Types of institutional proxy representatives for future generations in democracies: A comparative empirical analysis

Future, i.e., unborn generations will be strongly affected political decisions (not) made today, e.g. by the long-term consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss. According to the democratic all-affected principle, the interests of everyone affected by political decisions should be considered in the decision-making process. Future generations, however, cannot influence democratic decision-making, since they do not yet exist. Election-based democratic incentive systems are said to make it difficult to consider the needs of future generations today. Surprisingly enough, since the early 1990s, an increasing number of (sub-)national democracies have established what could be called institutional proxy representatives for future generations (in short: proxies), such as the Finnish Parliamentary Committee for the Future, the Hungarian Ombudsperson for Future Generations, the German Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. These proxies are supposed to help to consider the interests of future generations alongside the interests of current constituencies. Employing the perspective of Andrew Rehfeld’s (2006) general account of formal representation, it could be argued that an actor becomes a representative for future generations when they perform the function of – referring to Hannah Pitkin and motivated by the all-affected principle – making present future generations in the political decision-making process. To perform this function, they would need to be recognized by the audience, which is (at least) the parliament and/or government that can provide institutionalized access to the political decision-making process as required by the function. However, these actors shall be called proxy representatives to account for the fact that there is no dynamic relationship between representative and represented: Since the actual referents of this formal representation – future generations – are per se inaccessible, only the objects, i.e., selective portrayals of constituency interests in Michael Sward’s (2010) terms, can be represented. The function proxy representatives perform is therefore to introduce the construed interests of future generations in the political decision-making process. The paper surveys democracies for public offices or bodies that were established to be a permanent part of a country’s institutional arrangement and that perform this function. With a systematic comparison, it is shown that the 25 identified institutional proxy representatives come with very different institutional designs. Based on the membership criteria employed, three types are distinguished: expertise-driven independent guardians, political or administrative advisory and coordination bodies, and sustainability stakeholder councils or committees. They vary considerably in their capacity to impact policy-making, i.e., on what legal basis they were equipped with what instruments (from advice to suspensive vetoes or rights of investigation) to address which phases of the policy process and which branches of government. Proxies with comprehensive roles and instruments and strong legal bases are rare. Extreme cases (very low or very strong impact capacity) seem to live dangerously – they were dismantled. Overall, they should not be overburdened with expectations. While they are usually equipped with the tools to voice the (construed) interests of future generations, they often do not have the capacities to act as watchdogs with teeth when ignored.