Institutions for the Long Run: Taking Future Generations Seriously in Government
- Fin Moorhouse and Luca Righetti
- Jun 22, 2021
- 26 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Introduction
This article sets out the case for taking future generations seriously through our political institutions. We make three central claims. First, future people matter, and political institutions ought to reflect this. We make this case by appealing to the importance of broad political enfranchisement, and then to the more general moral significance of future people. Second, our political institutions do not yet take the interests of future generations sufficiently seriously across a range of issues, especially relating to managing risks—and considerations from economics and psychology explain why she should expect this to be the case. Third, institutional reform toward representing future people is both promising and feasible. To this end, we describe four kinds of reform which we hope will broaden the discussion. Throughout, we draw on work by Tyler John.[1]
Future generations matter for politics
Representation matters for politics
A core part of today’s Western understanding of democracy is that governments derive their legitimacy from adequately including the people they affect in their decision-making processes.[2] The American Revolution led with the slogan ‘no taxation without representation’,[3] and the subsequent Declaration of Independence affirmed that ‘governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’.[4]
Yet, a government being democratic in name does not imply it represents everyone it ought to represent. Indeed, the history of Western democracy is a history of subjugated groups struggling for political enfranchisement.[5] Women were not granted the vote until well into the twentieth century; US Congress only passed the Civil Rights Act in 1967; and today fierce discussion continues on how constitutional issues like gerrymandering discriminate in practice against certain groups.[6]
We may care about representation because we value equality, diversity, or fairness, and believe broader representation is necessary for these abstract ideals. But we should also care about representation because of its practical effects—because it shapes laws and policies. When groups are underrepresented in democratic systems, politicians have weaker incentives to consider their interests in constructing policy, and are exposed to a narrower range of perspectives. When groups are not represented at all, governments do not have to internalise the externalities imposed by this policy.