Realist climate action: Between responsiveness and responsibility

Abstract

How should political leaders address the emerging climate crisis if citizens are reluctant to accept costly but necessary climate action? In this article, I address this question by harnessing insights from the realist tradition in political theory. I propose that the realist legitimacy framework provides action guidance by offering two broadly applicable heuristics for political agents: responsibility and responsiveness. These heuristics collide if citizens are unwilling to accept policies designed to secure a nation's long-term stability. Faced with this problem, some authors make the supposedly realist argument that policymakers in liberal democracies should prioritise responsibility over responsiveness and embrace eco-authoritarianism to address the climate emergency. Against this line of argument, I maintain that the realist legitimacy framework entails no such commitment. Instead, realists must emphasise that responsible climate action entails a sufficient degree of responsiveness. I conclude by sketching how this insight may guide democratic leaders and climate activists in the future.

Introduction

Anthropogenic climate change stands as an ominous threat to human security and welfare. If industrialised nations fail to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, densely populated regions around the globe are poised to endure recurrent heat waves by the end of the century – exposing up to one-third of the global population to existential danger (Lenton et al., 2023). Rising oceans (Neumann et al., 2015) and expanding deserts (Burrell et al., 2020) will progressively threaten human habitats and the looming spectre of unprecedented weather phenomena – ushering in food shortages (World Bank, 2022) and disease (Carlson et al., 2022) – are anticipated to affect human societies with ever-increasing frequency and intensity.

Throughout this century, these phenomena are expected to disproportionally affect developing nations in the global south, some of which may be pushed beyond their ability to adapt (IPCC, 2022: B.1). Affluent Western democracies, on the other hand, already experience increasing pressure from phenomena like the flooding of coastal cities (Nicholls et al., 2007), the disruption of global trade (Arslanalp et al., 2023), and growing migration flows (Lieven, 2021: 49). For most nations, this creates ‘unacceptable systemic risk’ (Symons, 2019: 143). Against this backdrop, the security strategy of the United Kingdom now highlights climate change as ‘the greatest challenge to global stability’ and, accordingly, to the country's ‘national security’ (UK Cabinet Office, 2008: 18).

Importantly, the extent to which the worst effects of climate change will materialise in the coming decades largely depends on the actions of our political leaders in the coming years. First, governments must implement climate adaptations to alleviate the dangerous effects of global warming that are already affecting us or have become almost unavoidable (Borenstein, 2023). Second, industrialised nations in particular must phase out, capture, or compensate for, their greenhouse gas emissions to forestall the eventually apocalyptic consequences of runaway climate change (Lieven, 2021: 2).

Towards this end, some progress has been made in recent years. A solid majority of citizens in advanced economies now recognise global warming as a major threat to their welfare (Poushter et al., 2022). What is more, 174 states and the European Union signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 (UN, 2015). In doing so, the global community pledged to engage in climate mitigation and eventually remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (UN, 2015: Article 4.1; see also Peters, 2016: 646). However, as things stand, no industrialised country is on track to meet its mitigation commitments (Climate Action Tracker, 2023). Globally, emissions are still on the rise (International Monetary Fund, 2022). As such, humanity has (thus far) failed to adequately address the problem.

In what follows, I discuss climate change as a distinct challenge for both the theory and practice of contemporary nation-state governance. In particular, I will focus on one specific normative dilemma that political leaders frequently encounter in their climate mitigation efforts: despite widespread awareness of the problem, governments worldwide frequently encounter public backlash against certain (often costly) climate mitigation policies (see Mittiga, 2022: 999). Notable instances include the gilets jaunes protests against a higher gasoline duty in France (Willsher, 2018) and the referendum against a proposed carbon tax in Washington State (Schimel, 2019). In the Netherlands, farmers rallied against a policy aimed at reducing meat and dairy production (Holligan, 2022), and the German government had to diffuse its prohibition on installing natural oil- and gas-based boilers in private homes due to fierce public resistance (Economist, 2023). These cases speak to a well-known dilemma in normative political and democratic theory: if citizens will not endorse or at least accept a policy that experts and politicians consider to be the right course of action, should the latter defer to citizens or follow their own judgement? For the purpose of this article, I frame this as a tension between responsibility and responsiveness. This tension, I argue, must be addressed to inform effective climate action.

Besides its practical relevance, my research provides an interesting case study for the realist program in political theory. While I maintain that my reflections are valuable for theorists of different theoretical strands, I take political realism (in the tradition of Bernard Williams) to be a particularly promising framework for analysing the problem at hand. For one, many political realists aspire to offer normative action guidance to political leaders (see Cross, 2022; but Ulaş, 2020). When it comes to the tension between responsibility and responsiveness, the realist literature has further produced ample arguments in support of either side. Some realist authors place significant value on citizen preferences and argue that political action ought to be responsive to (or aligned with) public values and (in the case of democracy) popular opinion. On the other side, scholars frequently maintain that politicians ought to, first and foremost, act responsibly and avoid disastrous outcomes for their communities – even if this means disregarding the sentiments of the public.

As a relevant example of the latter approach, I will discuss Ross Mittiga's (2022) supposedly realist argument for eco-authoritarianism, which sparked a controversy well beyond the seminar rooms of political theory (Drezner, 2022). Mittiga claims that the realist legitimacy framework demands of political leaders in liberal democracies to disregard public opinion and, barring any alternatives, to impose green policies on reluctant citizens. Throughout this article, I will show that the realist approach to legitimacy does not carry such eco-authoritarian implications. Rather, I will maintain that responsible climate action, now and around here, necessarily entails sufficient consideration for the requirement of democratic responsiveness (or civic alignment).

