Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T23:25:29.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2021

ROSS MITTIGA Open the ORCID record for ROSS MITTIGA [Opens in a new window]
ROSS MITTIGA*
Affiliation:
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
*
Ross Mittiga, Assistant Professor, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile, ross.mittiga@uc.cl.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 998 - 1011
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Matthew, and Mittiga, Ross. 2021. “Material Scarcity and Scalar Justice.” Philosophical Studies 178(7): 2237–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception, trans. Attell, Kevin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle. 1998. Politics, trans. Reeve, C. D. C.. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Barry, John. 2012. “Climate Change, ‘the Cancer Stage of Capitalism’ and the Return of Limits to Growth.” In Climate Change and the Crisis of Capitalism, eds. Pelling, Mark, Manuel-Navarrete, David, and Redclift, Michael, 129–42. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Barry, John, and Smith, Kimberly. 2008. “Civic Republicanism and Green Politics.” In Building a Citizen Society: The Emerging Politics of Republican Democracy, eds. White, Stuart and Leighton, Daniel, 123–45. London: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Battistoni, Alyssa. 2018. “States of Emergency.” The Nation, July 21. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/political-theory-for-an-age-of-climate-change/.Google Scholar
BBC News. 2018. “France Fuel Unrest: ‘Shame’ on Violent Protesters, Says Macron.” BBC News, November 25. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46331783.Google Scholar
Beeson, Mark. 2010. “The Coming of Environmental Authoritarianism.” Environmental Politics 19 (2): 276–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boffey, Daniel. 2021. “Court Orders Royal Dutch Shell to Cut Carbon Emissions by 45% by 2030.” The Guardian, May 26.Google Scholar
Brennan Center for Justice. 2020. “A Guide to Emergency Powers and Their Use.” Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-emergency-powers-and-their-use.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Allen. 2002. “Political Legitimacy and Democracy.” Ethics 112(4): 689–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Marshall B., Miguel, Edward, Satyanath, Shanker, Dykema, John A., and Lobell, David B.. 2009. “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa.” PNAS 106(49): 20670–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burke, Marshall, Hsiang, Solomon M., and Miguel, Edward. 2015. “Climate and Conflict.” Annual Review of Economics 7: 577–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnett, Richard, Mieczysław Szyszkowicz, Hong Chen, Bryan Hubbell, C, Neal Fann. Joshua S. Apte, Arden Pope III, et al. 2018. “Global Estimates of Mortality Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Outdoor Fine Particulate Matter.” PNAS 115 (38): 9592–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caney, Simon. 2016. “Political Institutions for the Future: A Fivefold Package.” In Institutions for Future Generations, eds. Gosseries, Axel and Ricoy, Iñigo González, 135–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carleton, T., Hsiang, S. M., and Burke, M.. 2016. “Conflict in a Changing Climate.” The European Physical Journal: Special Topics 225: 489–511.Google Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 1996. The Rule of the Many. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 2008. The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits . Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Climate Emergency Declaration. 2019. “Climate emergency declarations in 1,261 jurisdictions and local governments cover 798 million citizens.” https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/climate-emergency-declarations-cover-15-million-citizens/.Google Scholar
Cook, Benjamin I., Smerdon, Jason E., Seager, Richard, and Coats, Sloan. 2014. “Global Warming and 21st Century Drying.” Climate Dynamics 43(9): 2607–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copp, David. 1999. “The Idea of a Legitimate State.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 28(1): 3–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Daniel. 2017. “Way More Americans May Be Atheists Than We Thought.” FiveThirtyEight, May 18, 2017.Google Scholar
Dale, Catherine. 2014. “The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and Defense Strategy: Issues for Congress.” Report, Congressional Research Service, February 24. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R43403.pdf.Google Scholar
Davenport, Coral. 2018. “Trump Administration Unveils Its Plan to Relax Car Pollution Rules.” The New York Times, August 2.Google Scholar
Davis, Mike. 2010. “Who Will Build the Ark?” New Left Review 61. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii61/articles/mike-davis-who-will-build-the-ark.Google Scholar
Derysh, Igor. 2019. “Trump’s Repeal of Light Bulb Standards Will Increase Pollution, Cost Billions.” Salon, February 17.Google Scholar
