PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY vs REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
We as citizens of the United States observe politics from afar and the vast majority of us may participate in the political process only to the extent that we go to the polls once a year to vote. We may endeavor to follow the news accounts of our nation's politics as they unfold, and of the consequences those political actions yield, but we have little power to influence our "democratically" elected officials. Perhaps we write an occasional letter to our senator or representative, but we almost inevitably receive a vague and impersonal response explaining why they will vote in our opposition.
Over the decades, our representative democracy has been systematically undermined and has ultimately failed in preserving the well being of the people of this nation. The system that the founding fathers painstakingly devised in order to best serve the interests and the will of the people has been corrupted and the systems of checks and balances on power that they instituted have been stripped away. Most of us accept this reality as being beyond our control and continue to observe, comment, and complain without aspiring to achieving any real change, without any hope of instituting a new system of governance that would instead take directly into account your views, and the views of your neighbors, and would empower you to make real positive change possible in your communities.
This site will attempt to explore in depth the places in the world where people are successfully bringing about that type of change in the face of similar odds, where an alternate form of democracy, which is called participatory or direct democracy, is taking root. Initiative, referendum & recall, community councils, and grassroots organizing are but a few ways in which direct/participatory democracy is achieving great success around the world.
Our system of representative democracy does not admit the voice of the people into congressional halls, the high courts, or the oval office where our rights and our liberties are being sold out from underneath us. Our local leaders and activists in our communities, and even those local elected officials who may have the best of intentions are for the most part powerless to make real positive change happen in our neighborhoods, towns and villages when there is so much corruption from above.
In places like Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa, India, and the Phillipines, new experiments in grass roots community based governance are taking place. There is much to be learned from these and other examples of participatory democracy from around the world when we try to examine how this grass-roots based governance could begin to take root here in our own country in order to alter our political system so that it might better serve the American people.
In the hope that one day we can become a nation working together as a united people practicing true democracy as true equals, we open this forum…
The following article describes the ups and downs of the participatory budgeting initiative in Salford, U.K. The author questions whether the people are truly having their say and being heard, or whether community voices have are being drowned out by the power structure within this somewhat token and incomplete participatory model. This case demonstrates the need for such initiatives to be firmly rooted at the grassroots level in order for them to be successful. - Editor
Power to Which People?
The government is promising ’devolution right to the doorstep’ as a means of reinvigorating local democracy. A pilot participatory budget making project, whereby people can ’have a direct say’ in how their taxes are spent, has been running in Salford. Stephen Kingston questions its democratic credentials
Nearly 170 years ago, more than a quarter of a million people marched to Kersal Moor, in Salford, demanding democracy. One of the biggest of the many demonstrations organised by the Chartist movement in the mid-19th century, this huge rally was the Live Aid of its day, with more than 30 bands playing. But instead of Bob Geldof demanding ‘Give us yer fuckin’ money’, there was Feargus O’Connor demanding ‘Give us the fuckin’ vote’.
After much campaigning and demonstrating, five of the six points of the People’s Charter, adopted on Kersal Moor that day, were eventually won. As well as the right to vote itself, these were: secret ballots, equal electoral districts, no property qualification to stand as an MP and payment for MPs. The exception to this successful record was the demand for annual parliaments, which was seen by the Chartists as crucial to stop the corruption of MPs...
To read the full article click HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment