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The Anthropocene and the Republic

Paper for the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops

10-14 April 2018, Nicosia

Marcel Wissenburg

Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Work in progress

Please do not quote without the author’s explicit permission.

Summary

he Anthropocene, Earth System and Earth System Science, it would seem, call for global

governance and global governance institutions. Using the republican repertoire, I argue that

global governance is actually the last thing we need, and suggest that global environmental

institutions ought to be based on a global ‘republicanism-light’. Key elements of that approach are: (1)

a Machiavellian appreciation of discord, agonism and ‘the political’, combined with a realistic

assessment of the very diverse interests global stakeholders have, hence very diverse ideas about the

benefits and burdens of specific global environmental strategies; and (2) institutions based on ideas

developed by Machiavelli, Montesquieu and the Founding Fathers allowing for human and science’s

fallibility on the one hand, irreducible moral and political diversity on the other.

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Introduction

onceiving of climate change (and related issues) in terms of an Anthropocene, thereby almost

inevitably bringing on board Earth System and Earth System Science (ESS), has big, very big,

implications for environmental politics understood as ‘shaping the world’ (in the Aristotelian

sense), or ‘the management of the body ecologic’, that is, the artificial and environmental

circumstances defining our societies.

For one, unlike many other environmental issues, Anthropocene-specific problems are genuinely

global: they require that the focus for solutions, the locus of environmental action (though politics,

policy, technology and techniques, etc.) shifts from ecosystems and/or nation-states, regions or cities

to spheres and the global realm.

Secondly, global strategies have global consequences: states, societies and other stakeholders in Earth

System can practice the Way of the Ostrich (hide one’s head in the sand and expect trouble will pass

by) but they can only do so to their own disadvantage: trouble will not pass by silently. To slightly

abuse Benjamin Constant’s famous concepts, the freedom of the Moderns, freedom from interference,

is severely limited for collectives in the Anthropocene, while the freedom of the Classics, political

participation, becomes inevitable, perhaps even a moral duty if sovereignty is itself a duty rather than a

claim-right. Avoidance is now irrational.

In the academic and policy discourse, the construct of the Anthropocene and the global aspect of

solutions to Anthropocene problems support a call for coordination through ‘global governance’. In

theses discourses, the latter concept is employed as the goal-rational obvious choice for Anthropocene

policy: we know what needs to be done, the question is how to get it done most efficiently and

effectively. As I have argued elsewhere, however (Wissenburg 2016), value-rationality or reflexivity is

not among the virtues of the Advocates of the Anthropocene. Bluntly put, the mainstream

Anthropocene discourse takes the goals of Earth System governance for granted, bypassing any

questions about the political and ethical legitimacy of those goals. Yet not every stakeholder in

climate policy has the same (negative) appreciation of the effects of climate change, and they do have

a moral right to dissent – they may even be morally right.

It is because of the exclusion of reflexive or value rationality, in other words the exclusion of the

political,1 from the Anthropocene discourse that, as I will argue in this paper, global governance is the

last thing we want in dealing with the Anthropocene. Yet the Way of the Ostrich is no option either.

The Anthropocene is here to stay: one either makes global environmental policy or is its subject (cf.

Wissenburg 2018). I will therefore defend a third option for the execution and coordination of

Anthropocene policy: republicanism-light.

The first part of this paper investigates the reasons why global Earth System governance as presented

in the mainstream policy and academic debates is both unpractical and undesirable – those reasons all

relating in some way or other to the inability of technocracy and epistocracy to deal with reflexive or

value rationality. I focus on IPCC and the Anthropocene Advocates (the natural and social scientists

who have adopted mainstream interpretations of the concept Anthropocene) as exemplary for the

policy and academic worlds respectively – exemplary meaning ideal-typical rather than representative

for an average position.2

1 The political here includes the ethical, the values guiding or legitimizing political choices.

2 For the sake of clarity: there is nothing wrong with IPCC in itself. It is an institution that does what it is supposed to do:

chart facts, ways and means given certain goals. It is the remit itself that is problematic: IPCC is allowed no room for

reflexive rationality. In the vocabulary of Lukes, Bachrach and Baratz: IPCC is shaped by the second dimension of power, -

its agenda has been fixed and frozen.

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In the second part, I develop the ‘non-ideal theory’ notion of republicanism-light. Modern-day civic

republicanism isn’t exactly known for its global aspirations or qualifications – it is instead associated

with parochialism and in the case of green republicanism, with its stress on austerity and simplicity

(Barry 2008), the pastoral. Yet some of the core ideas of the thinkers that inspired republicanism and

helped shape our modern societies as republics rather than democracies – Aristotle, Machiavelli, the

Federalists – can also help to develop guidelines for the design of effective and morally defensible

institutions as constituent parts of a global, low-key republic; a republic-light. In this model,

surprisingly much of the idealism of civic republicanism can survive, while it is at the same time

palatable for liberals (the straw-man arch enemies of republicanism).

PART ONE

Anthropocene Utopian Engineering

Beginner’s guide

he well known five-yearly IPCC reports on climate change (or, with a less neutral and [since

far more is going on] less accurate term, global warming) and the occasional reports

published in between have not become more optimistic over the years. They did become more

precise and better supported, partly by learning from critique by trial and error, partly due

straightforwardly to the growth of knowledge. The cooperation between the various (natural) sciences

involved in the research projects that these days also feeds into IPCC reports has resulted in the

evolution of a transdisciplinary Earth System Science (ESS), the study of Earth System, the Earth (and

its environs) as one geological, biological, chemical, physical and climatological whole (Lenton 2016;

Hamilton 2017).3

In recent years, in response to the apparent failure of ESS-based recommendations to instigate radical

and robust policies, ESS has expanded to include bits of the social sciences: ‘ESS in its emerging form

incorporates the role of human activities as an integral and dominant force in the functioning of the

system’ (Oldfield 2016:165), since ‘humankind is now an integral part of the Earth system, having

generated severe threats to its sustainability as a habitat for human life’ (Oldfield 2016:169). (Though

I would argue that the expansion in the direction of the social sciences is not just for the sake of

completeness but also to understand how governance works and can be influenced: over the years, the

third parts of IPCC reports focus in increasing detail on ways to overcome resistance to proposed

climate policies.) ESS, however, is still not a Stephen Hawking-like Theory of Everything, not even a

theory of everything larger than an atom on or near Earth: ‘many of the dilemmas raised by the

Anthropocene, howsoever defined, lie outside and beyond scientific reasoning. They are the direct and

intimate concern of writers with diverse interests and skills outside science entirely’ (Oldfield

2016:169).4

The natural scientists who stood at the cradle of IPCC and gave ESS concepts like Earth System,

climate change and global warming, among whom Dutch Nobel Prize laureate Paul Crutzen is most

widely known, also introduced and promoted the latest key concept in climate science: the

Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a geological epoch like any other (Miocene, Pleistocene,

Holocene, etc.), always beginning with a geologically demonstrable clean break in climate and

ecosystems – with one tiny difference: the latest break5 is associated explicitly with human behaviour.

