Citizens, Environmental Sustainability and Local Democracy
A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2022) | Viewed by 675
Special Issue Editors
Interests: politics and youth; voting and elections; political parties
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The environmental and climate crisis is now widely acknowledged by politicians and populations around the world. The issue is omnipresent in the media and is increasingly studied in academia, largely due to environmental activism, especially by young generations that have deliberately drawn attention to the urgency for change (Pickard, Bowman and Arya 2021, 2022; Wahlström et al. 2019). Responding to these protests, international bodies, such as the United Nations, and political leaders have sought to engage with environmental activists (Henn, Sloam and Nunes 2021). Meanwhile, certain national governments have officially declared a climate emergency and set up citizens assemblies and deliberative democracy initiatives (Pickard 2020).
Although such climate-focused citizen/elite engagement is evident at national and international levels, there is a dearth of empirical evidence of local-level interactions between powerholders and individual citizens. Some work has shown that such local-level interactions are likely to increase the “voice” of citizens and their sense of political efficacy, as well as feelings that they are part of the solution to the climate crisis (Henn and Arya 2021) and democracy.
This Special Issue of Societies entitled “Citizens, Environmental Sustainability and Local Democracy” welcomes international contributions that consider local-level engagement of citizens in the debate about policy development and the design of policies intended to combat climate change. Contributions of original research and conceptualization are welcome from scholars, civic practitioners and activists operating in a range of different local settings, and using diverse disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
Contributions have to follow one of the three categories (article/review/conceptual paper) of papers for the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue. Please read details at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/societies/instructions.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Matt Henn
Dr. Sarah Pickard
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- civic engagement
- citizens’ policymaking
- citizen/elite engagement
- climate policy
- carbon-reduction policy
- climate crisis
- environmental activism
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