NGOforum09.se

Is it possible to reduce the democratic deficit through civil participation?
Marilyn Taylor, Emeritus Professor, University of the West of England

The 1990s hailed a new dawn for democracy, with the first free elections in the post-Soviet countries and in South Africa.  Yet even as the television flashed pictures of the long queues of first time voters in South Africa around the world, voting figures in many of the more established democracies in the West were plummeting, with opinion polls showing alarmingly low levels of trust in government. Indeed, despite the advance of democracy in the twentieth century, its institutions seem increasingly ill-adapted to the global economy and the complexity of today’s world. At a supranational level, globalisation and the advance of neo-liberalism mean that many of the forces that affect our lives are beyond the reach of the state.  Closer to home, as Michael Saward has argued, the formal system of electoral representation and – in my country at least – majoritarian rule was never well-adapted to the representation of minority interests, emergent interests or what he calls ‘intense’ interests. 

The response - from global institutions to governments in many parts of the world - has been the promotion of new forms of governance, of new forms of devolution along with a growing interest in civil society and civil participation, whether as a counterbalance to the state, a support to it, or a potential agent for its transformation.  At a local and national level, these developments have the potential to bring new knowledge, and resources into the process of governing as well as increasing its legitimacy.  At the supranational level, they can be seen, as Annette Zimmer has argued elsewhere, as a proxy for the transparency and democracy that international institutions typically lack. 

For me, these developments raise two important questions.  The first is whether civil society and citizens should take up the challenge this implies.  The second is whether it can. 

Let me take the ‘should’ question first.  There are many who argue that the apparent dispersal of power in contemporary society masks a reality of increasing centralisation.  While the quantity of opportunities for engagement has increased, there are strong reservations about the quality of these opportunities, as those in power maintain control over the rules of the game, resist the transfer of power and/or lack the skills to engage citizens effectively. Voices that do not fit are excluded, while an increasingly managerialist and technical approach to decision-making risks leeching the messiness and complexity of real politics out of the system altogether. As partnership becomes the ‘only game in town’, civil actors become institutionalised into the system and spaces for dissent and debate are increasingly hard to find. Thus Nikolas Rose argues that the “community discourse” has “hi-jacked a ‘language of resistance and transformed it into an expert discourse and professional vocation”.  Not only this, but as decisions are devolved to local level, citizens find themselves increasingly made responsible for problems whose origins lie way beyond their reach.

What about the ‘can’ question? Civil society has long played a role in informing and framing political debate and mobilising citizens, but as Jan Aart Scholte has argued, their organisations can be underdemocratic, non-democratic or even anti-democratic.  Indeed he goes on to argue that, at global level, civil society engagement rests on an overly narrow cultural base, with little or no engagement with the wider constituency. 

Ideally, the in-depth engagement of the few who have the time and expertise to engage needs to rest on strong roots at the local level and to be able to draw on a pool of engaged citizens who can hold their leaders accountable.  But what we have noticed in the UK is that many of the local institutions that used to act as schools of democracy -  especially for the less powerful classes in society - have been eroded.  While the local union branches, educational institutes, local political parties, the chapels and working men’s clubs that fed local political life in the past may have had their faults, their loss leaves a political vacuum. While many might see the internet as filling this vacuum, in my country, the most successful organiser at local level may now be the extreme right British National Party. 

A second challenge which civil society organisations need to address is that of diversity.  The rhetoric of civil society is often bathed in a soft romantic glow, portraying it as a site of cohesion and integration.  But it is nothing of the kind.  There are deep divides between communities who define themselves as much by what they are not as by what they are.  A competitive funding environment pits civil society organisations against each other, while social movements are prey to the ‘mischief of factions’. 

This brief review presents 4 key challenges for civil society actors:

First comes the expert citizen dilemma.  How can we reconcile the tensions between the expertise and leadership required to act strategically, whether on the inside or the outside, and the need to engage citizens more widely.  How can we scale up political engagement without losing our link to our roots?  And how can we build a pool of informed and engaged citizens who will hold those who claim to speak for them accountable?

The second related challenge is that of building alternative spaces where communities can find their voice and a strong base from which to take power and/or engage effectively with government.  This is a challenge that will vary from country to country and it is possible that these new spaces will be in cyberspace rather than in village halls – certainly this seems to be true at a global level. But there are still challenges of reach, inclusion and accountability.

The third relates to the ‘should’ question.  How can civil society organisations work in and against the state? We need outsiders to force issues on the agenda, reframe debates and develop an independent voice, but insiders to negotiate changes through the political system and to identify and work with allies.  Some organisations manage to work at the interstices of power very effectively, but this requires political sophistication and skilled boundary spanners who have credibility and commitment on all sides.

The fourth relates to the diversity that should be the strength of civil society.  How can we make this diversity work positively for democracy, without suppressing voices?  The participatory world will never lend itself to easy consensus building.  Its contribution to democracy is more likely to lie in the ability to promote debate and express difference.  But this contribution depends on the capacity to mediate conflicting interests effectively.

These challenges are not just for civil society organisations. John Keane argued that civil society and the state are the condition of each others’ democratisation and the state has a critical role to play.  Speaking in Scandinavia, it is perhaps easier to make a case for this than elsewhere in the world.  The challenges for the state, from EU level downwards, are manifold but let me restrict myself to three.  The first is to create a responsive and engaged public sector, with the skills and commitment to engage effectively and the will to commit meaningful resources to civic dialogue. This requires significant cultural change, as does the second, which is to recognise that civil participation involves diversity, critique, accountability and flexibility.  State actors, if they are serious about civil participation, need to resist the temptation to dictate the terms of reference. The third, in a world where key decisions are taken beyond the purview of the state with no line of accountability to the citizen and where the ownership of the media is increasingly concentrated, is to reassert the role of the state – to resist the erosion of the public sphere, to reassert the importance of social as well as economic wellbeing, and to safeguard the public space that is essential to democratic life.