The Ecology of Democracy
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The Ecology of Democracy

Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future

David Mathews

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eBook - ePub

The Ecology of Democracy

Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future

David Mathews

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About This Book

The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future is for people who care deeply about their communities and their country but worry about problems that endanger their future and that of their children. Jobs are disappearing, or the jobs people want aren't available. Health care costs keep going up, and the system seems harder to navigate. Many worry that our schools aren't as good as they should be. The political system is mired in hyperpolarization. Citizens feel pushed to the sidelines.Rather than giving in to despair and cynicism, some Americans are determined to have a stronger hand in shaping their future. Suspicious of big reforms and big institutions, they are starting where they are with what they have.This book is also for governmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as educational institutions that are trying to engage these citizens. Their efforts aren't stopping the steady erosion of public confidence, so they are looking for a different kind of public participation.The work of democracy is work. Here are some ideas about how it can be done in ways that put more control in the hands of citizens and help restore the legitimacy of our institutions.

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PART I

DEMOCRACY
RECONSIDERED

Images

1
SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS OF SELF-RULE

THE FIRST OF THE SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS of democracy I put on my list strikes at the heart of democracy: citizens aren’t engaged; they are on the sidelines. People are reluctant to get involved in either conventional electoral politics or even civic efforts with other citizens. An example: the low turnout at the polls. Another example: the community projects that fail because citizens—except for the usual suspects—don’t show up to do the work. Maybe people don’t see their concerns or what is most valuable to them being addressed. Maybe there is little space for them to reason together without expectations of a predetermined conclusion. Maybe the political system has pushed them to the sidelines by gerrymandering their voting precincts so their ballots don’t really count. Maybe they’ve sidelined themselves by retreating to small enclaves out of frustration or cynicism. Whatever the cause, the absence of people who think of themselves as citizens is a serious problem of democracy.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower1
The second problem comes on the heels of the first. Issues are approached and discussed in ways that promote divisiveness. Maybe not all of the options for solving the problem are considered. Or only two options, which are polar opposites, are addressed, which leads to an unproductive debate. At the other extreme, the inevitable tensions among options and the necessity for trade-offs are never recognized. Fear of disagreement produces bland discussions.
The third problem follows suit: people may get involved yet make very poor decisions about what they should do or which policies are in their best interest. Hasty reactions fueled by misinformation and emotional biases rule the day. Morally charged disagreements aren’t worked through—as, for example, disagreements over what is right or just when scarce resources for things like health care are to be distributed. This lack of sound public judgment is another serious problem of democracy.
A fourth systemic problem has to do with citizens’ perception that they can’t really make a difference in politics because they don’t have the necessary resources. However, certain kinds of in-your-face problems can only be solved if the citizenry acts. An example: issues involving keeping young people out of harm’s way. Institutions like schools and social service agencies are essential, yet they can’t do the job alone.
Fifth, citizens may act, but their efforts go in so many different directions that they are ineffective; they aren’t mutually supportive. The standard remedy for this lack of coordination can be equally debilitating: a central agency is put in charge and creates burdensome rules and regulations that drain the energy out of citizens’ initiatives. This can happen following natural disasters when the spontaneous actions of volunteers fail to mesh with the efforts of professional “first responders.” When there is no shared sense of purpose for citizens’ initiatives or when bureaucratic control takes away people’s control, democratic self-organizing is undermined. That, too, belongs on the list of systemic problems.
Democracies have to respond to ever-changing circumstances, on the one hand, and to difficulties that never seem to go away, on the other. In fact, the problems of democracy are perennial because they are rooted in the human condition. We are always prone to try to get off the field and onto the sidelines, to make poor decisions, to underestimate or overestimate our resources. We can’t declare victory and go home where democracy is concerned. To keep up the necessary momentum for dealing with systemic problems, democracies depend on constant collective learning, which promotes both experimentation and persistence. Consequently the sixth problem, the absence of shared learning, keeps democracy from working.
Finally, the seventh problem on my list has been quite acute for some time. It is the mutual distrust that burdens the relationship between citizens and most major institutions, governmental as well as nongovernmental. Institutions doubt that citizens are responsible and capable. And citizens see institutions as unresponsive as well as ineffective.
Democratic politics is both pragmatic and creative. People want to be able to shape their future, that is, to fashion the communities and world in which they live.

