Post-Democracy, Climate Movements, and Radical Reform

In recent years, environmental movements have come under criticism for operating in a post-political or post-democratic context. Developing this argument, Blühdorn and Deflorian (2021), Wilson and Swyngedouw (2014), and Mouffe (2022) have argued that in our current post-political or post-democratic systems, technocratic decision-making has replaced real political conflict and environmental movements have become trapped in this post-political hegemony. By framing their demands in techno-scientific terms, so the argument goes, environmental movements fail to pursue radical change. This paper will critically assess this view and argue that this form of post-political analysis underestimates the potential for democratic grassroots mobilization. Specifically, this paper argues that the grassroots dimension provides a necessary political agency to achieve systematic and democratic change to address climate change. Additionally, the paper argues that movements are crucial to not only repoliticizing the fight against climate change and attaining radical reform, but also redefining the meaning of climate justice in non-ideal terms. Contrary to theorists who disdain any kind of advocacy framed in moral or individualist terms as piecemeal and incapable of systematic change, I, therefore, argue that environmental movements can provide a “symbiotic approach” that combines moral and structural demands to achieve political change within a democratic context (Brownstein et al. 2021). This way, movements emphasize both collective and individual responsibility to act on climate change and challenge institutional constraints by engaging in continued political contestation. More generally, this paper thus analyses the political agency of civil society actors, such as environmental movements, and argues that a symbiotic approach can help modern democracies confront existential crises.