To structure my argument, I will rely on the action-oriented realist methodology recently proposed by Samuel Bagg (2016, 2022). It aims at producing mid-level heuristics to guide political agents. As I will show, responsibility and responsiveness can be extrapolated as two such heuristics from Bernard Williams’s (2005) legitimacy framework which lies at the heart of much contemporary realist scholarship. In a second step, I will evaluate how the normative tension between responsibility and responsiveness is best addressed in light of the emerging climate crisis. Against Mittiga, I will maintain that policymakers must not embrace authoritarian responsibility over democratic responsiveness to halt climate change. His eco-authoritarian proposal, I argue, is ultimately self-defeating. A sustainable transition will not work without widespread civic support. Lastly, I will sketch what this finding implies for political leaders and close my argument by highlighting the usefulness of my reflections for political activists.

Action-guiding political theory

Political realism

Much has been written on the realist critique of political moralism. Hence, I will only briefly touch on the debate here. Political realism has been described by William Galston as a ‘community stew, where everyone throws something different into the pot’ (Galston, 2010: 386). However, what unites realists at the threshold is their dissatisfaction with the ‘excessively moralistic and politically [naïve] character of much Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian political theory’ (Horton, 2018: 132) or what Bernard Williams describes as ‘political moralism’ (Williams, 2005: 2).

When it comes to the politics of climate change, moralist theories have primarily focused on questions concerning the just distribution of burdens that come with addressing global warming (e.g. Gardiner, 2011; Sparenborg, 2022; Sardo, 2023). According to realist critics, these justice-centred approaches fail to be properly action-guiding, as the underlying ‘idealised’ assumptions are too far removed from reality. After all, as Robert Jubb points out, the politics of climate change are ‘no more likely than any others to achieve justice’ (2022). Instead, an influential strand of realists suggests that theorists should focus their reflections on the concept of legitimacy (Rossi and Sleat, 2014). I will return to their argument in the next section. For now, let me briefly explore the realist call for action-guiding political theory.

As John Horton explains, the realist critique against moralist approaches broadly follows two lines. First, realists charge moralist theories with descriptive inadequacy. In short, realists maintain ‘that there is something fundamentally false or misleading in the picture of politics that [moralism] paints’ (Horton, 2017: 491). Political institutions, so the argument goes, are more than mere ‘instruments or mechanisms constructed solely for the purpose of realising antecedent moral principles or political ideals’ such as justice (Horton, 2017: 490). Rather, realists insist, political theories must take seriously the unavoidable need of institutions ‘to respond to complex and often conflicting social pressures, including those arising from broader historical determinants, and the motivations of those who inhabit them’ (Horton, 2017: 490).

Second and relatedly, realists charge political moralism with normative irrelevance. According to this line of criticism, moralist theories are too far removed from the world as we find it. They are considered overly utopian and naïve, which, under non-ideal circumstances, makes them inadequate for political agents to draw upon for action guidance. This is especially true for moralist theories that presuppose consensus on political or moral questions. Fundamental disagreement, as Matt Sleat argues, ‘is the rule rather than the exception [in politics]. The persistence of disagreement is one of the fundamental and “stubborn facts” of political life which ensures that there is rarely any natural harmony or order in human affairs’ (Sleat, 2013: 47). Under these circumstances, the bearing of moralist theories ‘on how we should act … becomes at best vague and at worst irrelevant’ (Horton, 2017: 491). In this context, it is among realism's central aims to provide better ‘action-guiding political theory’ (Hall, 2017: 283).

Towards this end, Mark Philp (2010) argues that political theorists ought to have something to contribute when political leaders ‘face challenges that call for action where it is not clear, for various reasons, what the right action, response or policy would be’ (467). After all, it is often unclear to policymakers what makes a political choice the right one. Importantly, Philp continues, ‘it would seem extraordinary if we, as political theorists, should have nothing at all to say about them’ (467f.). Realism, especially, Peter Ferguson adds, ‘must be able to provide a guide to statecraft in the Anthropocene’ (2023: 2). ¹

Relating to these reflections, Samuel Bagg introduces his radical, action-oriented approach to political theory (2016, 2022). It is grounded on the assumption that political theorists, as ‘“experts” in political judgment’ (2016: 233), should have something to contribute to contemporary political debates. According to Bagg, John Dewey's predictive theory of situated judgement goes a long way in enabling contributions of this kind. As Dewey argues, theorists need not engage in ‘social system-making’ or in developing ‘programs of fixed ends’ (233). Rather, they should focus on problems that political actors experience in their daily lives. As he puts it, the one ‘who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches’ (Dewey, 1981–1990: 364; see also Bagg, 2016: 236). For Bagg, it follows that realist political theory ought not to work backwards ‘from a hypothetical state of full justice or legitimacy to derive an appropriate response to the non-ideal circumstances we actually face’, but that we should aim to provide ‘more reliable practical guidance by working forwards from’ the situation we find ourselves in (Bagg, 2022: 44).

The role of the theorist in engaging these problems can be separated into three stages: First, theorists can help to draw a more detailed picture of what the problem actually is. Second, theorists are tasked with imagining possible responses. And third, the available options must be evaluated (Bagg, 2016: 238).