2
STRUGGLING FOR A CITIZEN-CENTERED DEMOCRACY

THE PROBLEMS-BEHIND-THE-PROBLEMS of democracy can’t be solved without citizens. But exactly what role are citizens supposed to play? Is being voters, taxpayers, or volunteers enough? That all depends on what kind of democracy you have in mind.
The democracy discussed on these pages is based on the concepts captured in the two roots of the word itself—demo and cracy. The demos is the citizenry, and the cracy (from kratos) is their power to rule or prevail. In other words, democracy is governance based on the power of people to shape their future. Citizens are at the center, although it has always been a struggle to keep them there.2
The conventional understanding of democracy is as a system of representative government created through contested elections. Representative government is essential, yet I believe it rests on a foundation of a citizenry that does more than vote to choose political leaders. I’m not talking about direct referendum democracy, but rather a democracy of citizens working with citizens to solve common problems and produce things that benefit everyone—things that also help the institutions of representative government work effectively. For a democracy to be strong and resilient, citizens have to be producers, not just consumers.
Some of our nation’s founders, however, did not want a democracy and said so emphatically; they wanted a republic of representative government. They were afraid that power in the hands of citizens, particularly the poor, would result in redistributing wealth. Nonetheless, a citizen-centered democracy began to take shape in the town meetings of colonial New England, and then gained strength in the armies of citizens who flocked to the Revolution. As the 18th century gave way to the 19th, citizens took on new roles in settling frontier communities. They built our early churches, schools, roads, and libraries. They organized associations to help their neighbors and assisted those visited by misfortune. They got their hands dirty doing the work required to make things that benefited everyone.3
Images
©Anthony Baggett/Dreamstime.com
With public sentiment, nothing can fail;
without it nothing can succeed
.
— Abraham Lincoln1
You may remember (because he is cited so often) Alexis de Tocque-ville, the French observer, who noted that when Americans faced a problem, they, unlike Europeans, were more likely to turn to their neighbors than to city hall or the statehouse.4 The citizens Tocqueville wrote about are the political ancestors of the active citizens I introduced in the opening pages of this book. These Americans worry about their role in today’s democracy and about the institutions they created to serve them.
DISTRUST THAT’S MUTUAL
Americans know something is wrong with our democracy, and we are concerned about what lies ahead for the country. A 2011 Rasmussen poll showed that more than half of American voters felt the nation’s best days were already in the past, and only 17 percent believed the country was heading in the right direction. Granted, people have been pessimistic before, and our confidence in government rises and falls; still, it has remained low for some 40 years. And the government isn’t the only institution that has lost the public’s confidence. Most major institutions, from the schools to the media, have dropped in the public’s esteem.5 To make matters more serious, this distrust is mutual. Officials in our major institutions often have a low opinion of citizens.
A former mayor of Muncie, Indiana, lost reelection after campaign promises to bring new jobs didn’t meet voters’ expectations. The National Journal quoted her as saying, “Why wasn’t I more honest with voters? They didn’t want to hear it.”6 She didn’t trust the voters and ran what she confessed was a less-than-upright campaign.
This mutual distrust has increased significantly over the last decade. Banks suffered a 24 percent decline in trust between 2002 and 2011. Confidence in the Presidency dropped 23 percent. Even confidence in the Supreme Court has fallen by 13 percent.7 One reason for the decline, the National Journal argues, is the inability of institutions to respond to people’s concerns. “It’s not just that the institutions are corrupt or broken; those clichĂ©s oversimplify an existential problem: With few notable exceptions, the nation’s onetime social pillars are ill-equipped for the 21st century. Most critically, they are failing to adapt quickly enough for a population buffeted by wrenching economic, technological, and demographic change.”8 I would add another reason—people don’t feel they have sufficient control over our major institutions.
The political system, blocked by hyperpolarization that is fueled by incivility, appears more concerned with which side wins than with solving problems. People say that voters don’t vote, money does. Interest groups appear to control everything. Politicians seem easily corrupted. People complain, but some feel they get what they deserve. Or perhaps the media are to blame. The litany of charges goes on.
As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy, or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics.
— Fareed Zakaria9
America’s leaders are said to be out of touch with what life is like for most people. In the lines of the old country song, citizens are saying, in effect, to these leaders, “I don’t see me in your eyes anymore.” A woman in Alabama explained, “I think [politicians] all have a personal agenda and they’re not listening to what the average American has to say to them.” While public criticism seems to focus solely on national elected and political leaders, people are often equally dissatisfied with local leaders. A woman in New Mexico had in mind local political leaders and officials when she lamented, “I don’t see them calling you back 
 I can’t even get somebody to get us a recycle bin at our school to call us back.”10 Dan Yankelovich, one of America’s premier analysts of public attitudes, has found that leaders and the public typically come at issues from vastly different starting points. Their assumptions, definitions, and expectations are often worlds apart.11
Personally, I get uneasy about the popular tendency to demonize politicians and officials of government. But I am reporting what people say, not what I wish they would say. I was never a politician, although I have been an official in government, where I met any number of able, responsible bureaucrats, along with decent, conscientious political leaders committed to serving the public good as they saw it.
STRONGER HANDS, OUR HANDS
With distrust so prevalent, many people feel about politics the way they feel when the remote to their TV set no longer controls the screen. The battery seems to be dead or some kind of bug has invaded the electronics. You can hear their frustration with politics in comments like, “The system is out of whack.” “The rules have changed (and I don’t know what they are anymore).” Anxious Americans want more control in their own hands, not exclusively in the hands of those who say they will take care of the problems for them.12 This reassurance isn’t reassuring.
Jean Johnson, reporting on research by Public Agenda, describes a discussion where citizens talked at length about unresponsive government, mortgage defaults, and the banking crisis, as well as an apparent lack of accountability and responsibility among leaders. When asked what would help, Jean wrote, people “immediately started talking about citizens taking a stronger role,” although many were unsure of what a more robust role would be.13 The people Public Agenda heard from believed that the only way the country could overcome its current problems is for “average citizens to be less passive and get more involved.”14 People advised one another, “Have the confidence to believe that you can make a change. Don’t be defeated before you try.”
Images
Illustration by Jennifer Berman
We are the ones we have been waiting for.15
The advice to keep trying can be quite persuasive. One study showed that between 2008 and 2010, a majority of Americans were active “in working with others to improve their communities” despite whatever reservations they had about making a difference.16 Even though worried and anxious, we Americans still have high expectations for the country. We want to live where justice reigns, where peace is the norm not the exception, and where people are free to follow their conscience. And we want the world our children inherit to be better than the world we have now. Americans have been hopeful for most of our country’s 200-plus years and, deep down, many still are.17
HOPING TO HOPE
Although people want to hope, hope is fragile. Researchers, drawing from interviews with people from across the country, heard a man from Minnesota saying optimistically, “I think there’s a hunger for engagement, generally, with people, and I think they’re ...

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