“Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us.”
Henrik Tikkanen

Democracies – both the representative and the direct type – face a structural problem, namely the tendency to favour the present over the future. Future individuals are not yet born, that is why they are unable to be involved in today’s decision-making process. Deliberative democracy, in its narrow form, can collide with the imperatives of intergenerational justice. In the bid for votes, every party is obliged to focus on the preferences of the present electorate. In so far as politicians of all parties want to look further ahead than the next election, they face a disadvantage in competing with their short-term thinking political rivals.
This may result in short-termism of the whole political system.

We ought to find ways to reconcile democracy with intergenerational justice (or sustainability – if understood as safeguarding the needs of future generations) by institutionalising the interests of future generations in the decision-making process of today. Conflicts between the interests of present and future generations are likely in two fields: the environment and in financial politics. The failure of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change has blatantly shown that the world does not yet have the adequate mechanisms at its disposal to incorporate the interests of future generations in today’s decision-making processes.

What can be done?