Presentation
This Note is a contribution to the current national debate on the institutional responses to the democratic and ecological crises. It is based on the experience acquired through the practice of environmental democracy over several decades and in several European and international contexts, which allows us to identify some key conditions for the success and credibility of these mechanisms, and highlights three major issues.
Extract
Addressing the democratic and ecological crises would require a broad opening of the possible options for institutional reform, to cover the two key levels of response: (a) the practice of government in current institutions and their complementation by participatory and deliberative mechanisms of various kinds, and (b) changes in the institutional framework itself.
Beyond the content of institutional reform, there is the question of its elaboration process, and its degree of openness to society. (...) These challenges invite the new government to adopt a logic of practical experimentation from the beginning of the five-year term, while having defined very clearly the ambition and the process of institutional reform in which these experiments are to take place.
