Democracy for a Sustainable World
Democracy for a Sustainable World
The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. Democracy for a Sustainable World explains why global democracy and global sustainable development must be achieved and why they can only be achieved jointly. It recounts the obstacles to participatory democratic global governance and describes how they can be overcome through a combination of right representation and sortition, starting with linking and scaling innovative local and regional sustainability experiments worldwide. Beginning with a visit to the birthplace of democracy in ancient Athens, a hillside called the Pnyx, James Bacchus explores how the Athenians practiced democratic participation millennia ago. He draws on the successes and shortfalls of Athenian democracy to offer specific proposals for meeting today's challenges by constructing participatory democratic global governance for full human flourishing in a sustainable world.
- Explains the relationship between democracy and sustainable development
- Shows how democratic global governance can be constructed through a combination of global sortition and right representation
- Shows how bottom-up grass roots sustainable development networks worldwide are creating new forms of democratic participation while working for sustainable development
Reviews & endorsements
‘From Athenian experiments with local democracy to current debates about global democracy, Bacchus gives us a hopeful vision for addressing two critical challenges of our time: planetary sustainability and participatory democracy, as well as a compelling argument for why and how these are inextricably linked. A brilliant intellectual history spanning over 2000 years!’ John Gaventa, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
‘James Bacchus traces an attractive ‘path from the Pnyx’ to a new vision of sustainable democracy, based on a deep understanding of the ancient Athenian practice of sortition. His path from the deep past to a realistically attainable future is illuminated by a ‘duty of optimism’: An important corrective to defeatist retreats from the essential political project of re-imagining the untapped potential of true self-government.’ Josiah Ober, Professor of Classics, Political Science, and Philosophy, Stanford University
‘This important and fascinating book offers a ‘deep dive’ into classical Athenian ideas of governance – describing how they have resonated through the centuries, and how they could guide us towards more truly democratic responses to the global challenges facing us. These idealistic thoughts on public policy don’t come from an academic ‘ivory tower’: they carry special weight as James Bacchus is not only a scholar, but a distinguished lawyer with wide personal experience of the political arena, including as a member of the US House of Representatives.’ Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and former President of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom
‘James Bacchus's book gives a vivid and impressively informed evocation of how the Athenian original worked as a regime and argues with passion that the principles which came to inspire it can still revitalize the institutions through which we must struggle as best we can to manage the ever more dangerous relations of our own troubled world.’ John Dunn, Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at King’s College, University of Cambridge
Product details
June 2025Paperback
9781009583213
576 pages
229 × 152 × 33 mm
0.926kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Greek Fires: Hot Stones in the Path
- 2. Human Goals: Finding the Path
- 3. Human Action: The Path Is Participation
- 4. Athenian Origins: Prelude to the Path
- 5. Democratia: Cleisthenes and the Athenians Discover the Path
- 6. Rowing the Triremes: Participation as Cooperation for Democracy and Sustainable Development
- 7. Aristotle's Garden: Participation as Naturization in the Natural World
- 8. In the Footsteps of Cleisthenes: Participation as Liberation Through True Self-Rule
- 9. The Vision of Pericles: Participation as Deliberation and Sortition
- 10. Frogs Around a Pond: Participation as a Global Framework for Human Imagination
- 11. Plato's Living Thoughts: Participation as New Institutions of Global Sortition
- 12. The Wall in the Stoa: The Tools for Participation Through Sortition
- 13. Reimagining Athens: Participation as Political Will.