Essentially, it becomes the task of political theorists to make predictions about the social and political consequences that are likely to materialise if we take certain actions. These predictions in the social realm cannot hope to be as precise as predictions in the natural sciences. Henceforth, Bagg posits that we cannot prove what is right by mere argument. Ultimately, our hypotheses for the best course of action must be tested in reality (Bagg, 2016: 237; see also Anderson, 2023). One core task for theorists in this framework, then, is to help political actors decide ‘which experiments are worth trying’ (Bagg, 2016: 238).

At its core, Bagg's action-guiding methodology aims at developing broadly applicable heuristics to aid political decision-making. These heuristics can be informed by various sources. First and foremost, the study of how our past judgements played out can go a long way in deducting general rules of conduct, especially if we enrich our predictions with new findings from the social and natural sciences (Bagg, 2022: 44). Broadly speaking, this is what I aim to do in what follows. Leaving Bagg's own take on the relation between realist theory and legitimacy aside, ² I will argue in the next section that the realist concept of political legitimacy offers two vital action-oriented heuristics for political agents. These are especially relevant in contemporary liberal democracies. If understood well, the two heuristics can help citizens and political leaders better address instances of widespread citizen reluctance to accept costly but necessary climate action. ³

Legitimacy: Responsibility and responsiveness

Realists have proposed different accounts of political legitimacy. The most influential among them, by far, is that of Bernard Williams (2005). In his seminal essay ‘Realism and moralism in political theory’, he argues that the question of legitimacy is internal to the practice of politics itself. ⁴ Following Hobbes, Williams claims that politics allows human beings to avoid a hypothetical state of nature in which warfare and bare domination make life miserable for everyone. This state of nature can be averted if violence and coercion are replaced by authority and acceptance. To achieve this aim, some actors have to fulfil the basic legitimation demand. Roughly, it consists of two layers.

As a baseline, the first political question has to be answered. That is, some actors have to establish and secure a monopoly on coercive power and thereby guarantee ‘order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation’ (Williams, 2005: 3) within a community. Williams explicitly connects this idea to Max Weber's ethic of responsibility. In essence, it asserts that, everywhere and always, exercising political leadership comes with the responsibility to ensure the (political) survival of one's community (12). As such, being a politician carries the ‘“meta-duty” to maintain the proper functioning of the “machinery of politics”’ (Arlen and Burelli, 2022: 241f.; quoting Ferrera, 2018: 258; and Weber, [1919] 2004: 51). On my reading, this connection infuses the first political question with an undeniable long-term dimension.

As Williams further points out, answering the first political question is necessary but not sufficient for legitimacy. It is the prerequisite merely for posing, let alone answering, any further political question. Usually, the war of all against all is replaced with the rule of some over others in a state-like structure. As Williams stresses, however, the answer to the first political question must never become part of the problem (Williams, 2005: 4). Nothing is gained over the state of nature if rulers exclusively rely on their coercive capacity alone to keep citizens from revolting. According to Williams, this situation merely resembles a war between rulers and their subjects. Thus, to genuinely avoid the state of nature, rulers have to offer a justification for why they should be obeyed. To be effective, this justification must ‘make sense’ to citizens (10). If citizens find the provided justification acceptable, they will no longer feel dominated and thus comply with most of their rulers’ commands most of the time. Again, realist scholars have connected this to Weber's idea that a state can only maintain genuine political stability if it manages to secure the assent of a large majority of its citizens (see Greene, 2017: 303). This requirement has variously been described as ‘civic alignment’ (Greene, 2017: 312–314) or ‘responsiveness’ (Shaw, 2008; see Rossi, forthcoming: 5). For the purpose of this article, I will use both terms interchangeably.

Before I continue, it is important to note that Williams introduces legitimacy as a scalar concept. As I take it, this gives the requirement of responsiveness a quantitative and a qualitative dimension. On the one hand, a regime must secure the acceptance of a ‘sufficient number’ of its citizens to transcend the ‘conditions of unmediated coercion’ (Hall, 2015: 473). Roughly, we may assert that the legitimacy of a regime increases according to the share of citizens that accept its authority. On the other hand, there is variation in the quality of public acceptance. As a baseline for legitimacy, it may be enough for a regime to be tolerated. That is, citizens must be able to consider their political community worth living in, even if they harbour some general concerns or grudges against the prevailing social order (Fossen, 2019: 123). To ensure toleration of this kind, a state must tailor its policies in line with what citizens can ultimately accept – call this minimal responsiveness. However, as Williams recognises, modern democratic citizens usually hold their ‘state to a higher standard’ (Hall, 2015: 469; see Williams, 2005: 10). ⁵ That is, democratic citizens typically expect more in terms of responsiveness to their first-order political preferences – call this direct responsiveness.

This expectation is picked up in the empirical social science literature. It resembles what Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels call the ‘folk theory of democracy’ (2016: 3). The underlying expectation is expressed by Robert Dahl when he states: ‘A key characteristic of a democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals’ (Dahl, 1971: 1). ⁶ In the same vein, Vladimir Key argues that unless ‘mass views have some place in the shaping of policy, all the talk about democracy is nonsense’ (Key, 1961: 7). Citing Harald Lasswell, he continues: ‘the open interplay of opinion and policy is the distinguishing mark of popular rule’ (Lasswell, 1941: 15; see Shapiro, 2011: 982). As I take it, these scholarly assessments speak to a tacit expectation that most citizens in democratic nations have towards their government.

