Análisis del sector (fuentes secundarias)

States, particularly democratic states, also run on a key principle: representation. Without this principle, without it first having being applied to humans and then non-human nature, we would not have the political and social environment we have today. Eckersley notes: "Unlike Habermas's formulation, the critical ecological formulation acknowledges the very important role of

607 Ibid., p. 11. 608 Ibid. 609 Ibid., p.112. 610

M. de Geus, ‘The Ecological Restructuring of the State’, in Democracy and Green Political Thought, B. Doherty and M. de Geus, eds, Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 188-211, p. 210.

611

144 representation in the democratic process."612 It is here that we make contact again with Keane's broad developmental history of democracy and the core principle of representation.

To get a real feel for the nature of the gritty political realities with which we are dealing, and where democracy probably came from and where it could head, one can do little better than Keane's impressive history. It details the development of early democracy-like cultural practices in the east that were transferred to the Greeks and stunningly reinvented by other peoples in that region, leading to the development of an ecology of democracies springing up throughout the Greek world in the heady days of Athenian glory. This "assembly" democracy faded from history for various reasons only to be readopted, morphing into representative democracy from about the seventeenth century onwards. Then, over the past seventy-odd years, we have had the evolution of "monitory" democracy, where conventional power-arresting memes from the past - derived from both assembly and representative democracy - are complemented and enhanced by complex power- monitoring processes and institutions.

The years since 1945 have seen the invention of about a hundred different types of power-monitoring devices that never before existed within the world of democracy. These watchdog and guide-dog and barking-dog inventions are changing both the political geography and the political dynamics of many democracies, which no longer bear much resemblance to textbook models of representative democracy, which supposed that citizens’ needs are best championed through elected parliamentary representatives chosen by political parties... the emerging historical form of ‘monitory’ democracy is a ‘post-Westminster’ form of democracy in which power-monitoring and power-controlling devices have begun to extend sideways and downwards through the whole political order. 613

Note that these monitoring bodies are not necessarily the top-down surveillance type of institution of which the CIA is emblematic. They include institutions and organisations such as integrity commissions, tribunals, consensus gatherings, parliamentary allocations for minorities, citizens’ juries and assemblies, think-tanks, vigils, traditional and web-based media (newspapers, teleview) scrutiny.614 These power-monitoring and power-limiting groups or institutions are complex holons with tetra-arising characteristics, and to describe them fully using an integral framework is beyond the scope of this thesis. However, Keane himself admits the complex part/whole nature of the monitory democratic terrains:

Its latticed patterns of power monitoring effectively fudge the distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’, the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. Like other types of institutions, including business and universities, democracy, too, is caught up in a process of ‘glocalisation’. This is another way of saying that its monitory mechanisms are dynamically interrelated, to the point where each functions simultaneously as both part

612

Ibid., pp.112-113. 613

Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy, p. xxvii. 614

145 and whole of the overall system. In the system of monitory democracy, to put things a bit abstractly, parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist. Its units are better described as sub-wholes – ‘holons’ is the term famously coined by the Hungarian-born polymath Arthur Koestler – that function simultaneously as self-regarding and self- asserting entities that push and pull each other in a multilateral system in which all entities play a part.615

Keane displays a very integral approach with his concepts of vertical and horizontal development in democracy. He notes that "the vertical ‘depth’ and horizontal ‘reach’ of monitory institutions are striking.616 Eckersley's critical analysis could be usefully applied to the democratic monitory institutions Keane lists here (including political institutions and parties) and those institutions could endeavour to "populate" their objective behaviours and interobjective systems with intersubjective understandings and ethical charters on the "other" which recognise "the demos as no longer fixed in terms of people and territory" and to pursue the claim "that in relation to the making of any decision entailing potential risk the relevant moral community must be understood as the affected community or community at risk, tied not by common passports, nationality, blood line, ethnicity or religion but by the potential to be harmed by the particular proposal, and not necessarily all in the same way or to the same degree."617 According to Habermas, a person will interpret an action depending on what it means to them and their culture, 618 or what EZI would call the ecological centre of gravity of an individual or her culture. Eckersley acknowledges that a person's conception of "good" can only be obtained "through membership of a language community and culture in which individuals are located." 619 By extending our understanding of community to include non-human nature, we include - albeit indirectly - these "others" in the deliberations that give rise to problem- solving ecological worldviews. Critical political ecologists can bring attention to the Terrain of Systems and Terrain of Behaviours by highlighting the connection between ecosystem integrity and individual and collective human well-being.620

