Democracy is under siege: electoral processes are being undermined, civil rights are being eroded, and the compulsion toward authoritarianism is arguably stronger today than it has been since World War II. Against this backdrop, the emerging discourse on multispecies democracy (MD), which challenges human exceptionalism by advocating for nonhumans’ political inclusion, is a chance bright spot among democracy’s tremulous prospects today.
While the advocates of MD do not propose direct voting rights for nonhumans, many argue that humans should act as proxies, giving voice to nonhuman concerns in democratic processes. Yet this proxy status raises an important question: How can MD reject anthropocentric notions of subjectivity, agency, and freedom while simultaneously relying on human representation? This paper explores this question, arguing that a more precise account of human difference—humans’ unique discursive capacity—both illuminates the limits of MD’s political potential and clarifies why democracy, as a system of political accountability, remains essential to the pursuit of freedom.
MD challenges the assumption that democracy is exclusively a human affair. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour (1991, 2004), Jane Bennett (2010), Eduardo Kohn (2013), and others (e.g., Haraway 2016, Barad 2007, de la Cadena 2015), advocates of MD contend that nonhumans already shape collective life and that governance should recognize their agency (van Dooren 2019, Despret 2016, Tsing 2021). Some advocate for the legal recognition of nonhuman rights (Shiva 2005), like how the nations of Ecuador and New Zealand designate personhood status for rivers and mountains. Others, inspired by Indigenous political traditions, call for governance structures that incorporate nonhuman concerns into decision-making (Whyte 2017). The goal is not to assimilate nonhumans into human democratic norms but to transform democracy itself—decentering the human and reconfiguring political agency in nonanthropocentric terms.
Yet while arguments for MD rest on the rejection of anthropocentric models of freedom and agency, they nevertheless depend on the assumption that human representatives must articulate nonhuman interests. Democracy requires not only participation but accountability—the ability to justify decisions, respond to criticism, and engage in norm-based reasoning. If democracy is defined as a system of deliberation where participants give and take reasons, sharing in the construction and contestation of communal norms and governing procedures, then nonhumans appear excluded from democracy’s core processes. This presents a dilemma: either democracy must be radically redefined, or human proxies must play a more carefully theorized role in representing nonhuman concerns.
This dilemma reveals a deeper conceptual issue: What does it mean for nonhumans to be free? Many advocates of MD argue against liberal (i.e., Kantian) notions of autonomy, which define freedom as self-legislation (e.g., Bennett 2010). Instead, they propose relational models, where freedom emerges through interdependence within ecological networks. But this understanding of freedom remains politically ambiguous. If freedom is a matter of ecological embeddedness rather than self-determination, how can it be protected through democratic mechanisms? Who decides what counts as flourishing, and on what grounds?
To address these questions, this paper draws on insights from pragmatist philosophy, particularly the work of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom, who argue that human agency is distinguished by discursive accountability—the capacity to make norms explicit, justify actions, and revise commitments. For Sellars (1980, 1997), human knowledge is not a matter of merely registering facts but of placing those facts within a conceptual framework that allows for rational critique and revision. Brandom (1994, 2019) extends this idea, emphasizing that humans are not just rule-followers but rule-explainers, capable of making norms explicit and subjecting them to deliberation. This capacity for discursive accountability is what enables democratic governance, as democracy depends on collective reasoning and justification. Nonhumans, lacking the ability to participate in these justificatory practices, cannot engage in democracy in the same way.
This does not mean that nonhumans lack significance in democratic systems, however. It just means that nonhumans’ democratic representation must be structured in ways that preserve the legitimacy of democratic deliberation. The challenge is to establish a framework in which humans can speak for nonhumans without erasing their own agentive capacity or anthropomorphizing their interests.
Existing democratic systems already navigate similar issues: children, for example, do not vote, yet their interests are represented through guardianship and advocacy. Some democratic legal frameworks recognize the rights of animals, ecosystems, and future generations. But these forms of representation work best when they are embedded within systems of accountability—mechanisms that allow claims to be debated, refined, and challenged. Advocates of MD must develop similar mechanisms to ensure that nonhuman interests are represented in ways that remain open to revision rather than being treated as fixed or unquestionable simply because we wish to see the rights of nonhumans respected.
MD’s greatest strength is its insistence that democracy must be reconceived in light of nonanthropocentric values that honor the moral standing of the more-than-human world. Yet if this rethinking is to remain democratic, it must preserve the structures of accountability that give democracy its legitimacy. Freedom, in democracy’s view, is not simply the capacity to act but the capacity to participate in the ongoing articulation of shared norms. Since nonhumans cannot directly engage in this justificatory discourse, humans must assume a representative responsibility. But we must do so in ways that acknowledge the limits of this representation and remain ever open to its being revised. This is not an abandonment of democracy’s ideals but an expansion of them—one that takes seriously the standing of nonhuman beings while recognizing the unique role that human discourse plays in securing freedom.
Multispecies democracy (MD) challenges human exceptionalism by advocating for the political inclusion of nonhumans, positioning itself as a hopeful intervention in an era of democratic crisis. While MD does not propose direct democratic participation for nonhumans, its advocates argue that humans should act as proxies, representing nonhuman interests in democratic processes. A crucial tension emerges, however: How can MD reject anthropocentric models of agency and freedom while simultaneously depending on humans to articulate nonhuman interests? This paper explores this tension by examining democracy’s dependence on practices of discursive accountability—giving and taking reasons, justifying claims, and revising shared norms. Because nonhumans lack the capacity to take part in these practices, the prospects for their democratic participation require further theorization. By clarifying the limits of MD’s current political vision, this paper argues for forms of nonhuman democratic representation that preserve democracy’s core structure of accountability while expanding its ethical scope.