Dobson, Andrew. 1996. “Representative Democracy and the Environment.” In Democracy and the Environment, eds. William M. Lafferty and James Meadowcroft, 124–39. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1975. “The Original Position.” In Reading Rawls, ed. Daniels, Norman, 16–52. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Eckersley, Robyn. 2004. The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty: Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Estlund, David. 2008. Democratic Authority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier, and Pandolfi, Mariella. 2010. Contemporary States of Emergency. The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Freedland, Jonathan. 2017. “In God We Trust: Why Americans Won’t Vote in an Atheist President.” The Guardian, August 8.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. 1997. “Reason, Justification, and Consensus: Why Democracy Can’t Have It All.” In Deliberative Democracy, eds. Bohman, James and Rehg, William, 205–42. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gilley, Bruce. 2012. “Authoritarian Environmentalism and China’s Response to Climate Change.” Environmental Politics 21(2): 287–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goitein, Elizabeth. 2019. “The Alarming Scope of the President’s Emergency Powers.” The Atlantic, January/February. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/.Google Scholar
González-Ricoy, Iñigo, and Gosseries, Axel, eds. 2016. Institutions for Future Generations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, Heejin. 2015. “Authoritarian Environmentalism under Democracy: Korea’s River Restoration Project.” Environmental Politics 24(5): 810–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, Heejin. 2017. “Singapore, a Garden City: Authoritarian Environmentalism in a Developmental State.” The Journal of Environment & Development 26(1): 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herf, Jeffrey. 2019. “Emergency Powers Helped Hitler’s Rise. Germany Has Avoided Them Ever Since.” The Washington Post, February 19.Google Scholar
Hill, Thomas E. 2001. “Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism.” Social Philosophy and Policy 18(2): 300–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Curley, Edwin. Dallas, TX: Hackett.Google Scholar
Holden, Barry. 2002. Democracy and Global Warming. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
IPCC. 2021. “Summary for Policymakers.” In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. eds. V. Masson- Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Irfan, Umair. 2018. “The EPA Refuted Its Own Bizarre Justification for Rolling Back Fuel Efficiency Standards.” Vox, August 16.Google Scholar
Kateb, George. 2015. Lincoln’s Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kerry, John, and Khanna, Ro. 2019. “Don’t Let China Win the Green Race.” The New York Times, December 9.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Klosko, George. 2013. History of Political Theory: An Introduction, Volume II: Modern . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine. 1997. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Korte, Gregory. 2017. “A Permanent Emergency: Trump Becomes Third President to Renew Extraordinary Post-9/11 Powers.” USA TODAY, September 14.Google Scholar
Kreuder-Sonnen, Christian. 2019. Emergency Powers of International Organizations: Between Normalization and Containment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laville, Sandra. 2020. “Ban Suv Adverts to Meet Uk Climate Goals, Report Urges.” The Guardian, August 3.Google Scholar
Lazar, Nomi Claire. 2009. States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. 1989. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Looney, Robert. 2016. “Democracy Is the Answer to Climate Change.” Foreign Policy, June 1.Google Scholar
Lu, Denise. 2019. “Trump’s Emergency Declaration.” The New York Times, February 15.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1994. Machiavelli: Selected Political Writings, ed., trans. Wootton, David. Dallas, TX: Hackett.Google Scholar
Malm, Andreas. 2016. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Mann, Geoff, and Wainwright, Joel. 2018. Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
McKibben, Bill. 2016. “A World at War.” The New Republic, August 15, 22–31.Google Scholar
Meckled-Garcia, Saladin. 2014. “What Comes First, Democracy or Human Rights?” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17(6): 681–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mittiga, Ross. 2018. “Before Collapse: A Political Theory of Climate Catastrophe.” PhD diss. University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Mulgan, Tim. 2014. Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy after Catastrophe: London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1987. “Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 16(3): 215–40.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Nuccitelli, Dana. 2017. “NATO Joins the Pentagon in Deeming Climate Change a Threat Multiplier.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 25.Google Scholar
Ophuls, William. 1973. “Leviathan, or Oblivion?” In Toward a Steady State Economy, ed. Daly, Herman, 215–30. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Oreskes, Naomi, and Conway, Erik M.. 2011. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Oreskes, Naomi, Oppenheimer, Michael, and Jamieson, Dale. 2019. “Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change.” Scientific American, August 19.Google Scholar
