Enhancing the Legitimacy of Offices for Future Generations: The Case for Public Participation

Abstract

Independent offices for future generations are rare among institutional designs that aim to ameliorate short-termism in democracies. Drawing on the experience of offices for future generations in Israel, Hungary, and Wales, the article argues that such institutions face at least three challenges to their legitimacy: first, the capacity of an unelected agency to constrain government and law-making; second, the ability of a single office to adequately represent the plurality of interests within and across future generations; and third, their political fragility and vulnerability. The article develops the counterintuitive argument that offices for future generations can enhance their democratic legitimacy through embedding systematic public participation in their activities, in particular through the institutionalization of deliberative mini-publics.

Intergenerational Justice and Institutions for the Long Term

“…Future-beneficial institutions, by contrast, do so as a byproduct of pursuing other goals. I will here zoom in on the former, which have dominated recent debates, especially among normative theorists (Tremmel, 2006;Thompson, 2010;Gardiner, 2014;Caney, 2016;Smith, 2019). But there is a growing literature on how institutions whose chief aim is not to promote farsighted policies, like proportional electoral rules (Lindvall, 2017;Finnegan, 2019), government transparency (Aguiar, et al, 2019), institutional capacity (Jacobs, 2011), and low corruption (Garri, 2010), crucially contribute to this end.…”

“…Watchdogs, by contrast, are bodies whose authority is restricted to advising and monitoring the government on certain areas. Independent offices for future generations, such as those established in 2001 in Israel, in 2008 in Hungary, and in 2016 in Wales, are illustrative (Boston, 2017;Smith, 2019). They typically lack legislative or executive authority, though they may also wield some quasi-governing powers.…”

“…Insulating devices encounter, thus, various hurdles to remain in operation over time, as the Israeli and the Hungarian offices for future generations, which lasted just one term before they were respectively discontinued and downgraded, can attest (Smith, 2019). One hurdle is, to repeat, citizens' hesitation to support institutions whose monitoring is informationally taxing.…”

Enfranchising the future: Climate justice and the representation of future generations

“…Another concern is that expert composition, which often correlates with social background, may inaccurately represent future people's plural interests and views. Proposals to mitigate these concerns include collegial composition of boards, mixed composition of experts and elected officials, and systematic public engagement in the workings of OFGs (Beckman & Uggla, 2016;Rosanvallon, 2011;Smith, 2017).…”

“…A further concern is related to the plurality of future interests, both across and within generations (Jensen, ; Smith, ). Future generations are not a homogeneous group with common interests.…”