Rethinking Democracy: a Response to Julia Cagé by Hendrik Pröhl and Sanne van den Boom
Julia Cagé, the 2021 Arne Næss Chair, draws attention to the “crisis of representation” caused by the disproportionate influence of corporate and private money on parliamentary politics. For effective and just climate action, indeed more voices need to be heard, but rethinking democracy should go beyond political funding and party politics. What other changes in politics are needed, and how can we give space to those who are currently excluded?
Image credit: Peter Piotr Kuzinski.
In 2021, the Arne Næss Programme on
Global Justice at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the
Environment awarded the annual Arne
Næss Chair to Julia Cagé, Associate
Professor for Economics at Sciences Po Paris. Cagé’s most recent book, The
Price of Democracy (2020), analyses how private and corporate wealth has come to hold disproportionate influence in politics. At the 2021 Arne Næss Symposium, Cagé elaborated on her findings and offered several solutions. As holders of this year’s Arne Næss stipend, we responded to some of her arguments but wanted to elaborate on a central concern we could only mention briefly during the symposium: rethin36
