Enhancing the Legitimacy of Offices for Future Generations: The Case for Public Participation
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Graham Smith |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719885100 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719885100
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(4) 996 –1013
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321719885100
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Enhancing the Legitimacy
of Offices for Future
Generations: The Case
for Public Participation
Graham Smith
Abstract
Independent offices for future generations are rare among institutional designs that aim to ameliorate
short-termism in democracies. Drawing on the experience of offices for future generations in
Israel, Hungary, and Wales, the article argues that such institutions face at least three challenges to
their legitimacy: first, the capacity of an unelected agency to constrain government and law-making;
second, the ability of a single office to adequately represent the plurality of interests within and
across future generations; and third, their political fragility and vulnerability. The article develops
the counterintuitive argument that offices for future generations can enhance their democratic
legitimacy through embedding systematic public participation in their activities, in particular through
the institutionalization of deliberative mini-publics.
Keywords
future generations, public participation, independent offices, short-termism, democratic
legitimacy
Accepted: 6 October 2019
Introduction
Democracies are beset by short-termism that is often harmful to the interests of future
generations. Lack of action on climate change is perhaps the paradigmatic case of failure
to consider the long term, to the point where terms like “crisis,” “breakdown,” and “emer-
gency” are becoming commonplace. Solutions to the long-term storage of nuclear waste
materials are postponed. Technological advances, such as biotechnology, cybertechnol-
ogy, robotics, and artificial intelligence, promise enormous economic and social benefits,
but little attention is given to the long-term deleterious effects they may bring to eco-
nomic and social life and the environment. In more traditional areas of social and public
policy, governments continue to obfuscate in the face of aging populations that will place
Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), University of Westminster, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Graham Smith, Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), School of Social Sciences, University of
Westminster, London W1T 3UW, UK.
Email: g.smith@westminster.ac.uk
885100PSX0010.1177/0032321719885100Political StudiesSmith
research-article2019
Article
Smith 997
significant stress on pensions and health and social care, and fail to invest strategically in
infrastructure, undermining the future reliability of utility distribution systems, transport
networks, and the availability of housing stock. Our democratic systems appear to be
structurally dysfunctional in their capacity to deal with the costs and political risks associ-
ated with long-term issues and to consider the interests of future generations in any sys-
tematic manner. Critics point to a range of explanations for “democratic myopia,”
including: individual-level psychological traits; characteristics of the political system
such as short electoral cycles, the actions of entrenched social and economic interests, and
the lack of presence of future generations to defend their interests; and dynamics of con-
temporary capitalism (e.g. Caney, 2019; MacKenzie, 2017a).
A number of institutional remedies to ameliorate harmful short-termism within democ-
racies have been proposed and, in some cases, implemented (Boston, 2016; González-
Ricoy and Gosseries, 2017). Most attention has been placed on reforms to the established
institutions of contemporary democratic polities, namely the constitution and the struc-
ture and practices of the legislature. Clauses that specify the rights of future generations
and/or nature or particular long-term ends such as environmental sustainability are
increasingly incorporated within constitutions. They aim to constrain the actions of gov-
ernments and other social actors and/or give citizens procedural participatory rights, par-
ticularly around environmental decision making. Legislative proposals have focused on
mitigating particular drivers of harmful short-termism: longer terms of office to reduce
the impact of short electoral cycles, guaranteed legislative (proxy) representation for
future generations, and reductions in the electoral power of older generations, either by
removing their voting rights or giving greater weight to the votes of young people. The
Finnish Parliament is unusual in the establishment of a relatively influential Committee
for the Future, a cross-party body that deliberates on parliamentary documentation, makes
submissions to other committees, and engages in scenario modeling.
This article takes as its point of departure the growing interest in a relatively new piece
of institutional architecture: offices for future generations (OFGs). OFGs have moved
from proposal to institutionalization in a small number of polities, most prominently
Hungary, Israel, and Wales. A shared characteristic of OFGs is their independence, but
they can take on a diversity of structures and powers, operating within or across legisla-
tive, executive, or judicial branches of government. While OFGs have been empowered
to delay or suspend actions, their function differs from proposals for guardian-type bodies
that sit above democratic politics (Brennan, 2016; Shearman and Smith, 2007).
OFGs are not an institutional “silver bullet” for dealing with harmful short-termism in
contemporary democratic politics. The Israeli OFG was abolished after one parliamen-
tary term and the powers and status of the Hungarian body diminished. However, careful
analysis of the workings and fate of this phenomenon offers insights into how such insti-
tutions might better protect the interests of future generations in democratic polities. The
article argues that, to be effective in their work, OFGs need to respond to a number of
challenges to their democratic legitimacy, namely the right of an independent body to
constrain the actions of the legislature, their political vulnerability, and their capacity to
come to robust judgments about the interests of future generations. These legitimacy
challenges raise both normative (the extent to which OFGs act in accordance with demo-
cratic ideals) and sociological (the legitimacy of the institution in the eyes of the public)
concerns (Beetham, 2013; Mansbridge, 2012).
The article draws on a comparison of the practices of three OFGs in Hungary, Israel,
and Wales. Having laid out the characteristics of each OFG, we move to an analysis of the
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