Since the 1970s, there have been a lot of theoretical and philosophical reflections about the potential political contradictions between the need of democratic processes and the obligation of green outcomes. Some may have defended the hypothesis of a radical incompatibility between the democratic proceduralist logic on the one hand, and the green consequentialist tendency on the other hand. But many of them tried to minimise this incompatibility hypothesis, considering the potentiality of an institutional evolution towards greened democracies.
Our present contribution aims at exploring one particular aspect of this democracy-greening hypothesis, which is the timing of the possible transitions towards post-growth democracies. Firstly, we will analyse the different scenarios proposed by green philosophers or political theorists, which aim at reforming democratic institutions and decisional processes in order to adapt them to a green outcome imperative: an improvement of the representative system, a reinforcement of the deliberative democracy, a reduction of the democratic systems scale, or the addition of non-representative institutions within the current democratic system (Bourg and Whiteside, 2010). Secondly, we will consider the catastrophist political framing that emerged in the 2000s in various green movements such as ‘degrowth’ and ‘transition towns’, which draw on the idea that democracy may have already reached a dangerous potential tipping point: peak oil. This renewal of a green catastrophist approach brings forward the question of democratic resilience in a time of non-chosen global shift to a post-growth reality (Semal, 2012). Using both green political theory and political philosophy, we will analyse the relationships between adaptation, transition and collapse perspectives for post-growth democracies, trying to clarify the degree of compatibility between these various scenarios.
