LECTURE 26 DEMOCRACY FROM BELOW December 9, 2010

I. Two Kinds of Democratic Institutions Representative democracy: elections to select people who make public decisions for you. Direct democracy: active participation of ordinary citizens in shaping and making public decision-making.

Familiar examples of direct democracy Juries Referenda Public hearings Public issue campaigns Social protests New England Town Meetings Question: Can arenas of direct democracy be meaningfully expanded in a complex society?

II. An innovative example: Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre Brazil Basic idea: City budgets are generated through direct citizen participation in neighborhood budget assemblies rather than by the Mayor and the city council.

Participatory Budgeting: how it works City of Porto Alegre – about 1.7 million people. 17 neighborhood assemblies + 6 “thematic assemblies”. Anyone can attend and vote. Assemblies meet at beginning of budget cycle to review last years budget, discuss priorities and choose neighborhood budget council. Neighborhood budget councils meet for three months to formulate priorities and specific projects. Proposals brought back to assembly for ratification. All of these neighborhood budgets are then combined in a city-wide budget council with two delegates from each assembly.

Performance of neighborhood dance class before assembly meeting

A comedy skit performed before assembly meeting

Presentation by officials from Mayor’s office during assembly meeting

Discussions Voting

Chicago Participatory Budget Experiment video (web)

III. The Problem: the complex relationship between Legislation, Bureaucracy and Democracy Laws and policies get passed by legislatures, but how do they actually get implemented? How do laws-on-paper get turned into real practices in the world? Inevitably for most complex policies, a great deal of rule making and practical adaptation has to occur in the translation of laws-on-paper into real policies. Question: how democratic is this translation process?

Command-and-control Bureaucracy Standard solution: Command-and-control Bureaucracy (1) How it works: At the top of the bureaucracy are political appointees who are responsible to the elected executive of the government The politically-appointed head of the bureaucracy oversees rule setting and implementation There may be advisory panels of experts and representatives of “special interests” Below the political head are career civil servants who do most of the practical work of implementing these rules: field agents, accountants, researchers, etc.

(2) In what sense is C&C Bureaucracy “democratic”? The bureaucracy as a whole, and especially the head of the bureaucracy, is accountable to the elected executive. The bureaucracy is itself subject to rules and courts, so you can challenge its practices in court. Two Problems: (i) often bureaucracies become quite autonomous and insulated from popular pressure and democratic will; (ii) the policy-making centers in bureaucracies are often influenced by well-funded lobbyists and sometimes captured by special interests.

An alternative solution: Empowered Participatory Governance The basic idea: Decentralize important aspects of implementation to local units Involve ordinary citizens and civic associations in working out practical details of implementation (and sometimes rule specification) with real power to make decisions. Retain relatively centralized funding, monitoring and coordination This is NOT deregulation or privatization; it is participatory democratic decentralization rooted in civil society.

_______________________________________ III. Examples of participatory democracy involving EPG _______________________________________ Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (discussed in book & film) _____________________________________________ 2. Industrial Areas Foundation community planning The problem: The Federal Government provides block grants to cities. How should the specific projects be decided? Traditional solution: Mayor, city planning departments and city councils decide how to allocate these funds. Participatory alternative: Planning meetings are held in homes, churches, schools in which ordinary residents generate “wish lists” and then deliberate about priorities. This is followed by meetings and discussions at more aggregate levels, which culminates in a plan for the use of the funds.

3. Habitat Conservation Planning The problem: The endangered species act legislation left many details to be worked out by the agency responsible for the policy: what species should be on the list? How should the list be changed? Exactly how were the species on the list to be protected? How do you drawn the boundaries of protected habitats? There are very sharp conflicts of interests between developers and environmentalists over habitat conservation. Traditional solution: Experts in the Federal agency make the decision after holding hearings and doing scientific research. The typical solution is zero-development within a protected habitat because this is the easiest to monitor. Participatory alternative: Create habitat-specific planning councils in which all “stakeholders” -- environmentalists, developers, landowners, government experts -- participate and create the rules for a specific habitat in which “compatible development” is allowed and the monitoring problem is solved by greater trust and local participation.

4. Community Policing The problem: effective policing requires a lot of trust between police officers and residents, but in many crime-ridden poor neighborhoods there is little trust. Traditional solution: Police adopt a very defensive attitude, stay in police cars, avoid informal interactions with public Participatory alternative: In Chicago an effort has been made to create neighborhood policing councils, “beat councils” in which residents meet regularly with the police to discuss priorities for policing the neighborhood and in which the police report to residents what they have done to response to neighborhood demands. Difficulty: The residents are not really empowered to make the police adopt their priorities.