Who Gets a Voice? Understanding Support for Representing Nonhumans in Democratic Deliberations

• In Event: 3140 - Innovations in Sociological Animal Studies

Abstract

Humans face a wide range of environmental issues about which we must make decisions. One promising approach to making such decisions is democratic deliberation. However, one problem with making environmental decisions through democratic deliberation is that it most forms of democratic deliberation exclude nonhuman stakeholders from the decision-making process. In this paper, I explore people’s support for multispecies democratic deliberation, an approach to democratic deliberation that includes nonhuman stakeholders through proxy representation by humans, by quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the results of a survey administered to a representative sample of 591 American adults. Through my analysis, I find that people tend to be supportive of including nonhumans in the decision-making process. Their attitudes toward sustainability and animals are the strongest predictors of their support for including nonhumans in the decision-making process, but that direct experience with a nonhuman animal may also increase their support. Additionally, I find that people who support including nonhumans tend to explain their support through principles of democracy, efficacy, and intrinsic value, whereas people who do not support including them tend to explain their support through principles of efficiency. These findings provide useful insights for facilitators of democratic deliberations interested in including nonhuman stakeholders in the decision-making process, as well as for scholars of animal studies, environmental sociology, and green democracy.

Keywords: Deliberative democracy, environmental decision making, inclusion, nonhuman stakeholders

Author

• Stephen Patrick Vrla, Michigan State University