Other Democracies: Listening as a Democratic Practice

Voice metaphors dominate discussions of democracy, but have not proven very effective in political practice. One of the weaknesses of representative democracies is that elected leaders often do not heed what the people they represent tell them they want. Once the leverage of “the people” over their representatives is reduced to elections, time and again we have seen that “the people” do not get what they want.

Those who assume that identity politics in electoral politics produces direct access to constituent desires may be disappointed. Many women have found that not all women elected leaders will advocate for strong protections against domestic violence. Black voters do not find that black representatives necessarily serve their interests.

When citizens become passive and rely on representatives to do the work of democracy, then democracy tends to become vulnerable to what political scientists and economists call “capture” by wealthy or powerful interest groups. This makes it impossible for governments to serve the public interest.

            One way to strengthen democratic accountability is to transform passive citizens into active agents. Rather than relying on elected leaders to tell others what you want, you speak directly for your own views and participate directly in decision-making, sometimes called direct democracy or participatory democracy or horizontalism.

These democratic practices tend to reduce centralization of power in organizations, making exploitation and abuse of power more difficult. History shows that decentralized democracy is a more egalitarian way to institutionalize democracy.

            If the assembly is one of the constituent features of a working democracy, then speaking at the assembly is a fundamental democratic act. In established political theory, speaking in a formal forum like a legislative chamber appears to guarantee effective democratic process. Concerns about back room deals outside of public forums are one reason for laws prohibiting closed meetings by public officials, so called sunshine laws, but these laws only rarely are enforced by legal action.

Yet speaking does not always mean influencing decisions, and can even prove to be hazardous. Whether labor activists attempting to protect their interests, or elected officials speaking up for policies unpopular with autocratic officials, those who speak may find themselves in trouble or dead. This risk is not new, but those who traffic in voice metaphors act as if the weaknesses of democracy are unknown or these risks have been forgotten.

             Argentina in the post-2001 rejection of electoral leaders found ways to practice democratic decision-making while ensuring that representatives would listen to their constituents. After the December, 2001 collapse of trust in electoral democracy, many neighborhoods and workplaces and schools began to govern their own affairs. Because they had found representative governments did not listen to what the voters wanted, they were suspicious of representative systems. Yet they needed to network and organize at scales larger than any single mass meeting could handle.

One practice that many neighborhood associations adopted in the first decade of the twenty-first century was to send two listeners with any representative. If the representative attended a meeting and spoke about what the group they represented wanted, then both listeners would come along and quietly observe what the representative said. Then when the representative returned to meet those whose views they had been chosen to represent, the representative kept quiet while the two listeners described what had been said and done. This system made the representative accountable to the group they claimed to represent by forcing them to report back to their constituents.

            In late 1990s Ethiopia young women learned that their voices can be heard in assemblies, when they are able to talk to anyone in their community, even elders. Yet speaking was effective because Ethiopian women had already learned how to make changes in their communities that benefitted them, like fixing bridges, digging wells, and planting trees to use for firewood. Demonstrating how powerful they were at meeting their own goals meant that when they spoke in community conversations, men and elders would respect what they could do.

            Most importantly, the Ethiopian young women operated collectively as part of an organization known as Kembatti Mentti-Gezimma-Tope, a phrase in one of the oral languages of Ethiopia that reflects the power women generate when working together. By working in groups they increased their collective power and strengthened their positions as agents of change.
             KMG Ethiopia also adopted a process of community conversations that practiced consensus, so that group decisions were made with all participating rather than majority-rules unequal power relations found in electoral practices. In this practice decision-making is held hostage by marginal groups through consensus, rather than experts and elites holding power hostage as in many national elected governments.

            Table metaphors also don’t do much to pressure entrenched interests into taking constituent goals seriously. By using consensus to pressure those at the table to listen to all present, democracy can come to represent the general interest rather than only the interests of the powerful and the wealthy. 

            The linking of speaking in assemblies to multiple leverage points for the Ethiopian young women or other often marginalized groups is one way to demonstrate their agency and willingness to act in their own interests. This serves not only this particular interest group in the Ethiopian setting, a specific interest group, but also pressures community elders and other powerful groups into serving the general interest.

            Listening will only be effective when elected leaders and people in other positions of authority are made accountable to their constituents. Police officers and others who should serve the public will do so only when accountability structures are both in place and operating effectively. When there is no accountability oversight mechanism in place and being used regularly, then democracy becomes nothing more than an excuse for abuse of power.