The critical thing is that a deeper focus on these intersubjective understandings - reached through ideal deliberative processes - would add to the power-monitoring and power-steering functions of monitory institutions a power-legitimising function. That is, the "good" state would be legitimised by a combination of: "communicative abundance" (Keane's term for the plethora of media and information now available from media institutions, political parties, other "monitory" bodies and the general citizenry - particularly facilitated through the internet);621 application of deliberative 615 Ibid, p. 717. 616 Ibid., p.698. 617

Eckersley, The Green State, p. 111. 618

Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, p. 25. 619

Eckersley, The Green State, p.105. 620

Ibid. 621

146 democracy based on the communicative ideal, the unconstrained communicative action of Habermas - with Eckersley's ecological slant - and the actual 'on the ground' monitory democratic institutions acting objectively (and interobjectively) in individual states and across and between states. Hence, the goal is to inculcate a new ecological worldview into monitory institutions. As this worldview would be based on comprehensive communicative action, it would work contrary to the dominance of steering institutions that have come to divorce strategic action from communicative action. Unconstrained normative discourse acts against the colonisation of the lifeworld by the system and the instrumental values of the systemic world. 622

Political language has adapted to reflect the new reality of monitorism and to my mind the buzzwords and democratic tools used are strangely in accordance with what a "good" state might aspire to, particularly with regards to deliberation over what “democracy” should be: "'empowerment’, ‘high energy democracy’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘participatory governance’, ‘communicative democracy’ and ‘deliberative democracy’"; but also "surveys, focus groups, deliberative polling, online petitions and audience and customer voting"; and "where the old rule of ‘one person, one vote, one representative’ – the central demand in the struggle for representative democracy – is replaced with the new principle of monitory democracy, ‘one person, many interests, many voices, multiple votes, multiple representatives.'"623 Without naming it so, Keane recognises the integral nature of current democracies. A monitory institution or actor using an integral framework would have a nuanced map for describing the one person, the many interests and voices, and the multiple enfranchisement and representation inherent in post-Westminster democracy. Such a framework could help plot a route to bring change to political and policy terrains. Many monitory institutions and actors are already powerful advocates for the good state. If they used an integral framework, informed by Eckersley's critical approach, these actors would more fully meet their obligations to provide the demos with alternative perspectives and more accurate and relevant information on the workings and performance of government and non-government actors. Already, they help to define, examine and enforce shared public (intersubjective) understanding around the mores, rules and laws to prevent, for example, inappropriate behaviour and corruption. They are also committed to "strengthening the diversity and influence of citizens’ voices and choices in decisions that affect their lives – regardless of the outcome of elections."624 The end-game is a juxtaposition of integral values, unconstrained dialogue, and willing monitory actors. This will require an integral approach for a system that is now clearly integral in expression. The integral framework can also help us grasp the vertical and horizontal complexity of democracy and provide

622

Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action Volume 1, p. 342. 623

Ibid., p. 691. 624

147 monitory actors with a post-emancipatory and integrative ethic. The role assigned to integral theory in this chapter is necessarily a broad one, going beyond just a case study on Antarctic policy. The focus has not so much been on how intersubjective understanding of Antarctica can be reached by a polity, but on the broader use of Eckersley’s integrative critical approach as part of any IPT methodology. An analysis of her suggested critical approach to achieving an ecological state reveals an integrally-informed view on the limitations and powers of various disciplinary approaches and the need for multi-level unconstrained dialogue.