Another great resource
I'll be posting something more substantive later, but in the meantime this is another great resource for and by participatory practitioners. http://practiceinparticipation.org/index.php
I'll be posting something more substantive later, but in the meantime this is another great resource for and by participatory practitioners. http://practiceinparticipation.org/index.php
If we see democracy as a value and indeed it's enshrined in the Clinton School's Objectives, then what are the conditions that would allow for genuine participatory democracy to be possible?
Currently, the conditions (curriculum, leadership, academic culture) make the idea of genuine participatory democracy problematic and difficult
Many interesting and relevant points in this video. Small reforms in the Clinton School curriculum and governance seem relatively easy comparatively.
Critiquing Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation as “obsolete and defective”, Fung proposes an alternative model, the "democracy cube", with three dimensions: participants, influence, and communication and decision making. Participants can range from a very exclusive set of expert administrators to a more encompassing, diffuse public sphere. Communication and decision making range from least intensive to most intensive, “where intensity indicates roughly the level of investment, knowledge, and commitment required of participants.” Influence and authority gauges actual impact on public action. Fung says, however, that citizen empowerment is not always appropriate because of concerns of competency, representativeness, and legitimacy.
Unlike Arnsetin, Fung does not assume that direct citizen control is always better. He states that Arnstein’s push for citizen control may have been more relevant in the 1960s, a time of urban revolt. However, Fung wrote this article in 2005, before the 2008 economic crisis and before the urban revolts of Occupy Wall Street spread to cities and towns across the country. People from all points on the political spectrum seem to be calling for more accountability and direct citizen control over a wide range of institutions. Regardless, Fung does give at least one solid example of a case in which different objectives might warrant mechanisms other than direct citizen control.
In the case of the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), funding and control was delegated to neighborhood associations to administer appropriate local activities in housing, human services, economic development, infrastructure, and education. Because the administration of NRP had very demanding technical components and time commitments, small groups of citizens with the available time and resources began to control the process-- "typically white homeowners who are insensitive to the concerns of minorities, renters, and less-well off residents."
There are a variety of mechanisms to counteract this kind of capture by unrepresentative interests. Fung suggests that effectiveness can be enhanced by engaging in less extensive and more intensive forms of participation (see cube model for examples). He doesn't address it extensively in the article, but I am curious to know if this kind of danger could justify an important role for the state as an arbiter or facilitator of representativeness, justice, and equal opportunity. In his concluding remarks, Fung describes a potential partnership or co-existence of representative and participatory forms of democracy. He projects that participatory models such as the budgeting system in Porto Alegre could be replaced with institutionalized officials who can effectively carry on the work of ensuring justice and equality. Ignoring the intrinsic value of civic participation, the goal of justice could be achieved through a variety of potential mechanisms.
Our friends at OWS and elsewhere have been hard at work writing, editing, and publishing new journals! Take a look:
Recently, the Governance Committee (a Clinton School Student Government committee) announced that they would be revising the constitution. The committee decided to hold a student body-wide visioning session to ground the initiative. A little over 1/3 of the student body attended the meeting.
Utilizing liberating structures learned in an elective class this semester, our classmates facilitated a group process that asked us to express our views on how student government currently operates and to brainstorm and prioritize the values we hold as Clinton School students. Then, we were asked to reflect individually on the question: "in what ways could student organization, through the school, be more meaningful and/or relevant to you as a student?" We paired off and shared our ideas with a partner, then formed into small groups of four people to identify patterns and develop a vision statement based on the common ground we found.
Several of the groups wrote vision statements that mirrored traditional ideas about the role of student government (e.g. as a liaison between students and administration, vehicle to get money for student activities), but what surprised me was that the majority of groups envisioned a very different form of organization-- one that was based on full participation, transparency, consensus and dialogue. As we returned to the whole group to report back and continue the conversation, more specific ideas began to surface. One student suggested that perhaps a student assembly using a form of more direct democracy would fit our needs better as a small school. Another suggested abolishing the committee structure and instead creating affinity groups that could be more dynamic and organic. Several students expressed a desire to create space for students to benefit from each others' expertises.
The Governance committee is now trying to decide how to move forward. Getting students together to brainstorm ideas is one thing, but building consensus around a new structure seems like a daunting, impractial task in such a short amount of time. We have not been introduced to or practiced the types of tools that would allow us to easily facilitate or envision such a process, much less an alternative form of governance. Compounding the problem is a lack of common language to discuss and move the idea forward.
This quandary is precisely the gap that our independent study and curriculum development is meant to fill. We need information, tools, and models to make the vision a practical reality. Perhaps the modified consensus process of the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly could be helpful. Or general assemblies elsewhere. Or principles of dynamic governance that are being used at the Little Rock Sustainability Commission.
We need to educate ourselves and each other so that we aren't forced to fall back on the status quo. Ideas appreciated!
We recently developed the following four main categories to help focus and organize our study of participatory democracy models:
a) GOVERNANCE
b) ACTIVISM
c) RESEARCH
d) EDUCATION
Each category can be associated with specific situations, methods, and skills. For example, under category c) RESEARCH, we can study the methods associated with participatory action research and engage with case studies where this method has been applied around the world.
As an overarching premise, we would like to examine the role of the state in each category.
In addition, it is important to consider the interconnections between the categories. I recently read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in another class and he summed up the holistic vision nicely:
The investigation of the people's generative themes or meaningful thematics constitutes the starting point for the process of action as cultural synthesis. Indeed, it is not really possible to divide this process into two separate steps; first, thematic investigation, and then action as cultural synthesis. Such a dichotomy would imply an initial phase in which the people, as passive objects, would be studied, analyzed, and investigated by the investigators-- a procedure congruent with antidialogical action. Such division would lead to the naive conclusion that action as synthesis follows from action as invasion. In dialogical theory, this division cannot occur. The Subjects of thematic investigation are not only the professional investigators but also the men and women of the people whose thematic universe is being sought. Investigation--the first moment of action as cultural synthesis--establishes a climate of creativity which will tend to develop in the subsequent stages of action [...] In cultural synthesis there are no invaders; hence, there are no imposed models. In their stead, there are actors who critically analyze reality (never separating this analysis from action) and intervene as Subjects in the historical process. Instead of following predetermined plans, leaders and people, mutually identified, together create the guidelines of their action. In this synthesis, leaders and people are somehow reborn in new knowledge and new action. Knowledge of the alienated culture leads to transforming action resulting in a culture which is being freed from alienation. The more sophisticated knowledge of the leaders is remade in the empirical knowledge of the people, while the latter is refined by the former. (Pp. 180-181)
In other words, liberation through Freire's theory of dialogic action presents education as collective investigation (research), which leads to action and reflection (activism), and ultimately to a transformation of how society is organized (governance). The whole process constitutes revolution.
While seeking to tie all elements together into one visionary whole, we must recognize that the case studies and examples we consider in this course will likely fall into one category or another since in our current global reality we see progressive steps toward more authentic democracy, but not wholesale revolution.
Graeber discusses three common misconceptions of the so-called “global justice” movement in both its tactics and goals: the supposed opposition to something called “globalization,” the supposed “violence,” and the supposed lack of coherent ideology. The article brings to light the complex identity and purpose of the movement, while uncovering its center in anarchist philosophy. This article expands understandings of a recent North American resistance movement that sought to redefine democracy and introduced methods/tools that have become more widespread in subsequent movements such as the antiwar movement and Occupy Wall Street. The article is interspersed with a critique of corporate media in the United States, which Graeber describes as having a “choke-hold on information and ideas.”
