LIST OF PANELS

We are living in a time the environmental crisis is getting worse, and climate change has turned to be climate emergency that threatens catastrophe. As Fischer (2017) shows in “Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect”, democracy and participation will be in jeopardy. Technocratic politics will be the dominant approach to political elites. However, there has to be a role for the local that promotes a governance system that focuses on matters concerning the practical orientation of the bottom-up participation by communities as a deliberative exercise able to engage ordinary people as well as officials in the solution (Fung & Wright, 2003). The environmental belief that criticizes market environmentalism has always been a key value of the movement, especially the one that typically involves explicit struggles against inequalities by civil organizations. This is written into sustainable development documents but neglected in practice. Prominent examples are also found in mainstream sustainable development discourses that depoliticize and neglect the foundations of justice and sustainability (Baker, 2022). In contrast, this hybrid panel welcomes real-world governance practices that promote meaningful participation to challenge the existing unjust barriers and pave the way toward sustainability. Critical policy researchers and practitioners are encouraged to share the attempt to go beyond the promotion of network governance that usually turns out to be a metaphor (Dowding, 1995) or an empty signifier (Offe, 2009). The panel looks for lessons for sustainable governance that confronts the rise of techno-authoritarian control and the neo-liberal state. As such, it seeks practices that promote democratic deliberation focused on more inclusive and emancipatory conceptions of sustainability (Hammond & Smith, 2022). 

References:
 
Baker, S. 2022. “Sustainable Development: Between Reformist Change and Radical Transformation”. In Bornemann, B., Knappe, H. & Nanz, P., eds. Routledge Handbook of Democracy and Sustainability. London: Routledge. 
 
Dowding, K. 1995. Model or Metaphor?: A Critical Review of the Policy Network Approach. Political Studies, 3(1): 136-158.
 
Fischer, F. 2017. Climate crisis and ecological democracy: Participatory governance in sustainable communities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
 
Fung, A., & Wright, O. (2003). Deepening Democracy: Institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance. New York: Verso.
 
Hammond, M. & Smith, G. 2022. “Deliberation and Sustainability”. In Bornemann, B., Knappe, H. & Nanz, P., eds. Routledge Handbook of Democracy and Sustainability. London: Routledge. 
 
Offe, C. 2009. Governance: An ‘Empty Signifier’? Constellations, 16(4): 550–562.

The goal of this hybrid panel is to stimulate the exchange of examples in the real world that show participatory governance for a just sustainable future to more than just ideology. Apart from describing the governance practice and its context, the papers should address how such practice improves decision-making and builds political legitimacy by enhancing reflection on the diversity of environmental values and knowledge; how the practice challenges broader systemic injustices; and how it promotes more reflexive, adaptable, and ecologically attuned societies.