ABSTRACT
Global deliberative democracy as developed by James Bohman, then applied to environmental affairs by Baber and Bartlett, involves application of ideas drawn from the theory and practice of deliberative democracy to global governance. In an environmental context (at any level) many authors claim that deliberative democracy can produce more effective collective decisions, not just more legitimate ones. From the point of view of deliberative democracy, global environmental governance currently looks problematic for several reasons. In light of the current obvious deliberative deficiencies, a number of reforms have been proposed by deliberative democrats. Many have been implemented in environmental governance at different scales (local, regional, and national), but relatively few at the global level. One reform would be to introduce moments of citizen deliberation directly into the system. In global environmental governance no less than elsewhere, democratic legitimacy matters, and so does policy effectiveness. Global deliberative democracy is an attempt to realize these twin aims by seeking authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation.