Pashley, Alex. 2015. “Climate Change Migration Is ‘Genocide’, Says Marshall Islands Minister.” Climate Home News, May 10.Google Scholar
Pasternak, Avia. 2018. “Political Rioting: A Moral Assessment.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 46(4): 384–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Peter, Fabienne. 2017. “Political Legitimacy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Summer 2017 edition], ed. Zalta, Edward N.. Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Posner, Eric A., and Weisbach, David. 2010. Climate Change Justice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Povitkina, Marina. 2018. “The Limits of Democracy in Tackling Climate Change.” Environmental Politics 27(3): 411–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice : Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1995. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur. 2004. “Authority and Coercion.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32(1): 2–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, David. 2018. “Washington Votes No on a Carbon Tax—Again.” Vox, November 6.Google Scholar
Rossiter, Clinton. 1948. Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Scharpf, Fritz. 1999. Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2016. Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scheuerman, William E. 2006. “Survey Article: Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law after 9/11.” Journal of Political Philosophy 14(1): 61–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlenker, Wolfram, and Roberts, Michael J.. 2009. “Nonlinear Temperature Effects Indicate Severe Damages to U.S. Crop Yields under Climate Change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(37): 15594–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmitt, Carl. 1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Schwab, George. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shahar, Dan Coby. 2015. “Rejecting Eco-Authoritarianism, Again.” Environmental Values 24(3): 345–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, A. John. 1999. “Justification and Legitimacy.” Ethics 109(4): 739–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, A. John. 2001. Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stacey, Jocelyn. 2018. The Constitution of the Environmental Emergency. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Starostinetskaya, Anna. 2019. “Fox News Pundits Mock Cory Booker’s Vegan Stance with Burgers and Ribs.” VegNews, February 14.Google Scholar
Stern, Nicholas. 2007. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevenson, Hayley, and Dryzek, John S.. 2014. Democratizing Global Climate Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The World Bank. 2014. Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Climate/English-Regional-Summary-Turn-Down-the-Heat-Confronting-the-New-Climate-Normal.pdf.Google Scholar
Thiele, Leslie Paul. 2013. Sustainability. New York: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Union of Concerned Scientists. 2017. “A Brief History of Us Fuel Efficiency Standards.” July 25, 2006; Updated December 6, 2017. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/brief-history-us-fuel-efficiency.Google Scholar
Vohra, Karn, Vodonos, Alina, Schwartz, Joel, Marais, Eloise A., Sulprizio, Melissa P., and Mickley, Loretta J.. 2021. “Global Mortality from Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combustion: Results from Geos-Chem.” Environmental Research 195: article 110754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waldron, Jeremy. 1999. Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, K. J. 1988. “The Environmental Crisis: A Critique of Neo-Hobbesian Responses.” Polity 21(1): 97–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace-Wells, David. 2017. “The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition.” New York Magazine, July 14.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 2006. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Watts, Jonathan. 2018. “We Have 12 Years to Limit Climate Change Catastrophe, Warns UN.” The Guardian, October 8.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1991. “Politics as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, eds. Gerth, Hans Heinrich and Mills, C. Wright, 77–128. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wellman, Christopher H. 1996. “Liberalism, Samaritanism, and Political Legitimacy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 25(3): 211–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wester, Philippus, Mishra, Arabinda, Mukherji, Aditi, and Shrestha, Arun Bhakta, eds. 2019. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment: Mountains, Climate Change, Sustainability and People. Kathmandu, Nepal: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wikipedia 2021. “United States Lighting Energy Policy,” last modified on August 14, 2021, at 17:22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_lighting_energy_policy.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 2005. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wirt, William. 1817. Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry. New York: James Webster.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.