To be fair, apart from members of populist movements and parties, citizens usually do not demand that policymakers immediately and without any filter translate public opinion into policy. It is commonly understood that, in electoral democracies, representatives are tasked with negotiating compromises and determining the limits of feasible collective action. As such, the requirement of democratic responsiveness is always a matter of degree. After all, the alignment between public opinion and policy outcomes cannot be perfect (Lafont, 2020: 23). However, if citizen preferences are entirely decoupled from the political process, this poses severe problems for the legitimacy of a democratic regime. This is especially true if a government acts against its citizens’ preferences on highly politicised issues. Accordingly, the empirical social science literature commonly treats a lack of political responsiveness to public opinion as a democratic deficit (e.g. Lax and Phillips, 2012).

Insofar as my reading of Williams's argument holds, it follows that his reflections on the nature of politics and the role of legitimacy entail two broadly applicable heuristics for political agents. On the one hand, answering the first political question requires that rulers act responsibly. To answer the first political question, they must tailor their actions to avoid situations of extreme material scarcity, manage conflicting interests within a society, and minimise externally induced threats (like the challenges posed by climate change). After all, there is no room for further collective action within a society if the first political question can no longer be answered. On the other hand, they ought to be responsive to the needs and desires of their population. This requirement applies to all political regimes (minimal responsiveness) but has special force in modern Western democracies (direct responsiveness).

As I will show in the next section, climate mitigation policy occasionally brings these two heuristics into tension. ⁷ Indeed, Ross Mittiga (2022) makes the supposedly realist argument that responsible climate action should be granted normative priority over responsiveness considerations. By contrast, I will maintain that responsible political action, now and around here, necessarily involves sufficient alignment between costly climate policies and citizen preferences.

Responsibility as authoritarian climate action

In the previous section, I have argued that political leaders, seeking to address the climate crisis, can draw two broadly applicable normative heuristics from the realist legitimacy framework: responsibility and responsiveness. In this section, I will explore how climate mitigation occasionally brings these two heuristics into tension and explain why Ross Mittiga's call for eco-authoritarianism cannot resolve it.

Eco-authoritarianism

As Mittiga stresses in his article ‘Political legitimacy, authoritarianism, and climate change’ (2022), the world's leading democracies are currently failing to sufficiently reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. As he observes, the normative heuristic of democratic responsiveness plays a key role in this failure. Accordingly, he argues that governments should act responsibly and embrace a more authoritarian form of leadership to mitigate the increasingly disastrous effects of climate change (2022: 999). ⁸ He is not alone in this assessment. Other scholars have cautiously explored the upside of authoritarian over democratic climate action (e.g. Beeson, 2010; Gilley, 2012; Han, 2017). However, Mittiga's account is especially relevant to my analysis as he relies heavily on Williams's legitimacy framework and further connects eco-authoritarianism explicitly to the realist project in political theory (Mittiga, 2022: 999). As such, Mittiga presents eco-authoritarianism as a viable – if not unavoidable – option for realist-inclined policymakers.

To build his case, Mittiga distinguishes between foundational and contingent legitimacy. This distinction neatly maps the two layers of Williams's basic legitimation demand and the corresponding heuristics of responsibility and responsiveness. Foundational legitimacy, for Mittiga, entails that a government must be able to ‘ensure continuous access to essential goods (particularly food, water, and shelter), prevent avoidable catastrophes, provide immediate and effective disaster relief, and combat invading forces or quell unjustified uprisings or rebellions’ (1000). If a government cannot provide these goods (i.e. answer the first political question) it can hardly be considered a government at all. Contingent legitimacy, Mittiga continues, contains the surplus of legitimacy requirements that emerge if foundational legitimacy is achieved and, as the name suggests, is contingent on the historical and material context of a society. At present and around here, this entails ‘democratic rights and processes, consent, guarantees of equal representation, provision of core public benefits, protection of basic individual rights and freedoms, social justice, and observance of fairness principles’ (1001f.). Under favourable conditions, no tension emerges between the foundational and contingent requirements of legitimacy (1004). According to Mittiga, however, the devastating effects of climate change already undermine these favourable conditions and make their persistence unlikely in the future.

Mittiga goes on to argue that contingent liberal legitimacy requirements frequently interfere with our democratically elected politicians’ ability to deliver urgently needed climate action. As he points out, democratic protests and referenda have defeated even moderate carbon taxes on multiple occasions (999). ⁹ Problems further arise as liberal countries cannot effectively regulate harmful ‘climate denial and disinformation campaigns’ because of free-speech regulations (999). Even more problematic, the liberal commitment to individual autonomy has, at times, made minor policy interventions (like regulating lightbulb efficiency) unfeasible and more ambitious mitigation programs like population control ‘totally unthinkable’ (999; see Derysh, 2019). Lastly, he expresses the worry that a majority of citizens could ‘decide democratically not to address [the] emerging existential threat’ at all (Mittiga, 2022: 1001). ¹⁰ Although this seems unlikely at the moment, Mittiga asks us to remember ‘how many thousands of people have organized, protested, and voted so as to frustrate or defeat even the most minimal, low-cost public-health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic’ (1001). By looking at these cases, the potential for normative tension between responsibility and responsiveness considerations becomes legible.

Building on these reflections, Mittiga continues to argue that an eco-authoritarian form of government is better able to deal with the problem at hand. ¹¹ After all, effective climate action will require massive public investments which may necessitate higher taxes and increasing sovereign debt. It will further require restrictions on private consumption habits and other environmentally harmful behaviour. As Mittiga argues, we must expect these measures to be unpopular and ‘inspire considerable resistance, among both the general public and negatively affected industries’ (1007).