There are at least three Anthropocene narratives: one in which the break coincides with the transition

3 Although one might argue that Earth Science was always already there (cf. Oldfield 2016) – it has just evolved into

something recognized and recognizable as a scientific discipline in its own right. 4 This seems like an ideal opportunity to draw the reader’s attention to an excellent illustration, the long-running Brill book

series Nature, Culture and Literature: http://www.brill.com/products/series/nature-culture-and-literature. 5 Characterized by among other things a sharp and exponential rise in temperatures, and the so-called Sixth Extinction of

species. For the (literally) coloured figures used by the academic Advocates of the Anthropocene construct to link human

activity to climate change, see: http://www.anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php.

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from the hunter-gatherer to the farmer, one in which the Industrial Revolution (say, since 1750)

defines the break, and one in which the Anthropocene begins with Hiroshima – the very sharp line that

radio-active fallout since 1945 left in Earth’s geological archive is undeniably quite telling. The

International Commission on Stratigraphy has so far not recognized the Anthropocene as a ‘genuine’

geological epoch (in spite of a 2015 proposal to that effect), and to clearly distinguish the concept as a

scientific hypothesis from the political message derived from it by Crutzen and colleagues, Earth

scientists of a more academic leaning write the word with a lower case a: anthropocene.

Looking through the lens of the Anthropocene at climate change changes the way Earth Science is to

be used, and changes the nature of environmental policy itself. Anthropocene problems like climate

change have nothing to do with localized ecosystems but everything with –spheres: the ‘atmosphere,

hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere’ (Hamilton 2017:17). Consequently,

Anthropocene environmental policy cannot be localized either – even if it originates locally, its effects

are (or at least need to be) global, i.e., they will affect your neighbours. Obviously, Dalby warns, this

invites us to first think ‘about geoengineering before major experiments are tried’ (Dalby 2015:190).

Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and various other takes on reducing atmospheric concentration of

CO2, regularly considered in IPCC reports, can be initiated by national governments, and the ocean

iron seeding experiment of 2012 was even a private experiment.6 It is all too easy for states or other

stakeholders to act unilaterally. To be effective and to avoid repercussions for and from other parties,

some form of global coordination and control over Anthropocene policies will always be needed.7

Understanding Earth System requires ESS, and controlling Earth System requires that all things

human (economics, politics, love, lust, culture and art) take second place to ecological considerations,

to the side-constraints Earth System imposes – that is ‘Holocene thinking … supplanted by

Anthropocene thinking’ (Hamilton 2016:48). ‘Protecting nature and, now, placating the Earth System

trump all other considerations’ (Hamilton 2016:55). The logic of Earth System global governance

dictates that control over Earth System trumps everything – and by implication, any deviation from

priority for rational, maximally efficient global management would indicate that there is a higher value

than X, the value that inspires and guides the quest for control over the Anthropocene (more on this

below). In the Advocates’ conception of global governance for the Anthropocene, governance is

expert rule, preferably natural scientists’ rule; concepts like democracy, diversity, rights or freedom

are considered problematic at best, but more often simply passed over (Wissenburg 2016, 2018). Two

disturbing recent illustrations:

The prospect that humans are in (…) the Anthropocene fundamentally challenges basic

assumptions of modern thought, such as (…) liberty, that the planet is capacious enough for

individual acts to be thought of as disconnected from the peoples, species and processes once

rendered as ‘others’ (Schmidt, Brown and Orr 2016:188).

And:

…forums for ‘civic governance’ should actively cultivate virtues, such as humility, for

decision making in the Anthropocene. (…) virtues directed towards ‘compassionate retreat’

present a way to meet obligations to humans and non-humans that were created by attempts to

control the Earth System even as efforts are made to retreat from that misguided aim (Schmidt,

Brown and Orr 2016:196).

This alone should be sufficient to make one wonder if the rewards of Anthropocene global governance

are worth their price. But there is more.

6 Both SRM and iron seeding are also discussed as feasible and viable policies in the IPCC Special Report Global Warming

of 1.5 °C, forthcoming in 2018. Since citing from the draft version is prohibited, this report is not included in the

Bibliography. 7 If such a thing can exist, a policy that affects only or almost only one ecosystem (the natural environment for green

republicanism) may be politically desirable but is, from the point of view of the Anthropocene, irrelevant.

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The blind eye of epistocracy

lthough the meaning (and use) of the terms epistocracy and technocracy seem to overlap, I

will for the sake of clarity use them as two quite distinct concepts: epistocracy as the rule of

those with superior knowledge of politics, in other words of the desired shape of society, in

other words of ends; technocracy as the rule of those most skilled in a practice, in other words the use

of means. The Anthropocene discourse is both epistocratic and technocratic, and both conditions blind

it to its shortcomings. Let me start with the epistocratic affliction.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, David Gauthier (1986) made a most helpful distinction

between three types of collective action problem: Type I, where cooperation to create a public good is

beneficial for all and desertion attractive for none (one example would be a sinking lifeboat, floating

only as long as everyone scoops out the water streaming in), Type II, where cooperation is good for all

but defection attractive for some (e.g. for those for whom the benefits of the public good are offset by

private costs – those living on rather than behind a dyke, for example), and Type III, where

cooperation is good for all but defection is rational for all (e.g. the classic free rider problem or

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons). Gauthier argued that only Type III really requires the presence of

a government (or more precisely, an institution with the force of authority), while I Type II situations,

participants can simply compensate the potential defectors without the need to bring in government.

Type I, of course, is where the invisible hand makes both authoritative coordination and compensation

redundant.

There is no evidence (at least none that I know of) that IPCC in the realm of policy advice, or the

Anthropocene Advocates in the academic realm, are so naïve as to believe that climate change is a

Type I problem. Perhaps surprisingly, it is also rare to see language that suggests that it is a

straightforward Type III problem. IPCC reports in particular are very careful to point out that different

policies have different costs and benefits for different actors and stakeholders. In the upcoming IPCC

Special Report Global Warming of 1.5 °C the complete fifth chapter will even be devoted to the

effects of the various types of climate governance on inequality and poverty in the global south. This

kind of subtlety is, frankly, far more rare in environmental political theory than among climate

scientists in general, and these target groups in particular.

