View Point Land, ecology, and democracy A twenty-first century view Julianne Lutz Newton, Ph.D. The Environmental Council University of Illinois 311 West University Avenue #401 Champaign, Illinois 61820 jnewton@uiuc.edu Eric T. Freyfogle, J.D. University of Illinois College of Law 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue Champaign, Illinois 61820 efreyfog@uiuc.law.edu William C. Sullivan, Ph.D. The Environmental Council University of Illinois 1101 West Peabody #390 Urbana, Illinois 61801 wcsulliv@uiuc.edu ABSTRACT . Land is necessary for human flourishing, and its use remains a compelling concern for every society, even those wherein industrialization has sharply diminished people’s awareness of land. Here, we consider land’s influence on political thinking, particularly thinking about democratic governance, and ask if this influence might be made more beneficial by the application of lessons drawn from ecological research. We identify five such lessons and apply them in six ways to the institution of private-property rights in nature — the main legal institution that allocates and perpetuates power over land — and to modern assumptions about liberal individualism and rights to health. We conclude that people can live well on land, promoting both human and land health, only in governmental forms engaging more citizens more deliberatively than now typical even in democracies. Implications for political institutions and human welfare are discussed under conditions of globalizing interdependence. I n the nineteenth century, hardly anyone who wrote about democracy in America failed to pay attention to land and to the ways it influenced American politics. Widespread land ownership and the vast frontier played key roles in sustaining American democracy, or so many people believed. Nature and politics were linked, in practice and prevailing thought. Today, the situation is starkly different. Few political writers pay attention to land, except for specialty writings about green politics. 1, 2 Indeed, prominent writers rarely mention nature in any form, as if it no longer influenced political thought and political struc- tures. 3 That omission, we believe, is unfortunate. Why we think so and the many ways that land and democracy today are linked are the subjects of this inquiry. 42 P OLITICS AND THE L IFE S CIENCES d 23 J ANUARY 2007 d VOL. 25, NO. 1-2