, though with an additional environmentalist awareness. I am arguing how can we achieve a democracy that is environmentally sustainable, when the present formal frameworks of Enlightenment based democracy are what are leading us into environmental degradation? What are in the Bioregional Letters are a list of requirements, as well as a series of arguments for why these requirements should be adopted. It argues why the present forms of government in the United States are leading us toward environmental degradation, low voter turnouts, and unrepresentative parties.
Even though the brunt of the arguments are about the United States, what I am arguing is that these are general structural requirements for all states as they move towards sustainability, instead of talking only about the United States. The United States can be considered the running example in these letters though structurally the state in general requires changing instead of only a change on the level of political party ideas for instance. The idea is for popularizing ecologically sound democratic frameworks, through numerous and detailed formal institutional changes and additional senses of power checks and balances.
Moreover, in a strategic sense connecting theory and practice, the Bioregional Letters propose how existing unsustainable states could be slowly 'made over' into sustainable states one adaptation at a time. Typically, a different topic is addressed in each letter. However, there is an intentional overlap in certain formal institutional proposals across multiple letters to show how the formal frameworks interact with each other to facilitate the innate environmental proxy politics.
There are 25 Bioregional Publius letters at this stage. State structures are far from the only aspect of importance, though they are a formal requirement. (I am working on other issues beside the state--science, finance, and consumption.) The 20th letter is an ongoing online petition drive and a project that "ecologizes" the U.S. Constitution as an adapted model for a bioregional state. In essence, the 20th bioregional letter compiles into a single document all the formal framework ideas so far at that stage for working towards sustainability.
6. In terms of the bioregional state, affirmative institutions are ones that are designed jurisdictionally to be ecologically aware and facilitative of the particularities of environmental proxy politics influenced geographically in their orientation by bioregional and watershed variegation. Formal state institutions historically have been created under "political slack" instead of full representation because all existing states have been hinterland based. In the past 50 years, the removal of the hinterland changes the political dynamic towards inexorable environmental amelioration changes in formal policy and formal institutions because it changes the pressures of informal politics from exit to voice, facilitating more environmental proxy politics.
An environmentalist politics and pressures for environmental degradation and environmental amelioration are far from something novel historically. Environmentalist politics are as ancient as territorial states and even older. Even though I would argue that it is with territorial states that some modicum of affirmative feedback began to be introduced into environmental degradative politics with the creation of the novel historical issues of formal institutional design, it is simultaneously with territorial states that the whole process of institutionally sponsored environmental degradation began to pick up speed through the formal institutions that influenced it due to a systematic unrepresentative feedback into how the territorial state influenced its developmentalism in a hinterland.
It is only recently that we are beginning
to see the environmentalist politics that is there in the historical record
in its own terms as such, without it being masked by other social movements
and religious expressions of dissent typically facilitated by it. The expanded
contention over developmental issues has a great deal to do with the removal
of the hinterland post WWII that has led environmental proxy politics to be
much more vocal and explicit on a global and systemic scale. I feel that the
historical context is ripe for such an exposition for how formally to make state
developmentalism more affirmative and representative of ecological differences
as well, and how to facilitate checks and balances in formal democratic feedback
against various human, ecological, and economic externalities.
In terms of the bioregional state, affirmative institutions are ones that are
designed jurisdictionally to be ecologically aware and facilitative of the particularities
of environmental proxy politics influenced geographically in their orientation
by bioregional and watershed variegation. Formal state institutions historically
have been created under "political slack" instead of full representation.
This is because state developmentalism has been a formal institutional pressure
as well as has been politically riding on the political slack of a refugee population
aiming more to escape through exit any unsustainable political relations than
to facilitate through voice any sustainable political relations. Expanded contention
and pressure for formal institutional change is thus historically caused by
any removal of this exit strategy, when the removal of a state's hinterland
pressures a surge of environmental proxy and environmental amelioration politics
that is reflected in pressures for more affirmative formal institutions of the
state to address the mounting externalities that are suddenly inescapable.
In conclusion, I believe it is important to frame any democratic debate as one towards democratic sustainability. A recognition that the durable politics of human justice and ecological justice are innately intertwined and co-dependent in their fate greets us whether we analyze the historical record or analyze present democratic state and international politics. The feasibility of these ideas is marked by a stress on informal slow change beginning with establishing informal 'state-external' organizations of citizenship recognition societies on the local watershed level globally worldwide, based on a particular voting procedure. For this, I refer you to the foundational "Article I." of the novel "ecologized" U.S. Constitution, otherwise known as the enclosed "Constitution of Sustainability."
back to the list of bioregional letters
contact:
mrkdwhit@wallet.com
mwhitake@ssc.wisc.edu
Work toward sustainability:
bioregional voting districts
that reflect your experience of health and environmental risk