Yet there is one sense in which IPCC and the Advocates lack subtlety, and that is where epistocracy

comes in: it is assumed that climate control is a public good – but it isn’t. The problem here is not so

much the public part (the non-exclusion demand) but simply with the idea that climate control is a

good, or that it is useful.

For one, climate change is, for example in the guise of global warming, an opportunity, one might

even say a public good, for many countries. For Russia and Canada, Chile and Argentina, melting ice

caps and thawing permafrost means easier and cheaper access to immense resources and consequently

wealth and political clout. China now sees an opportunity to open up a new trade route with Western

Europe via the Arctic Sea. Moreover, as even IPCC reports indicate, some of the already available

mitigation and adaptation techniques (like nuclear power) can actually be profitable and so successful,

so productive, that they become interesting export products. In other words: There are places and cases

where climate control is simply undesirable and where climate change is the public good.8

Secondly, it is all too easy to assume that nation-states are the stakeholders in global climate

governance. As classic sources of rules and regulations, they may be the most likely agents of change

but they are not the only ones nor necessarily the most legitimate stakeholders.

8 And for the record, there are places where and times when climate governance is not cheaper than climate war (cf. Lee

2009, Haldén 2007, 2011).

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They are not the only ones because, ultimately, the climate cannot be influenced let alone controlled

by paper tigers – it’s the economy, stupid… Climate control is control of levels and types of

consumption, modes and means of production and size and sort of trade. That kind of control does not

necessarily need to be exercised by political authorities – and one does not have to be a Marxist to

acknowledge that changes in modes and means of production often come about through autonomous

processes that governments simply cannot control.9 Technological revolutions tend to be followed at a

very, very long distance by befuddled governments trying to get some grip on changes with ill-

informed, inadequate and counterproductive regulations. This suggests, by the way, that IPCC reports

may well identify the wrong stakeholders as prime movers – which makes one wonder what IPCC

reports would look like if they were written for finance, business and industry rather than

governments.

Not only are they not the only candidates, neither are nation-states by definition the most legitimate

stakeholders in the world of climate governance. Not all minorities, ideologies, religions or sexes may

be equally well represented by their governments; not all their interests will be equally well protected,

nor will they necessarily accept (or worse, be morally obliged to accept) a national government as their

representative. Of course, first and indigenous peoples are perhaps the greatest moral challenge to the

authority and standing of nation-states: they can argue that no conqueror has a moral right to speak for

the conquered. And first and indigenous peoples may well have most reason to complain: their ways

of life are by definition more vulnerable than almost any other to the destructive effect of most

techniques and climate policies.10

Plus: what goes for Russia and Argentina goes for any of these

potential stakeholders as well: who is to say that global climate governance is a good for them?

This brings me to a third manifestation of epistocratic blindness: the apparent inability of

Anthropocene Advocates and IPCC authors to appreciate value system other than their own. Allow me

two relatively long quotes from the Fifth Assessment Report:11

Any decision about climate change is likely to promote some values and damage others. These

may be values of very different sorts. In decision making, different values must therefore be

put together or balanced against each other. Some pairs of values differ so radically from each

other that they cannot be determinately weighed together. For example, it may be impossible

to weigh the value of preserving a traditional culture against the material income of the people

whose culture it is, or to weigh the value of biodiversity against human wellbeing. (…) Multi-

Criteria Analysis (MCA) (…) is a technique that is designed to take account of several

incommensurable values. (…) It is very difficult to measure non-human values in a way that

makes them commensurate with human values. Economists address this issue by dividing

value into use value (associated with actual use of nature — instrumental value) and nonuse or

existence value (intrinsic value of nature). (…) The total amount people are willing to pay has

sometimes been used as an economic measure of the total value (instrumental and intrinsic) of

these features (…) A person’s wellbeing will be affected by many of the other values that are

mentioned above, and by many of the considerations of justice mentioned in Section 3.3. It is

bad for a person to have their rights infringed or to be treated unfairly, and it is good for a

person to live within a healthy culture and society, surrounded by flourishing nature. (IPCC

2014 220-221).

9 This is neither the time nor the place to explain why ‘Capitalocene’ is a misnomer and a very bad alternative for

‘Anthropocene’. But it is. 10 This should not be read as support for the way of life of first and indigenous peoples; it’s about their moral standing

relative to their self-proclaimed guardians. Given that they lead nasty, brutish and short lives while inefficiently using

resources that could provide for ten or a hundred times their number, there are grounds even for non-consequentialists not to

be too confident in embracing traditional ways of life. 11 The draft of the Special Report on 1.5 Degrees contains even better (worse) examples, but unfortunately we are not

allowed to quote that draft.

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And after having chosen to aggregating welfare as the solution to taking account of incommensurable

values (not for an intrinsic reason but simply because a quantifiable measure is seen as the unique

necessary means to the end of making choices):

Political feasibility is the likelihood of a policy gaining acceptance and being adopted and

implemented (…) It covers the obstacles faced and key design features that can generate or

reduce resistance among political parties (…) Political feasibility may also depend on

environmental effectiveness and whether regulatory and other costs are equitably distributed

across society (…). The ability of governments to implement political decisions may be

hampered by interest groups; policies will be more feasible if the benefits can be used to buy

the support of a winning coalition (…). Ex ante, these criteria can be used in assessing and

improving policies. Ex post, they can be used to verify results, withdraw inefficient policies

and correct policy performance. (IPCC 2014: 237)

In other words: values and ethics that do not support the ‘technically’ best policy are on the one hand

either calculated away as costs to be offset by benefits, on the other seen as political obstacles that

must simply be overruled and overrun, that do not need to be taken seriously as potentially well-

founded alternative world views, let alone be addressed in a reasonable dialogue respecting the burden

of judgment including irreducible moral pluralism (cf. Rawls 1993). As said above, not every

stakeholder in climate policy has the same (negative) appreciation of the effects of climate change (or

positive appreciation of specific climate policies), oftentimes on grounds of principles rather than

calculations;12

they do have a moral right to dissent and they may even be morally right.