            In lands where Indigenous communities are ignored or violated by governments, listening to Indigenous group members can shift power relations. If Indigenous historical narratives and other knowledge systems are to have traction in governments that claim to be democratcies, then listening to their perspectives will be important. This is particularly important in settler colonies(like the U.S. and Australia) or postcolonial nation-states in Africa or Latin America where Indigenous groups large and small govern together.

Governance mechanisms  that do not have effective guarantees that leaders will listen to “the people” are vulnerable to domination by powerful groups. Yet there are communities where listening has been effectively linked to force relations as part of democratic systems.

            Assemblies where all participate and speak equally, sharing time with all and not privileging the wealthy and powerful, are one way to end the reign of democracy as a politics of abuse. The use of consensus in community meetings, as KMG Ethiopia practices, produces leverage for marginalized group members, since they can use community need for consensus to pressure narrow interest groups into serving the general interest.

Democracy then can come to mean more than voice and table metaphors. Democracy can come to mean government by all for the general interest. A difficult task, certainly, but for many a task worth the delays and trouble of informing all equally and listening to all.

Other Democracies: Hong Kong Lessons in Democracy

               While there has been much debate about the Yellow Vest movement’s decentralized strategy of operating without a clearly defined leadership across France, similar developments are now emerging in Hong Kong.  While France may proudly claim its historical importance for global democracy, that is not the case in the People’s Republic of China.  So what do the recent struggle in Hong Kong between many citizens and the PRC government have to say about democracy?

               The Umbrella Movement, as it was called in Hong Kong during its earlier phase, has grown in intensity and publicity over the past two years. Like the Yellow Vest Movement, it operates consciously on the principle of refusing to establish a clearly defined leadership. While this strategy has its costs, many of which have been emphasized by mainstream commentators and news reports. But it also has clear advantages tactically, since it has proven durable and effective at avoiding the attempts of the mainland Chinese government to shut it down.  

               One implication of this year’s Hong Kong protest movement for democracy is that it demonstrates participatory decision-making by large groups acting under pressure. Unlike electoral democracies that claim to be efficient and nimble at responding to threats, many see direct participation as unable to respond quickly in times of crisis. Yet in our weekly news reports of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement we are watching mass participation in decision-making, as recent participants have remarked. Even Hong Kong elected leaders have found themselves displaced from leadership roles on the front lines in protests, and some elected leaders have left office in order to participate as part of large-group actions without the taint of elected office.

Another way that leaderless movements have something to say about democracy is their effectiveness at large scale. While this may not be obvious in the recent Hong Kong protests,  it is clearly the case in the Yellow Vest movement in France. That movement has demonstrated repeatedly that is can organize large actions in multiple sites across the entire nation. Once again the common criticism of direct participation movements as unable to work at large scale does not hold water.

In France, a notable character of the Yellow Vest movement in France has been the participation of many who were alienated from electoral politics. As inequality has continued to grow in France under President Macron’s policies, the Yellow Vest movement has become an important force in standing up to austerity policies. This long-lasting movement has caught many mainstream commentators by surprise, and the development has shown it can bring economic wealth gap to the attention of elected leaders. This carries important implications for electoral democracies that give into the demands of wealthy elites to maintain (or even worsen) high levels of wealth inequality. Rather than taking democracy as a reason to pursue the narrow interests of the wealthy, the Yellow Vest movement demands that elected leaders respond to those who do not benefit from austerity policies and the resulting wealth inequalities.

Holding elected leaders accountable to all is one of the most significant challenges to democracy. While the election may seem to hold electoral candidates accountable to the views of voting citizens, after election their accountability is notably weakened. This is why electoral campaign promises are so rarely fulfilled as advertised.  In the Hong Kong protests, the Hong Kong community members are demanding that the mainland government honor their promises to treat Hong Kong differently than the rest of mainland China. Only time will tell if they will be successful in holding the PRC accountable to its promises.

When electoral systems reduce participants in democratic decision making to small elites, electoral systems risk the loss of their claim to be democratic. This weakness of accountability to voters after elections is not a small problem. Since democracy promises a voice to all in decision making processes, the loss of that decision making power is a critical event.  As Gayatri Spivak has argued in her essay, “Foucault and Najibullah,” the removal from citizens of decision-making power means the end of the democratic freedoms and autonomy that democracy advertises as its main advantages.  As Spivak argues, democracy claims to be a method of autonomous self-management, where management is defined not in terms of capitalist efficiency but in terms of autonomous decision-making for the good of all.

