Designing Ecological Democracy: Agonistic and More-than-Human Approaches to Environmental Governance in Flanders

Abstract

This PhD research investigates how participatory and political design can intervene in environmental governance by promoting more ecologically informed forms of democracy. Situated within the FWO project "Redesigning Democracy" and empirically grounded in Flanders, Belgium, this study explores how design might challenge the technocratic rationalities of policymaking and open institutional processes to more-than-human participation, using regional water governance as a lens. The research examines the design's potential to act both within and against governance frameworks—being for politics and political at once—through an analysis of several local initiatives aimed at tackling water-related issues, and by experimenting with material engagements with local waterbodies. It further argues that design's generative and provocative capacities can mediate between institutional logics and ecological agencies, enabling new forms of coexistence among human and more-than-human actors. The research contributes to Participatory Design (PD) by advancing a notion of design for ecological democracy—a critical and generative practice for re-politicizing environmental governance and reimagining what it means to live and decide together in more-than-human worlds amid the frictions of environmental crisis.