It is not self-evident that a specific state of ecological harmony or degree of resilience is a higher goal

than individual liberty, or equality or justice (and that A might be a necessary condition for Y doesn’t

imply that B can’t be at least as important for Y or for Z), that present humans should create and fund

generic future generations rather than take individual responsibility for future lives before creating

them (Wissenburg 2010), that (the continued existence, and supremacy over the known universe,) of

humanity is a good, instrumentally or in itself. All of these valid perspectives are excluded by the

naïve epistocratic assumption that the goal and ends of Anthropocene climate policy are valid beyond

reasonable doubt. It may not come as a surprise that there was not a single non-consequentialist

philosopher among the scores of authors and referees of the Fifth Report.

The blind eye of technocracy

hile blind in one eye due to epistocracy, technocracy blinds Anthropocene Advocates and

climate policy designers in the other. On this particular affliction I can be fairly brief; it is

basically the staple food of the countless critics of geo-engineering megalomania (e.g.

Wissenburg 2018, Anshelm and Hansson 2016), but those critiques apply equally well if not better to

global governance – which requires even more knowledge and coordination than geo-engineering to

be successful.

If there is anything IPCC reports show, it is how impossible global climate engineering, and therefore

global climate governance, really is. The forthcoming IPCC Special Report Global Warming of 1.5 °C

perhaps illustrates this more than any previous report. In the natural science part, it makes sense to

indicate for each mechanism, each causal relation that ESS identifies as a potential determinant of the

global climate, how strong the evidence is, how wide the consensus and how confident the authors are

of the validity of the characterization of the mechanism. Strength, support and validity are meaningful

concepts in this context, and they allow us to formulate valid expectations on aggregate levels. But

unfortunately the same three criteria are also applied in the social science part (0-5 books indicating

12 I am aware that I am reducing consequentialism here to an ethics of cold self-interested calculation (cf. Rawls 2009), or as

I phrase it in lectures, the morality of dogs, children and psychopaths. That does not mean consequentialism has no place in

ethics or in human affairs – it only means it has no exclusive rights to the territory.

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strength of evidence, 0-5 smileys for agreement and 0-5 stars for confidence) to assess the effects of

exceptionally abstract aggregate policies on equally abstract aggregate policy domains – for example,

the effect of ‘accelerating energy efficiency improvement’, ‘behavioral responses’ or ‘afforestation

and reforestation’ on ‘air pollution reduction and better health’, ‘healthy lives and el-being for all at all

ages’, or ‘resource mobilization and Strengthen multi-stakeholder Partnership’. To even suggest that

judgments like these could offer a sound basis for global governance is nothing less than pseudo-

science.

The degrees of uncertainty about basic data, their instability due to ever growing scientific knowledge

and ever developing theories, the uncertainty and disagreement about the causal relations between the

countless variables in climate model, and the exponentially greater uncertainty and outright

disagreement on descriptions of the technological, social, economic, political (etc.) factors determining

societies and their environmental policies – all of this adds up to a social science inclusive ESS being

in all likelihood little more helpful than reading the entrails of a sacrificial sheep. The main difference

is that the authors of IPCC reports are quite open about their uncertainty, unlike the haruspices of yore.

The same cannot always be said about the advocates of the Anthropocene. Recently, Gaffney and

Steffen (2017) were accused of meaningless and gross oversimplification for introducing ‘the

Anthropocene equation’, a half a line long formula that would unite all the elements that make up the

Anthropocene – the critics referred to it as a pseudo-mathematical formula based on undefined

compound variables (Heijungs, Boersema and Huppes 2017).

It is not just sheer omniscience that is needed for global climate governance, but also total oversight

and omnipotence – the combination of which brings to mind not just the precautionary principle but all

of Karl Popper’s (1984, 2002) fears concerning scientifically supported totalitarianism. Global

Anthropocene governance is utopian social engineering squared.

In conclusion: IPCC and the Anthropocene advocates are blind in both eyes to questions of a value-

rational nature. Where the ends of climate policy are assumed to be self-evident and incontrovertible,

global climate governance necessarily becomes epistocratic and technocratic – a dystopia.

PART TWO

Republicanism-Light

Civic republicanism

he answer to the Anthropocene cannot be, should not be, global governance. Nor can it be, for

agents on their own, laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer. The Way of the Ostrich is

attractive but the Anthropocene won’t pass by. The Anthropocene represents a myriad of

possible challenges, advantages and opportunities for both economic and political stakeholders – one

either acts or is acted upon. And rather than governance or the law of the jungle, the Anthropocene

calls for institutions that facilitate reflexive rationality. In this second part I will argue that in designing

such institutions, we should once more seek inspiration in a two millennia old stream of consciousness

in political thought, to which I shall refer as republicanism-light, to distinguish it from the

contemporary school known as civic republicanism.

Since many of the classic authors whom I associate with republicanism-light are also sources of

inspiration for civic republicanism, let me first briefly discus the latter and explain why it is not the

most likely candidate for ‘political theory of the Anthropocene’.

Civic republicanism is often presented as embracing liberty yet strongly opposing liberalism. It

embraces liberty but not the kind liberals value above all else. Benjamin Constant described the two

as the liberty of the Ancients, the liberty of collective self-rule, versus the liberty of the Moderns,

liberty from collective (public, government) control. The two are clearly opposites though not

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necessarily antithetical. In liberalism, the individual is free if others do not limit his or her range of

possible actions. In republicanism, the individual is free if s/he actively participates in politics, in the

collective design and regulation of rules, customs and intuitions shaping his or her society (cf.

Cannavò 2016). One of the best known contemporary defenders of the liberty of the Ancients is Philip

Pettit, who re-interprets it as non-domination.

A second defining characteristic of civic republicanism (as exemplified by e.g. Dagger and Pettit – and

in green circles by none other than our very own John Barry) is that it embraces the idea that there is

such a thing as a common good, the realization of which ought to be promoted by public institutions –

as some authors have argued, again in opposition to a liberalism that would either directly deny the

notion of a common good or for the sake of impartiality discourage the authoritative imposition of

values and norms. Given that neither the Anthropocene, nor climate change, nor environmental

policies are ethically or politically uncontroversial, it is not immediately evident that civic

republicanism matches with a global good. Because…

Third and last, and equally problematical for a politics of the Anthropocene, civic republicanism is

unthinkable without a public, a polis that is more Gemeinschaft than Gesellschaft, more community

than society. Civic republicanism demands a positive commitment to the cooperative combination of

relations, meanings, exchanges and values across generations that makes ‘the public’ more than a

mob, crowd or market.

Against this background, Richard Dagger commented on the apparent inability of republicanism to

deal with globalization, being a politics of place or (prompting the critic) ‘a nostalgic form of political

thinking that looks past the nation-state to the Italian city-republic’ (Dagger 2001:158). In Dagger’s

view, this is an advantage rather than a failing: republicanism points to the importance of place and of

belonging against a cosmopolitanism gone wild. Republicanism offers ‘autonomy, civic virtue, and

their prerequisites’ (Dagger 2001:169), vital elements all missing in cosmopolitanism. ‘Place is

important to republicanism because it strengthens the sense of publicity – of being part of a public’

(ibid.).

Still, one might argue, this is anything but an answer to global problems requiring global answers and

global coordination – be these problems economic, political or climatological. Thus, James Bohman

concluded in another context, an answer to globalization requires more than moral cosmopolitanism –

a new locus of authority is needed when the nation-state no longer offers that. He then suggests the

next step needs to be ‘cosmopolitan republican citizenship’ – but Bohman is a teleologist, who invents

his goal before the path towards it, the necessary institutions, are specified; in Marx’ terms, he is a

utopian thinker. ‘In the absence of strong international judicial and legislative institutions or anything

like a global will of the people organized by representation to which to appeal, cosmopolitan

citizenship may very well be exercised primarily in public contestation’ (Bohman 2001:17). Little has

happened since in the mainstream republican discourse, as witnessed by Waldemar Hanasz’s diatribe

against republicanism: it would be necessarily parochial and patriotic, it embraces and instigates moral

relativism and morally indefensible partiality in favour of the own community, and flirts hopelessly

with ‘the trendy inventions of recent democratic theory’ (Hanasz 2006:298). To name but a few of its

shortcomings in the eyes of cosmopolitans.

The last decade had witnessed the development of environmental or green13

republicanism (cf. Barry

2008). While one can appreciate green republicanism as a contribution to both republicanism and

green political thought, its contribution to Anthropocene-level environmental politics is less clear.

Stressing the environmental dimension of global moral citizenship, thus focusing basically on

individual virtue and individual action, does not help much in designing institutions – although it is

clear that to green republicans as much as to others, a global republic is unthinkable, not to say

13 ‘Environmental’ may be the more neutral and therefore more professional term – I still prefer ‘green’ as it does not

necessarily associated subsequent nouns with a conception of the environment as resources ‘meant’ for human exploitation

and use.

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undesirable (cf. Cannavò 2016) – and (pace cosmopolitan wishful thinking) a global public is not the

same as a global social media audience.

Green republicans remain focused on the polis, public or community, expecting republican institutions

and republican civic virtue together to generate not just consensus but even the ‘right’ green choices

(as I expect e.g. the papers by Heidenreich, Bohn, Nordbrandt for this workshop to confirm), since

sustainability would be part of the common good and the republic cannot be neutral towards the

common good. But as argued above, environmental interests (climate, resources, etc.) are quite

diverse; unfounded faith in globally ‘right’ choices obfuscates the genuinely deep divisions,

controversies and conflicts that really define our interests (plural) in viable and resilient environments

(plural). It is far from certain that ‘pastoral’ green republicanism can count on in a global consensus on

– among much else – climate policy goals and ends. One might even suspect that the spread of green

republicanism to various countries could exacerbate the differences and conflicts between societies.

Perhaps the impossibility of conceiving of a community greater than the quasi-organic whole that

defines a republic predestines green civic republicanism to only opt for, or at least only discuss,

‘sustainability in one country’ type answers to Anthropocene problems: low-key, low-potential

solutions stressing austerity and simplicity, and resulting in decreasing welfare and smaller

populations – solutions that are hard to sell to an affluent, high-energy, high-consumption world. The

following quote nicely illustrates what makes the difference between ideal and non-ideal theory:

But resources are relative to needs; a disciplined and united people accustomed to frugality

and modesty will not make as many demands on its national resource base and ecological

hinterland. They will also be more unified and so better able to defend their city—and to

recover from disaster. This republican concern with promoting healthy, robust and resilient

communities thus corresponds well with contemporary empirical research on the conditions

which enhance a community’s capacity to withstand external shocks and disasters, and

augment its ability to adapt to significant natural and socio-economic transformations such as

climate change, peak oil or major downturns in the global economy’ (Barry 2008:6).

Republicanism-light

here is an alternative way of reading the history of republican political thought – a stream of

consciousness reflecting a constant dialogue with concurrent political systems and their

challengers, rather than a school with a clearly defined programme and mission.

Republicanism-light stretches across two millennia, from Aristotle via Cicero, Machiavelli,

Montesquieu and Spinoza to Publius. It is a reading of republicanism not as focusing on the unity and

virtue of a public but on the stability and resilience of the institutions that shape a republic.

It all starts with Aristotle who, in his Politics (1981), introduced a scheme that would – with

accommodations to different times and places – become the alpha and omega of political thought: his

typology of governments defining six basic types (rule by the one, the few or the many in the interest

of all or in that of the rulers only).

Aristotle’s Types of Government

Rule by and for Private interest Public interest

The one Tyranny Monarchy

The few Oligarchy Aristocracy

The many Democracy Politeia-1

Politeia-2: the mixed constitution

T

11

Interpreting Aristotle is difficult at times – for example, which one’s really the ideal form of

government – monarchy or aristocracy? Another example: theoretically a ‘rule by the many in the

interest of all’ (here denoted as politeia-1, one possible interpretation of some of his uses of the term

politeia) may exist but in practice it simply comes down to mob rule – for which from Aristotle’s

times on until the 19th Century, the term ‘democracy’ would be used. But on some points Aristotle is

clear: identifying the ideal form of government is an academic14

exercise; what matters is identifying

the most stable form of government so that all parts of the polis get a fighting chance to flourish. And

that most table constitution, politeia-2, is a mixed constitution – not a mix of utopian ideals but one of

realistic, perhaps even cynical, expectations: oligarchy and democracy, the haves and the have-nots,

kept in balance by a monarch.

The mixed constitution would quickly be renamed by Marcus Tullius Cicero (1866) in De Re Publica

(first published 51 BC, rediscovered 1819), from politeia into republic – a term that remained

synonymous with the mixed constitution until, again, the 19th Century (and in spite of its picking up

other meanings over the centuries. Throughout that time, it would serve two purposes: initially, as a

critical tool to curb despotism and tyranny, and increasingly, as the Revolution approached, as the one

and only viable alternative to democracy (i.e., mob rule).

In subsequent centuries, the mixed constitution was reinterpreted and redesigned according to the

times and the taste of the author, constantly absorbing new elements contributing to stability and

resilience. Most famously – sitting uncomfortably with many a mainstream republican but so in tune

with the modern times of Lefort, Rosanvallon or Mouffe: Machiavelli introduced discord to the

republic. A stable republic needs parties, dispute, disagreement, strife – not only is it a sign that

citizens identify with and are committed to the republic, discord as a way of constantly reproducing,

reinvigorating and redesigning the foundations of the republic is also simply what keeps it alive.

One further example is Spinoza who saw in the Netherlands in its Golden Age the makings of an ideal

republic combining the aristocracy of the Patricians with a democracy of a (through free press and

open debate) ever more enlightened public – no king, no monarch needed, the system stabilized itself.

Next, Montesquieu and Publius added various versions of the division of powers, checks and balances,

countervailence, and other further hurdles for the tyranny of majorities. Finally, I would argue, while

thinkers like Mouffe drawing attention to the function of discord may not be all that new, a truly

original recent addition comes in the form of Habermas’s and Rawls’s attempts to circumscribe a

reasonable debate that respects the burdens of judgment.

In terms of the classic vocabulary, the constitutional liberal and social democracies in which we live

today are not democracies at all, but republics.

Republicanism-light as the stream of consciousness in political thought that inspired reforms aimed at

the creation of stable, mixed constitutions cannot be caught in permanent core ideas like civic

republicanism, a genuine school – it has evolved way beyond anything Cicero, Machiavelli or even

Spinoza might recognize. But we can summarize its current accomplishments: it has established that a

stable republic (1) is a product of non-ideal theory, seeking both ethical and political legitimacy for a

republic not a public; (2) recognizes and embraces the cleavages in society between not only faiths,

ethics and ideologies, but also between haves and have-nots, elites and grassroots (ideational and

material); (3) recognizes and embraces the indispensable value of discord and of free and open debate;

and (4) fosters the creation of institutions that discourage rash and one-sided action while promoting

patience, reflection and philosophically well-founded agreement.

14 Pun intended. How could it not be?

12

Light Republican Institutions for the Anthropocene: Guidelines

t would be presumptuous to suggest that it is possible to design in any detail the kind of

Anthropocene policy institutions that make sense from a republicanism-light perspective.

Global political or administrative structures are never (going to be) incarnations of the ideal

types or models we use as standards or mirrors for today’s reality – models like liberal democracy, the

republic, the trias politica, Confucian structures, the community, et cetera. New institutions and

structures are always going to be what the Republic grew to be since Aristotle: a time and place

sensitive, evolving and adapting mix of old models translated to a new context, the accidental product

of interactions between self-interested and opposed groups who hopefully occasionally add a bit of

common interest beyond purely mutual advantage to the mix. I will therefore not attempt to defend

any utopian models – I limit myself to tentative guidelines. I list them first, then discuss them in detail.

Global republicanism-light

1. Take full responsibility for the Anthropocene

2. Avoid utopian and embrace piecemeal engineering

3. Support liberal sovereignty for states

4. Organize the opposition

5. Create global agonistic checks and balances

6. Adopt negotiation procedures that promote reflexive rationality

7. Work with realistic expectations

1. Take full responsibility for the Anthropocene

2. Avoid utopian and embrace piecemeal engineering

As Clive Hamilton (2018: 38) writes, ‘There are no more enclaves. The natural world inherited by

modernity is gone, and all of the ideas built on it now float on its memory.’ Those who argue that we

do not have the ‘power to change the future of the Earth (deniers and some religious fundamentalists)’

(Hamilton 2018:39), deep greens and ecocentric philosophers who would want us to relinquish that

power, ecomoderns who crave that power, and the ‘oblivious … avatars of the ruling system and its

intellectual apologists’ (ibid.) fail to understand what the Anthropocene implies: that humankind has

made its own world and has the power to continue to do so – but not necessarily the knowledge and

insight.

Even without use of the label Anthropocene and all that it stands for, there is no denying that some

human actions have had, have and will have global consequences. Assuming for a moment,

optimistically, that humans are capable of reflection, reason and autonomous choice, human actions

are doomed to be moral actions – and against that background, inaction is action too. There is then no

way to, in Hamilton’s terms, relinquish that power. The Way of the Ostrich is closed.15

I would not, in Hamiltonian vein, want to argue that ‘humankind’ should either take full responsibility

for affecting the global climate, or fail morally – there is no moral agent called humankind. But the

actions that affect the globe are human actions, and individual humans, we assume, can be moral

agents with genuine choices – they fail if they do not address whatever responsibility they can carry.

Yet as argued here and elsewhere, including to some degree by Hamilton, responsibility should not

give rise to megalomania, technocracy, epistocracy or utopian engineering. ESS is simply too

incomplete and too imprecise – it contains all the uncertainty and fallibility of its constituent

disciplines squared and squared once more. Global coordination of spheres-affecting action is a moral

duty but that duty can only be moral if executed responsibly – with checks and balances in place to

acknowledge the limits of knowledge and the burdens of judgment. To turn the Precautionary

Principle into a Popperian political guideline: the rational attitude towards uncertainty about facts,

15 ‘None but the King of Gone Dork shall pass.’

I

13

standards and values is not inaction but further investigating which standards and values can best

guide a policy minimizing the risk of disastrous consequences (cf. Popper 1984:158n2).

3. Support liberal sovereignty for states

As argued above, nation-states are not necessarily the best representatives of all the stakeholders in

Anthropocene policy. Yet realistically, nation-states dominate the international system and will keep

doing so for the foreseeable future (cf. Duit, Feindt & Meadowcroft 2016) – and it is still possible to

argue that, as the political face of society, the ‘social union of social unions’ (Rawls 1999:462), the

state has a valid moral status in its own right – albeit empirically next to the authorities and unifying

constructs ordinary citizens recognize next to, sometime even above, the state – think of religions, the

Mafia, the University, corporations and companies, even football clubs.16

Pace for instance Simon Dalby I would argue that ‘traditional notions of sovereignty’ can be helpful

(or at least one of them is). Dalby (2016: 198) argues that ‘territorial strategies are not the practical

modes for considering SRM [Solar Radiation Management, MW] with all its potential global effects’.

But robust global governance structures are not incompatible with sovereignty – technocratic single-

mindedness is. Accepting the crucial role of nation-states implies accepting their sovereignty – though

not necessarily the old-fashioned realist version of sovereignty as an immunity or claim-right. On a

liberal understanding, sovereignty is a duty: a duty to care for the wellbeing of state’s citizens

(specified further in terms of fundamental human rights). It is on this basis that many international

actors now defend or accept that nation-states have a responsibility to protect (R2P) populations

against not only aggression from invaders but also (with more than a homeopathic whiff of Hobbes)

against the failure of their own governments to exercise this duty. Arguably, the duty to care is first

and foremost a duty to protect the (necessary conditions for) survival, and primary among those is

protection of the physical environment – zuerst kommt das Fressen… The more explicitly sovereignty

is shaped so that it includes responsibility for the global climate, the more ‘Anthropocene-wise’

constructive an actor the nation-state can be.

4. Organize the opposition

Nation-states conceiving of their sovereignty as a duty to their citizens, among others a duty to control

the climate, will inevitably defend their supremacy over non-state actors, even or in particular17

the

economic actors that are the actual makers of the climate; in addition, they may also misrepresent or

not represent further stakeholders (ethnic, cultural and political minorities) and only selectively

represent the preferences and interests of the greater public. For republicanism-light, it is essential that

political choices are the result of sincere and intense public debate, which requires the existence of an

opposition – free and unobstructed.

A first group of obvious candidates to be given a forum are the market parties: consumers and

producers, including trade and finance – as is already done, to some degree, in the World Intellectual

Property Organization (WIPO).18

By the same token, cultural and ethnic minorities (including but not

exclusively first and indigenous peoples) are a second obvious choice. What other stakeholders are to

be included simply ‘depends’; inclusion and exclusion, recognition and denial, is in itself a (classic)

political question. My next-door neighbour who want the Canaries’ climate closer to the Netherlands

because she’s growing older and finds the holiday trip increasingly tiring is probably too small a group

16 It is probably a prejudice, a professional hazard, of political scientists and philosophers to think that the nation-state has an

in any way special or superior legitimacy; in the lives of ordinary citizens, at least those who did not grow up in societies

once addicted to the provisions offered by an Orwellian system, the state is just one inconvenience and one provider among

others. 17 Depending on whether you are a Marxist or not.

18 The history of WIPO’s Treaties and of its Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources,

Traditional Knowledge and Folklore nicely illustrates that the interests of states do not only not coincide with those of

‘traditional’ peoples (who gnaw at state sovereignty over land, resources, knowledge and ways of life), but also not with

those of ‘big’ business (which is not interested in sovereignty but in clear agreements on property regimes) (cf. e.g. Eimer

and Schüren 2013).

14

(and represents too limited an interest) to morally qualify for recognition as a climate stakeholder, but

a democrat would say that 50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong – the more people join her, the

stronger the political case for representation. All we can say is that recognition has to make sense,

morally or politically; only in ideal cases will the two go together. Morally, admitting religious

institutions as climate stakeholders makes about as much sense as including trekkies but politically,

religions are forces to be reckoned with.

For the record: republicanism-light and civic republicanism take different positions on the eligibility

of private actors like commerce, consumers and ethnic communities to the (global) political stage.

Barbara Buckinx, representing civic republicanism, for example argues that to qualify for global

governance tasks, an actor must meet two standards: its function must be ‘co-extensive with the

human world and it includes among its primary tasks duties of global governance ... (and, MW) it

conceives of itself as a global public actor, fulfilling a global public function’ (Buckinx 202:540); the

first criterion is also described as ‘must ... serve the world population’ (ibid.). From a light republican

perspective, this position is difficult to accept for at least three reasons. First, even Buckinx herself

admits that states (the only actors she is willing to entrust with global governance) do not qualify, and,

to repeat myself, whether states are representative for all their citizens and all their interests is

questionable. Second, Buckinx’s standards are themselves problematical – if applied (appropriately

reformulated) to the level of the state, they would result in the exclusion of political parties

representing non-universal interests, such as socialists. Republicanism-light however demands room

for all serious political interests. Finally, agonistic republicanism-light would reject the exclusion of

actors on the basis of a substantive moral standard (such as Buckinx’s ‘thick’ criteria); it would instead

let actors exclude themselves by their unwillingness to engage in a reasonable conversation accepting

the burdens of judgment. The common good, if it exists at all, is a product of reasonable debate, an

outcome, not its input – that would void all need for reflection.

5. Create global agonistic checks and balances

For a global climate regime to function as a republic rather than an epistocracy, it is essential to not

just organize a global arena for opposing voices (cf. Bäckstrand et al. 2017) but also to give

stakeholders an actual say in choices so as to create an Aristotelian-Spinozistic balance between

opposing forces. That means veto powers, division of powers, check and balances – and it requires

agonistic rather than consensus-oriented political arenas; only then will alternative views of the good

life and alternative perceptions of stakeholders’ interests have to be addressed on their merits, not

addressed as threats to efficiency.

This is where republicanism–light probably deviates most from existing practices in international

relations: currently, it is cartel of nation-states that exclusively decides on recognition, and exclusively

reserves full recognition to nation-states (which is why the Holy See is a member of the UN and not

the Vatican). Again, WIPO can serve as an indication that the unlikely is possible: while its treaties are

still treaties between members of the states cartel, they are increasingly the product of deliberation

with NGOs, producers and indigenous peoples, sometimes treated almost as equals – in other words,

where non-state actors have all but formal veto power. That said, WIPO cannot be mistaken for an

agonistic forum; for that aspect of global republicanism, I cannot name a best practice.

A necessary condition for an agonistic system to work is the absence of a strong, autonomous

executive – exactly what would characterize the ideal global governance structure preferred by

advocates of the Anthropocene. An executive hindered all the way from goal formulation to policy

implementation by the need to seek support from an opposition, the impossibility to bypass other

parties and checks and balances, creates room for the acknowledgement of human and science’s

fallibility on the one hand, irreducible moral and political diversity on the other. But let us not make

the fault so common among proponents of deliberative democracy: agonistic, divided political

structures are necessary but not sufficient conditions for deliberation, which in turn is a necessary but

not sufficient condition for genuine reflexive rationality.

15

Finally, designing global institutions built with countervailing components implies that we enter terra

incognita: while the process theoretically starts by rethinking familiar concepts in a new environment

(parliaments, elections, constitutions, supreme courts etc.), likely with the help of classical

predecessors (polis, empire, etc.), in practice new institutions emerge more by accident than by design,

and more by lateral than by structured thinking. For example – if we accept that it is the economy, the

market, that is the locus of change in technology and productive force, why not have two executives –

one political, one economic? Obviously, there will be trial and error – hic sunt leones et dracones.