               Participating in decision-making is an important type of what Spivak calls the intuition of democracy: the habit of justice for everyone, rather than just self-interest.” (101) When citizens lose their ability to participate in decisions, democracy dies. Or it revives in Hong Kong and France, unwilling to allow elected leaders to claim they know what the people want. And when it comes back to life in the form of leaderless movements, then democracy has said no to elite leadership. This has its costs, but also keeps democracy kicking.

Direct Democracy Festivals

Direct participation in governance has experienced a resurgence in the past decade. Rather than assuming their elected leaders will represent their interests, people begin to practice democracy by taking direct control over their own affairs. This government by the people rather than by experts or the social elites who are often successful in elections reshapes what democracy means. In this resurgence democracy comes to mean decision-making about one’s own affairs.

One trace of this resurgence is found in the Direct Democracy Festivals that have taken place each year since 2010 in Greece and other locations. These festivals provide a platform for an exchange of experiences, strategies, and knowledge about direct participation in democratic practice among those with experience in direct democracy, and allows locals without experience to learn a great deal very quickly.

The first festival took place on the Greek Aegean Coast and featured public discussions ranging from local self-organized institutions to horizontal governance practices and autonomous workers organizations. The 2016 festival was held in the capital of the Basque region in Spain, and included discussions of differences between elections and citizen initiatives, and the uses and risks of social media and other digital tools for expanding direct democracy. The 2017 Direct Democracy Festival featured presentations on establishing and strengthening the commons, on social movements taking power back from authoritarian governments, strategies and concepts useful in local settings, documentary films, theater, and musical performances.

Tied to the 2017 Direct Democracy Festival in Greece was a conference of participants in various direct democracy social movements and organizations at the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology. For example, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) is one organization that has been promoting direct democracy through their Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy, and Human Rights. The conference featured a speaker discussing the efforts to implement direct local governance across the entire Poitou-Charentes region of France, among many other similar global efforts. UCLG networks many local governments to establish local accountability for policies, and it has been successful in strengthening resistance in many locales to economic and political policies that benefit only a small minority of national, state or provincial, and local populations.

Participatory governance often is adopted when those who are systematically blocked from decision-making by government practices take matters into their own hands: the unemployed, undocumented immigrants, young people, and other groups. Participatory budgeting has been one of the most successful practices in the spread of participatory governance. Beginning in the 1990s, participatory budgeting has come to be widely used in over 100 cities in Brazil, and by 2015 it has also spread globally to over 1,000 locations. The sites where this practice has proven effective range from cities of over 1,000,000, such as Porto Alegre, Brazil, where it was first used in 1989 on a large scale, to entire regions and states: the Dominican Republic now uses participatory budgeting for all local governments.

One of the most important impacts of direct participation in governance decision-making is the training of young people in citizenship practices. Some practices have focused on participation by youth, and New York City’s expansion of participatory budgeting from 4 council districts to over 30 in 2015-6 invites any person over age 14 to get involved. Since passive populations have proven vulnerable to persuasion by elected leaders who have only narrow interests at heart, training younger generations how to become actively involved in determining their lives is an important countermeasure to centralized, elite government.

One disadvantage of participatory budgeting in some locales has been the limitation of the practice to discretionary funds of elected officials, as in Chicago and New York City. This does little to transform overall unemployment rates based on economic policies, or the inhumane conditions of many immigrants who are blocked from access to basic needs and safe living and working conditions in many cases.

Yet direct participation in democracy decision-making has wide appeal, and practiced in areas ranging well beyond budgets to such issues as access to basic services, gender equality, environmental protection, and poverty reduction. Studies have been completed of successes and obstacles in these areas in over 50 cities worldwide, and the results provide a rich resource for those who wish to take control of their lives into their own hands.

 
The risk that elected officials take in promoting participatory governance is that those who elected them may grow accustomed to being directly involved in governing their own affairs. While the claim by elected officials to represent the interests of all still has traction in some circles, as more lose faith in electoral systems the experience of self-determination may prove useful in the future. Direct democracy festivals and the work of the UCLG offer those interested in direct participation in democracy much to consider and more to do.