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Toward a Bioregional State: A Series of Letters About Political Theory and Formal Institutional Design in the Era of Sustainability

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Dear Customer,

My name is Björn and I am a law student from Germany. I had the pleasure to take part in two of Dr. Whitaker's readings. Up to now I have only read an excerpt of his book, but as I ordered the book just recently I will soon have the opportunity to read the full book. I have learned about a lot of important issues in Dr. Whitaker's readings and as the book is a good destillation of the knowledge Dr. Whitaker teaches and the ideas he offers I warmly recommend it.

Summary:
The short excerpt of Whitaker's book "Toward a Bioregional State" contains the introduction to his book and the second chapter respectively #4. In his introduction the author sets off describing the purpose of his book. I will comprehend the article by describing the problem the author sees with existing constitutions, shortly outlining introduction's overview about the offered solutions and will finally describe the given example in chapter 2.

The author argues that the formal constitutions conceived in the enlightenment era are incomplete. They would lack the institutions that lead to sustainability and the inventors could not have foreseen the structures of informal power that would be fostered by or at least could not be controlled by these institutions. These informal power alliances would then lead to monopolization which inevitably entails environmental degradation and state unsustainability. These alliances would further gatekeep against the debate of new ideas and political movements that desire institutional change by corrupting politicians and preventing active participation of citizens. He calls this an ecological tyranny. In the current situation democratic participation would further and further decrease, because the formal constitutions not yet foster a responsible individualistic citizen who is concerned about environmental problems. Finally he criticizes that the formal state does not take into account and is harmfully kept distinct of the political power that originates from science, consumption respectively economics, financial actors and material organizations, too.

In the opinion of the author, states have to become aware of their surrounding environmental conditions and structure their constitutions accordingly. The state should also "check and balance" against the in current constitutions neglected informal parties which have a natural desire to exclude other parties or oversee and publicly deconstruct environmental problems. The politic arena should be preserved in a way that ideas can freely be discussed and the ruling informal parties cannot gatekeep against them. He suggests that the formal structure of states and especially their electoral areas can be organized around geographical features. Ruling parties would up to now rather organize electoral areas to make a reelection more probable. Rather organizing them about a common concern would make these areas much more representative and foster voting participation.

In chapter two of his books he gives one example for this reorganization. This is the designing of electoral districts around watersheds. Current electoral districts would be "gerrymandered" and therefore be counterproductive to representive elections. Ruling parties would design districts to include as many voters that favor their party as possible. It is very tough to overcome this designed majority and the incentive to vote is accordingly low. Designed to one permanent party these districts readily invite corruption as there are opportunities for relationships with everlasting never exchanged political actors which cannot be challenged. In contradiction to this many local political movements would originate from environmental concerns. By designing the electoral districts accordingly the constitution would facilitate an already existing tendency so that environmental concerns can be politically engaged with and problems be solved.

Comments:
For me the outstanding special feature of this text compared to all others in the reading is that it is not only tracing and criticizing existing problems or respectively describing theoretical concepts of current societies. The author is rather giving alternative examples which can actually be implemented in reality and tested for their usefulness. While other texts only shortly give an outlook about necessary changes and very abstract postulate a desirable change this text is the illustration of an elaborated concept of ideas designed to change and improve society. It could be called a social invention if it would be tested in practice and actually yield benefits for society in a whole.

While I am favoring a different approach (which is the abandonment of money and the erection of a total new system) I see this as a parallel way to state improvement that is working with the current systems and tries to eliminate its flaws and drawbacks.

by Bjoern Schmidt