To mobilise the necessary resources for preventing the most catastrophic effects of climate change he, therefore, suggests that individual rights and freedoms should be constrained, means of democratic contestation be reduced and executive power be concentrated (1000). Towards this end, Mittiga advises political leaders to declare a state of exception (1005). Equipped with emergency powers, policymakers could more effectively intervene in the economy and regulate climate-harming behaviour (1007). What is more, regimes could restrict the access of climate-harming special interests to democratic institutions (1007). Lastly, Mittiga proposes that a government body should be empowered to overturn democratic decisions that obstruct or complicate necessary climate action (1007).

To sum up, Mittiga grants the normative heuristic of responsibility priority over responsiveness considerations when the survival of a political community is at stake. Without foundational legitimacy (which relates to responsibility), he claims, none of the more contingent legitimacy considerations (which relate to responsiveness) can be fulfilled, at least not for long (1005). As I will argue, however, focusing on the responsibility heuristic alone is unlikely to achieve the desired ends. Rather, realists should emphasise that responsible climate action must be sufficiently aligned with citizen beliefs and preferences.

Climate change as a state of emergency?

Before I continue, let me briefly engage with Mittiga's proposal to declare an indefinite state of exception to enable a transition towards eco-authoritarian leadership. In Hobbesian fashion, Mittiga posits that ensuring ‘safety and security is always the primary […] end of political power’ (Mittiga, 2022: 1004). In this sense, one can argue that the primary aim of politics and collective action is to ensure the survival of the community. Only if the conditions for survival are met can a society turn towards chasing more refined and enjoyable ends. As Berthold Brecht famously put it: ‘Grub first, then ethics’. Likewise, Aristotle argued that politics is first about living and then about living well (see 1004). For Mittiga, it follows that, if the survival of a community is at stake, political actors must prioritise responsibility over responsiveness.

As he stresses, these considerations are not particularly controversial. Most democratic regimes around the world have some set of rules in place that allow for the concentration of executive power in emergency situations. If a threat is perceived as large enough by a community, it is common to suspend ‘political institutions, processes, norms, etc. [that] impede the swift action needed to preserve/restore normal conditions’ (1003). Climate change, Mittiga argues, should be treated as a threat of this kind. Against this line of argument, it is important to emphasise that climate change differs from an ordinary state of emergency in at least two vital aspects.

For one, no single state can avert the perils of global warming by itself as the eventual phasing out of (or compensation for) fossil fuel emissions is a shared global responsibility. Preventing global warming demands effort from all emitting states. This poses a complex collective action dilemma for the international community as reducing emissions comes with hefty costs for state actors, national industries, and citizens. Addressing climate change therefore emerges as the ‘biggest and most complex political and economic problem the world has ever faced’ (Arezki et al., 2018: 1). In light of this global challenge, no state can ensure the security of its citizens merely by adopting a state of emergency. ¹²

Of course, we may yet assume that the responsibility heuristic demands that a regime must simply do everything in its power to avoid catastrophe – even if global cooperation is a necessary condition for success. Here, the argument for eco-authoritarianism encounters a second difficulty. As Mittiga himself points out, democracies only declare a state of exception, grant emergency powers, and suspend individual rights, to enable democratically elected leaders to preserve or restore what a society considers to be ‘normal conditions.’ This can be the case, for example, if a government seeks to avoid/win a war, mitigate the effects of a natural catastrophe, fight a pandemic, and so on. These scenarios are united in the fact that they, usually, occur within a limited timeframe. Importantly, this means that citizens need only accept a suspension of liberal and democratic norms for a limited amount of time. When it comes to fighting climate change, however, policymakers cannot be successful in achieving what we consider to be ‘normal conditions’ now and around here. As IPCC chairman Hoesung Lee has emphasised, addressing global warming will, in all likelihood, require ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ (IPCC, 2018). Addressing the climate crisis, in other words, requires that we adapt to already irreversible changes. As I will now go on to argue, Mittiga's call for eco-authoritarianism does not offer a plausible pathway for securing this adaptation.

It takes two to tango

Political realists have repeatedly pointed out that ‘might does not equal right’. There are two layers to this aphorism. First, it entails that the mere ability to coerce others does not entail the normative right to do so. For Williams, this is a political axiom (2005: 5). Besides this normative consideration, however, this axiom also speaks to an underlying instrumental consideration that shapes responsible political conduct. As realists frequently point out, it is not only for normative reasons that political power needs to be justified to those who are governed by it. Answering the basic legitimation demand (i.e. being responsive to citizen preferences) is not a surplus consideration of legitimacy that rulers may choose to consider if circumstances allow it. Instead, answering the basic legitimation demand is in itself a vital component of answering the first political question.

This assessment is, to a large extent, grounded in historical observations. Among contemporary scholars, Matt Sleat points to Edward Carr who famously stresses that ‘every government, though it needs power as a basis of its authority, also needs the moral basis of the consent of the governed, […] order cannot be based on power alone, for the simple reason that mankind will in the long run always revolt against naked power’ (Carr, [1939] 2001: 216; see Sleat, 2013: 51). Thus, if ‘rulers have an interest in achieving stable political order, they have an interest in gaining the support of citizens’ (Cross, 2022: 7). In this vein, Williams argues that answering the basic legitimation demand is what allows for the first political question to be solved without the solution becoming part of the problem. After all, stability and trust have to be built not only among citizens but also between citizens and their rulers. If the basic legitimation demand is not answered, this can have dire consequences for the latter. In the most extreme scenario, citizens can come to see no option but to revolt and replace the current regime. Less drastically and more common in modern nation-states, the governed respond to an unresponsive government with strikes, riots, protests, or acts of civil disobedience.

