Ecocentrism, or green ideology, offers a perspective on the relationships between human beings and nature that is radically different from the human-centred outlook within which democratic decision-making procedures have developed. Green ideology does not accept humans' innate right to dominate other life-forms. Rather, human beings are considered part of nature and the various parts are seen as having value in their own right, irrespective of their perceived usefulness for human beings. In this study, I seek to formulate a "green" democratic theory or, at least, identify the "seeds" of one using ecocentrism as my point of departure. In so doing, I focus on three basic democratic values - liberty, equality and participation. Although these values are presumed essential to all democratic theories, I argue that the interpretations are somewhat "elastic" in character. Thus, the boundary between democratic norms of process and content is placed somewhat differently in different versions of democratic theory. The green contribution to democratic thought introduces human environmental rights and rights of the non-human biota, which in turn call for democratic representa-tion. Furthermore, eco-democracy proposes an "environmental citizenship" that not only embraces environmental rights, but also citizen obligations towards the natural environment. I show that these eco-democratic norms have no exact equivalent within more traditional democratic theorising (which is represented in this study by a representative and a more participatory variant of democratic theory). This study also points to a rather propitious "breeding-ground" for the eco-democratic ideas among Swedish political actors at the beginning of the 1990s. Ecocentric interpretations of democratic core values have a position on the political parties' agendas, there is an active environmental movement that propagates for these ideas, and there is relatively widespread recognition of eco-democratic norms within the Swedish public. Thus, the elasticity of democratic core values is not "only" a theoretical construction, but also an aspect of contemporary Swedish democratic culture.