Abstract

In the context of a carbon-constrained and climate change world, green republicans aim to provide a high level of human flourishing with concomitant low energy and resource use. Contrary to liberal institutions which emphasize negative freedom, individualism and competition, private interests, and the systemic depoliticization of social actors, green republicanism stresses the importance of solidarity, commitment, and community-based life for flourishing, mindful and sustainable ways of inhabiting the world. Green republicanism supports a degrowth/post-growth agenda (downshifting paradigm) to bring to the fore more meaningful ways of living adapted to the current ecological overshoot and the ethico-socio-political crisis. While supporting decentralization and the empowerment of communities, green republicanism places a strong emphasis on the central state to support the maintenance of collective goods and the organization of public life, as well as to provide institutional basis for local transition movements. Given the economic, social, democratic, and ecological predicament, this chapter builds an argument for recasting liberal capitalist and consumer-based democracies in green civic republicanism terms. The green republican constitutional regime presented here is consistent with the post-anthropocentrism and post-capitalism defended in former chapters. It relies on an eco-communitarian conception of freedom, an active citizenry, civic green virtues, an agonistic form of democracy, and constitutional safeguards to ensure the transition aways from current unsustainability.