Can Democracy Hear the More-Than-Human? Representation, Accountability, and the Hope of Multispecies Democracy

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.