Politics of commitment? The representation of future generations

Our actions of today can inflict considerable harm on future generations. Against the backdrop of a worsening climate crisis, there is growing public and scholarly agreement that the interests of future generations should be represented. Only recently, a group of young people decided to take 32 countries to the European Court of Human Rights over their political inaction in the climate crisis, demanding better representation of their and following generations’ interests. Yet, disagreement prevails over whether future-oriented representation is reconcilable with democratic systems. After all, democracies might be ‘myopic’ – based on short electoral cycles and favouring short-term interests. Nevertheless, according to recent research by Araújo and Koessler (2022), out of 195 states, 41% explicitly refer to future generations in their constitutions as of 2021. This paper asks to what extent and why an increasing number of democratic states commits to representing future generations. Employing a comparative case study design, we consider both institutionalised forms of such representation (e.g., in the form of Ombudspersons such as in Wales) as well as representative claims by state actors. The case selection will reflect diversity in dimensions such as the system of government (e.g., presidential vs. parliamentarian), electoral systems (e.g., proportional vs. majoritarian), and/or party systems (e.g., two- vs. multi- party), focusing on states with future-regarding constitutional clauses. Data will be collected via keyword searches across national legal databases, digital holdings of national archives, and across states’ ministerial databases of press releases and policy documents to gain an overview over different states’ approaches to represent future generations. Developing a codebook consisting of a priori and inductively developed categories, we will analyse items such as the frequency/share of future-oriented laws, frequency/share of explicit reference to future generations per document, the extent of representative claims, and types of future-oriented constitutional clauses across up to five democratic countries. Together, this paper provides a first comparative analysis of institutional and claimed forms of representation referring to future generations and builds an empirical knowledge base for further theoretical and empirical research. It raises crucial normative and practical questions about the future of representation, especially considering whether current representative ecologies are ready for a representation of future generations, and further discusses potential risks associated with such representative claims.