Naturally, if and how responsiveness and stability interact is, in the end, an empirical question. Although Carr is certainly right that, in the long run, citizens tend to revolt against naked power, we also know of cases in which order has been (and still is) maintained without any meaningful allegiance from large parts of the governed. Throughout world history, some regimes have left the basic legitimation demand unanswered for large parts of their population without thereby immediately becoming unstable. ¹³ However, even autocratic regimes cannot afford to be entirely unresponsive to the sentiments of their subjects. Consider, for example, the massive protests in China that emerged against the CCP's attempt to limit the spread of the Coronavirus with excessive and strict curfew regulations. The Chinese government did not weather the storm for long – eventually, it had to give in to its citizens’ demands and abandon its zero-COVID strategy to maintain order (Mao, 2022).

In a democratic context, government action is much more limited by what the citizenry is willing to accept. After all, as Cristina Lafont compellingly argues, democratic citizens ‘might be bypassed as decision makers but, unfortunately, they cannot be bypassed as decision takers. It takes two to tango’ (Lafont, 2020: 87). ¹⁴ The point she makes in this context is that policies must, to some degree, be aligned with citizen beliefs and preferences if their intended effects are to materialise. Based on this insight, democratic policymakers must ensure that their policies do not alienate large parts of the population when taking necessary climate action. If they do, they risk strengthening opposing parties willing to capitalise on widespread resentment. To stick with Lafont's dancing metaphor, I maintain that responsible politicians must ensure that their political dance of choice is not choreographed as taking one step forward followed by being pushed two steps back. In this context, climate mitigation cannot work if the proposed policies generate increasing popular resentment each step of the way. Thus, as a bare minimum, leaders and policymakers must ensure that citizens can ‘live with’ (see Fossen, 2019: 124) the enacted policy program. That is, policies must at least fulfil the minimal requirement of responsiveness.

In light of these reflections, Mittiga's call for eco-authoritarianism appears utterly short-sighted and, in an important sense, unrealistic. When it comes to dealing with the climate crisis, there is no reason to hope that an eco-authoritarian regime, which emerges out of a contemporary democratic nation with a presumably active civil society, could consolidate without the widespread support of its population. If an eco-authoritarian regime can secure popular support, however, the question remains why democrats should opt for an authoritarian approach in the first place. After all, our democratic frameworks allow for decisive political action if a government is supported by a clear democratic majority.

One of democracy's advantages, then, is its capacity to function ‘with minimal coercive force because of the legitimacy of the system and the voluntary compliance of the public’ (Dalton, 2004: 12). This reduces the requirement for administration and policing which frees up valuable resources. As Anatol Lieven further stresses, the ‘greatest source of a state's strength is not its economy or the size of its armed forces, but legitimacy in the eyes of its population: that is, a general recognition of the state's moral and legal right to authority, to have its laws and rules obeyed, and to be able to call on its people for sacrifices’ (2021: 65).

In light of these considerations, realist action guidance must always factor in how citizens can be expected to react to a policy proposal. As such, any call for political responsibility necessarily entails the requirement that a political program can find sufficient acceptance among the population. The effectiveness of a policy can further be amplified if it is endorsed by a broad democratic majority. Against this backdrop, I argue that eco-authoritarianism is not among the experiments that are worth trying in Western liberal democracies, even in light of the emerging climate crisis. In line with Bagg's action-guiding methodology, I will now proceed by sketching better ways for policymakers to deal with the problem at hand.

Towards realist climate action

In the previous section, I argued that responsible climate action in Western liberal democracies is incompatible with eco-authoritarian. A sustainable transition cannot happen without sufficient public acceptance. In this section, I will go on to sketch what this finding entails for political leaders and activists and explore how the connected normative heuristics of responsibility and responsiveness may inform their actions going forward. In essence, I argue that responsible leaders must strive to achieve sufficient civic alignment in their climate mitigation efforts to maintain order. Activists, on the other hand, can play a vital role in supporting their efforts.

For the purposes of this article, my reflections focus primarily on what politicians and activists may do to foster acceptance on the national level. As I have elaborated above, climate change remains a global challenge that no nation-state can solve on its own. International cooperation remains indispensable to facilitate global decarbonisation and ensure our continued survival and prosperity. However, implementing corresponding policies on the national level is a necessary enabling condition for global action. As Oliver Morton points out, ‘an international agreement will not lead any government to follow climate policies that are clearly not supported at home’ (2015: 21). For related reasons, realists have repeatedly emphasised that strong nation-states are indispensable for implementing climate policies (Lieven, 2021: xxii) and that ‘domestic politics will be the primary driver of national climate politics’ (Symons, 2019: 145). My focus on domestic politics is further warranted as the normative tension between responsibility and responsiveness, which is central to my analysis, is most pertinent on the national level. ¹⁵

Democratic leaders

As realist authors frequently emphasise, everywhere ‘and always, political communities need good leaders’ to prosper (Galston, 2014: 16). One constant challenge for good politicians is thereby to find the right balance between responsibility and responsiveness. In light of the emerging climate crisis, they must take action to prevent the eventually unbearable consequences that come with unchecked greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time not alienating their constituents to the extent that citizens no longer consider a democratic regime and its policies acceptable. In this section, I discuss strategies for policymakers to navigate this difficult landscape.

