Values and Democratic Deliberation in Urban Climate Politics —the Case of the Climate-Departure Erlangen

Abstract

Values are often considered to be more stable than they actually are. Liberal theories locate them in individual decision-making processes, poststructuralism reads “values” as structural or discursive effects of power, and a communitarian perspective sees values as existing in the traditions that communities uphold and maintain. I seek to show how values are flexible and (re-)created in the process of democratic deliberation, which is an ongoing and dynamic struggle over policies and social practices in morally charged situations that arise in political life. The article analyzes an initiative launched by the German city of Erlangen, titled Climate-Departure Erlangen (Klima-Aufbruch Erlangen, roughly renderable as “going on a journey together for the climate”). A citizens’ assembly and a stakeholder group were mandated to develop a catalogue of measures by which the city could achieve “climate neutrality” by 2030. The catalogue was submitted to the city council for decision. The entire process was examined using methods of deliberation research to analyze its quality, its content, as well as the interactions and constellations of the various actors involved. The analysis demonstrates that the widespread view that deliberative and consensus-oriented processes lead to depoliticization and result in post-political expertocracy does not apply in this case. Instead, through the associated negotiations over the values guiding urban politics, the process had a substantially politicizing effect on climate politics