6. Adopt negotiation procedures that promote reflexive rationality

The greatest weakness in 2300 years of republicanism-light is that it has failed to provide one single

example of a reflexive republic. On the up side, it’s the source of ever new approach to preventing

goal-rationality running amok. But on the down side: politics can only create the necessary conditions

for reflexive rationality, and it cannot take away the natural inclination to let self-interest affect

deliberative processes – with the virtually certain effect of turning deliberation into negotiation,

negotiation into rational gaming, and game into an arm-wrestling match.

Still, through trial and error, progress has been made over the past decades in designing negotiation

procedures that allow reflexive rationality without obstructing the quest for a compromise. Luban

(1985) already discussed the PPP-approach: negotiations structured to turn a zero-sum-game into a

Positive-sum game, to guarantee Pareto-optimality, and to force participants into Principled

bargaining. The latter stands for voicing, testing and evaluating real arguments and values – which

Luban then operationalized as criteria that are eerily similar to Rawls’s (1993) burdens of judgment.

These, as much as Habermas’s ideas on a domination-free discourse, have resulted in a fast-growing

body of literature on real-world experiments with value-rational deliberation.19

7. Work with realistic expectations

In so far as institutions are designed, they are designed with a purpose in mind: results to be realized or

avoided. Anthropocene institutions will be no exception – even though the aim here is to a priori

exclude as few outcomes as possible, since that would undermine any attempt to represent the real

world’s plurality of ethics and interests. This implies that both the desirable and the feasible should be

options. In political theory, the feasible is not very popular except among non-ideal theorists – but the

Anthropocene demands feasibility, therefore an open agenda.

Consider the feasibility of the two most popular ideal-theoretical solutions to the quest for

sustainability (admittedly a question slightly more complex than climate control alone): adapted

preferences and population control. Right now (2018), in terms of our ecological footprint, perfect

sustainability requires that we all fall back to the level of welfare and way of life of the average citizen

of Sierra Leone or Mali20

. But it is absurd to expect Western and Northern societies to be willing to

make that journey, and perverse to expect the Global South to give up any hope of ever offering the

level of welfare and dignity the rest of the world enjoys. To maintain the present level of welfare yet

move to a 0% ecological deficit, Western and Northern societies would have to rid themselves of

probably 60% or more of their current population. Again, the solution is absurd and politically

infeasible. Ideal theory has little else to offer – be it in the context of sustainability or that of the

Anthropocene – than an orthodox Calvinist discourse of austerity and frugality.

As Swedish environmental political theorist Rasmus Karlsson argued (e.g. 2016, 2017, 2018; Karlsson

and Symons 2014; cf. also Nasiritousi 2017), we cannot survive the Anthropocene only by reduced

19 For a recent discussion of experiments with non-state environmental actors, see Abbott (2017). For an individualist

deliberative democracy perspective, see Berg and Lindskog (2018). I am very interested in tips & suggestions for further

literature on practicable methods for and real-life experiments with anything resembling a Rawls-Habermas-like domination-

poor debate. 20 Sierra Leone, Mali, Somalia, Botswana, Laos and Honduras showed an ‘ecological deficit’ in 2016 of 0.0 to 0.1%

(Footprint Network 2017). With a surplus of 0,7, war-torn Ukraine did surprisingly well.

16

consumption, recycling, sustainability and frugality – there simply is no time and no support. What we

need are clean alternatives compatible with equal or growing levels of welfare and wellbeing. And that

in turn requires that we embrace innovative technology and strategic use of all energy sources

including non-renewables. In Karlsson’s words: ‘…rather than demonizing the use of fossil fuel or

provoking cultural wars through draconic carbon taxation, it seems more productive to ensure that

clean energy become absolutely cheaper and abundant for everyone through public innovation’

(Karlsson 2017:242). Generalizing, we need a smart mix of careful policy (allowing for fallibility and

pluralism) and radical innovation (the motor of economic development). Additionally, Karlsson

(2017) points out, success requires greater independence in research from short-term economic gains

and short-sighted socio-political fads and crazes. 21

Karlsson then gives the one example that always

infuriates dark green pastoralists: the exploitation of our solar system is becoming economically

viable, and in space the final frontier for growth is very far away.

The addition of supply-side solutions to environmental problems is sometimes equated with ‘relying

on the techno-fix’ and ‘living in denial’ as all resources are ultimately finite. Those qualifications, I

would argue, are based on confusing two stories. One is humanity’s on the whole quite successful

struggle to squeeze the most out of limited resources, a struggle in which consumption and production

often ran ahead of, but incited the growth of, supply and technology. Had we not done so, we would

still be a species of 100,000 incestuous hunter-gatherers with a life expectancy of 27. The other is the

story of an ‘inherently unsustainable relationship with nature’ (Ingolfur Blühdorn’s position; cf.

Blühdorn 2013a,b). The latter is based on the fallacious belief that things like universal harmony and

stability, a balanced budget and a quiet life are possible. It is a story that goes hand-in-hand with the

defeatism and adaptive preferences of Aesop’s fox’s (a nice recent example is offered by Tiboris

2017). It is true that parts of humanity are, so to say, living above their means, it is true that there is a

risk in hoping that currently immature or non-existent technologies may help to control the deficit, and

it is true that some civilizations failed because they never developed appropriate new technologies –

Angkor Wat and the Maya come to mind. But the alternative is the Way of the Ostrich, and that spells

certain doom.

¡Seamos poco realistas y hagamos lo razonable!

n this text I have argued that the last thing humanity needs, as theory and as practice, is global

governance. It is antithetical to democracy, antithetical to liberalism and antithetical to

republicanism. While civic republicanism is not viable on a global scale, republicanism-light is

eminently suited to help develop feasible, stable institutions addressing the problems of the

Anthropocene – institutions that embody republican key values while still being palatable for liberals.

There already is an international political system that bears a superficial similarity to a global republic-

light. But the similarity is indeed only superficial. Like the dystopian idea of global governance,

though in different ways, the international system lacks appropriate room for the political and the

ethical, for reflexive rationality. While I tried to develop a non-ideal theory perspective on how to

make global climate policy institutions more flexible, more resilient, my suggestions remain as

utopian as most of the literature in the field: the ‘how to’ bit is missing.22

21 A strong argument, by the way, for the recognition and inclusion of not only market parties as equals of nation-states in the

Anthropocene politics arena, but also that other global force for change, the University. 22 In other word: more research is needed, please gimme mo’money.

I

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