Democracy and Moral Obligations to Future Generations

Despite the prevalent claims that modern democracy is the best and most just system of government, democracy in its current form has shortcomings in respect of protecting the rights and interests of future generations. Against this background, the book discusses two fundamental questions. Firstly, it discusses whether the present generation has moral obligations to posterity. Secondly, since the first question will be answered in the affirmative, the capacity of democratic governments to include the interests of future generations in their policies will be analyzed. In this context, it will be maintained that democratic decision-makers are primarily motivated to focus on the present, i.e. to achieve positive and tangible results during their period of office. Therefore, it will be argued that in order to make democracy more future-oriented, certain institutional reforms are necessary.