LA ESQUINA CALIENTE (THE HOT CORNER) - A STUDY OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY IN ACTION AROUND THE WORLD

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…

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

ESPAÑA: Se Realizó Congreso de Inovación Democrática en Santa Cristina d'Aro



Congreso de Innovación Democrática

La influencia ideológica que han ejercido las doctrinas y prácticas neoliberales en la acción política, negadoras de lo público e incentivadoras del individualismo más descarnado, se ha ido produciendo una crisis de la representación política. Surgen además con fuerza en los países con sistemas de democracia representativa fenómenos innegables, como es el del crecimiento de la abstención electoral, o también un incremento de la desconfianza de los ciudadanos hacia los representantes y en general de lo que podríamos llamar lo político y lo público.

Los procesos de redemocratización iniciados en Latinoamérica en la segunda mitad de los años ochenta del siglo XX, están permitiendo sin embargo la puesta en escena de prácticas concretas de democracia que concitan un interés creciente.

Entre éstas nuevas prácticas democráticas figura, en un lugar destacado, el instrumento conocido como el ?Presupuesto Participativo? iniciado en la ciudad de Porto Alegre (Brasil). En la actualidad, éste instrumento de participación política se ha extendido por el resto del mundo, siendo más de 300 los municipios que han implementado instrumentos de este tipo.

Este Congreso se centrará en el análisis de las experiencias participativas innovadoras a la luz de las aportaciones del debate contemporáneo sobre la democracia.

Para ello pretendemos dividir los debates de este Congreso en dos apartados. En el primero se debatirá sobre el funcionamiento de los actuales sistemas políticos representativos que inciden en la calidad de la democracia.

En el segundo se analizará, desde una perspectiva descriptiva, los instrumentos de democracia participativa que pretenden mejorar la calidad de la democrática, contribuyendo con ello objetivamente a la relegitimación del sistema democrático en su conjunto pero sin que eso signifique en modo alguno la sustitución del sistema de democracia representativa.


+ info:
www.santacristina.net/congreso/programa_...

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