As Niccolò Machiavelli famously explains in his Il Principe, political leaders can influence the opinions and sentiments of their subjects to solidify their authority and gather support for political reform ([1532] 2011). An increasing pile of empirical evidence indicates that this finding equally applies to the democratic context. Individuals, it turns out, ‘do not come to politics with fixed preferences that they have formed according to an instrumentally rational calculus; rather, they form preferences and opinions dynamically in response to the communications of electoral and policy campaigns’ (Disch, 2019: 6; see Arthur, 1992; Druckman, 2004). This insight lies at the heart of the ‘constructivist turn’ in representation theory (see Disch et al., 2019; Wolkenstein, 2021).

As Lisa Disch explains, constructivists flip the classical model of democratic responsiveness on its head. In essence, they acknowledge that ‘citizens are responding to politicians rather than the other way around’ (Disch, 2019: 6). Importantly, the research does not indicate that governments can easily script the political preferences of their subjects. In open societies, multiple political parties usually compete for public attention and popular support (6; see Druckman and Jacobs, 2015). Thus, it is difficult to predict who will ultimately be successful in shaping public sentiments. Still, the research suggests that policymakers are not pawns, pushed around by uncontrollable waves of public opinion. Instead, politicians have significant agency in influencing the sentiments of the public through strategic forms of communication and by offering convincing political proposals.

For my argument, it follows that the responsiveness heuristic can be addressed in two ways. First, policymakers can focus on responding to some persistent public preferences that have been constructed in past political struggles. Second, and more importantly for my overall argument, leaders can attempt to construct and shape new preferences, thereby potentially inducing alignment between a responsible political program and public opinion.

Against the backdrop of these considerations, Galston argues that the essence of democratic politics is to ‘obtain and sustain public support’ while working towards the public good (Galston, 2014: 24). In other words, responsible climate action in liberal democracies sometimes requires the attempt to carefully manage public sentiments.

Towards this end, realist scholars have suggested a range of strategies to maximise citizen acceptance of controversial policy proposals. Galston, for example, argues that leaders should strive to do what is necessary by displaying ‘democratic humility’. They must exhibit the necessary ‘knowledge, skill, and character’ to guide their nation while at the same time recognising that their political success ultimately depends on the support of their citizens (Galston, 2014: 15). As he continues, it is a ‘key requirement of democratic leadership […] to understand what is required in particular circumstances to maximize persuasion and popular consent’ (Galston, 2020). Also, the right timing to propose a policy is of the essence: ‘Act too early, and conditions are not ripe; too late, and the momentum has ebbed’ (ibid.).

Other authors have explored communicative strategies to increase the willingness of citizens to bear the costs of a sustainable transition. Lieven, for example, urges politicians in Western liberal democracies to rekindle a form of civic nationalism, ‘with a strong cultural and ideological core, based on [the idea] of common citizenship giving a common sense of identity to all citizens, of all races, genders, and classes’ (2021: 84). If the struggle against climate change was reframed as a patriotic duty to ensure the long-term prosperity of proud nations, he maintains, this would enable democratic communities to reduce selfishness and enable cooperation (128).

Related to this line of thinking, Alison McQueen (2021) encourages political leaders to strategically use the rhetoric of ‘civic fear’ (Pfau, 2007) to motivate effective climate action. Leaning on Aristotelian insights and modern psychology, she argues that sparking ‘fear can be a rational and motivationally powerful response to climate change’ (McQueen, 2021: 170). However, citizens must also be presented with clear and effective political options for addressing the problem at hand. As Aristotle notes, citizens are generally willing to protect their polities from immediate threats – even while they may sometimes struggle to recognise and correctly evaluate these threats to begin with. If this is the case, ‘Aristotle contends, it may be entirely appropriate to cultivate fear among citizens’ (166). As the ‘survival of the polity depends on the capacity of citizens to collectively perceive and understand the threats and opportunities that face them […] leaders may have a special role to play in aiding this collective perception and understanding’ (166).

What is more, scholars have emphasised how policymakers can utilise identity considerations to foster acceptance among their voters. As empirical research indicates, voters are generally more likely to change their preferences in line with the party they most identify with rather than switching their allegiance to a party that better represents their genuine interests (see Achen and Bartels, 2016: ch. 9). Based on these findings, Unsworth and Fielding (2014) argue that responsible conservative politicians and parties play a key role in raising the acceptance of necessary climate policies among their voters by publicly endorsing climate action. After all, people are more likely to adapt their beliefs according to messages from in-group rather than out-group members (Mackie et al., 1992). The same responsibility may arise for progressive or green politicians if, for example, they come to see the need to support particular technological or industrial solutions to climate change that, for whatever reason, are unpopular among their constituents. ¹⁶ Ultimately, Galston encourages political leaders of all stripes to try convincing their voters to support doing the right thing. ‘True, the people do not welcome being told what they do not want to hear’, he admits. However, they also ‘admire individuals who come before them with strong convictions about their community's best interests’ (Galston, 2020: 124).

Lastly, Galston emphasises that politicians seeking to deliver effective climate action should try to forge large coalitions to increase the acceptance of controversial or costly policies among the population (see Galston, 2014: 25). Here, the Danish government stands out as a prime example as it relies on large supermajorities in parliament to enact green policies and to safeguard them against future retraction (see Local DK, 2020).

With these strategies, politicians may well be able to maximise civic support for previously unpopular political programs (e.g. increasing the costs for certain climate-harming goods or prohibiting climate-harming behaviour). Yet, in a competitive democratic arena, these efforts may occasionally remain futile. For these cases, realist scholars provide additional considerations that can help to avoid public resistance against responsible government action.

As Bagg argues, for example, at times and for specific policy issues, leaders can try and persuade citizens to accept a political decision after it has been implemented. The potential effectiveness of this strategy is well-documented for cross-border migration. As Bagg explains, ‘global economic forces reliably create intense pressures for […] migration, and in many cases, political leaders have strong incentives to allow it – to satisfy business or diplomatic interests, perhaps – even if it means ignoring majority opinion and/or turning a blind eye to illicit migration flows’ (2022: 49; see also Piketty, 2020: 1022–1023). Propitiously, empirical evidence shows that citizens are more likely to express positive attitudes towards immigration if migrants have already settled in their area (Drāzanová et al., 2022: 2).

The data is less clear on issues concerning climate change. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that city dwellers are less likely to oppose the sustainable restructuring of urban traffic after experiencing the suggested modifications in pilot schemes throughout their city (see Kissel, 2023). In representative democracies, policymakers and city councils have some leeway to engage in experiments of this kind. Insofar as these measures create co-benefits for the population (e.g. economic growth or reduced noise and air pollution) policymakers can reasonably hope that citizens will come to accept (and maybe even endorse) the new status quo. ¹⁷

Related to this line of thinking, scholars aligned with the classical realist tradition have emphasised that particular climate policies are less likely than others to spark resistance from voters and special interest groups. Some argue, for example, that policymakers should, whenever possible, avoid market-based solutions as they create visible costs for citizens. Instead, governments should focus on implementing industrial programs. As these researchers explain, industrial strategies do ‘pretty much all the serious work of deep decarbonization’ (Cullenward and Victor, 2020: ix) while producing costs that are ‘less visible for voters’ (175). Others have argued that, when encountering resistance to climate mitigation efforts, policymakers should redirect resources towards research and development as new and cheaper technologies may yield ‘near-term national benefits’ (Symons, 2019: 156) while also working towards deep decarbonisation. As long as citizens are willing to accept these programs and insofar as these policies are effective in averting the dangers of climate change, the normative tension between responsibility and responsiveness requirements may be circumvented.

Activists

Apart from the abovementioned top-down means of persuasion, activists and social movements play a vital role in shaping public opinion. Admittedly, the normative heuristics of responsibility and responsiveness, as drawn from the realist legitimacy framework, do not straightforwardly apply to civic agents. Nevertheless, the framework generates some normative spill-over that engaged citizens may find relevant.

Although the stakes could not be higher, climate activists must recognise that politicians are ill-advised to enact climate policies that large groups among the population consider unacceptable. Insofar as this is true, the central aim of engaged citizens in the democratic framework must be to change the hearts and minds of their fellow citizens and to influence what they will recognise as good or at least acceptable climate action (see Cross, 2020). This can go both ways. On the one hand, citizens can try to convince their peers that certain actions, like subsidising fossil fuel industries with taxpayer money, should no longer fall within the range of acceptable political conduct. On the other hand, and of vital importance for my overall argument, activists can try to convince other citizens that certain costly policy programs, like a carbon tax or measures to reduce car traffic, should fall within the range of acceptable regulations.

Towards this end, certain strategies appear more promising than others. According to empirical research, public opinion tends to shift away from organised groups that engage in violent and destructive behaviour against police forces or their fellow citizens (Feinberg et al., 2017; Wasow, 2020). On the other hand, non-violent forms of civil disobedience have proven to be effective at gathering civic support for sometimes drastic social transformations (Shuman et al., 2021). Activists around the world have already been immensely successful in bringing the problem of climate change to the centre of political attention (Scheuerman, 2022). This provides some hope that continued activist activity may increasingly shift public opinion towards supporting costly but necessary climate action.

What is more, empirical evidence indicates that citizens and policymakers (especially in the United States) frequently underestimate the willingness of the public to accept effective climate mitigation policies (Sparkman et al., 2022). Under these circumstances, there is less tension between responsibility and responsiveness considerations than policymakers conceive. As such, mass protests and movements may motivate political action by making this misjudgement apparent. ¹⁸

Importantly, all of the options I have sketched in this and the previous section, both for democratic leaders and political activists, are compatible with the democratic framework we currently inhabit. They all provide means by which responsible actors can foster much-needed public support for (or at least avoid popular backlash against) costly climate mitigation efforts, while not giving in to the unstable and dangerous call of eco-authoritarianism.

Conclusion

Based on Bagg's action-oriented methodology, I have demonstrated how political leaders seeking to address climate change should best respond to the phenomenon of public backlash against costly but necessary climate action. I extrapolated two broadly applicable normative heuristics for political actors from the realist legitimacy framework: responsibility and responsiveness. As I showed, these heuristics occasionally come into tension in light of the emerging climate crisis. Against a recent eco-authoritarian proposal that advocates for granting responsibility absolute priority over responsiveness when facing the climate emergency, I maintained that responsible climate action now and around here necessarily entails sufficient consideration for citizen beliefs and preferences. As a baseline, politicians must ensure that a policy program meets sufficient public acceptance. The effectiveness of climate policies can further be amplified by securing broad public support. I have concluded by sketching how this finding should guide political leaders and climate activists going forward.