Contents - Index

3.2.   The Futile Search for Solutions                               (Top)

Many people say "Its easy, just throw the rascals out!"  But, what if elections are not working?  Then, the people's "sovereignty" has somewhere been usurped.  Others recommend "reforms" to correct the situation.  These are "structural" in nature, requiring changes in existing institutions and established ways of doing things.   Among many such recommendations are Fishkins "deliberative polling," run-off elections, weekend or holiday voting days, proportional representation, and many others.  The problem with these proposals is that they will the ends (for example, deliberative democracy) but not the indispensable means (how do we get there?).  To come into being, power centers must create and sanction these "solutions." Therefore, solutions must come from a source independent of the ailing system. Otherwise, vested interests in the status quo everywhere will act to prevent such reforms -- as in the old adage about the fox in the hen house.

Many proposals acknowledge the problems with structural reforms as a solution and recognize that the solution must lie in an independent source of power.  The only independent source of power is the people.  Therefore, citizen participation is the only way that a democratic system can be balanced and restored to health.  This led to many proposals centering on citizen participation.  One such proposal advanced by Walter Lippman and more recently by people like William Bennett put the whole weight of greater citizen participation on education and family morals.  The problem with this solution is that it is at best a long term prospect in which time the system could fall into more advanced stages of crisis and even dictatorship.  At worst, education cannot be a solution because schools are not an independent institution, as the problem requires.  Because schools are sanctioned by the system and depend upon traditional institutions for funding, they tend to mirror the defects of their political environments.

Other proposals bypassed the education solution by calling for entirely new institutions -- specifically "participatory institutions."  A classic example presented by Arnold Kaufman recommends the development of a set of participatory institutions parallel to representation and countervailing powers.  Participation in worker-manager programs is an example of such institutions.  As Kaufman puts it, "The main justifying function of participation is development of man's essential powers - inducing human dignity and respect, and making men responsible by developing their powers of deliberative action."  A more recent proposal by the distinguished political scientist Robert Dahl suggests that a number of randomly selected people periodically be injected into the political system.  In an important sense, this too is a call for a new and separate participatory institution,.  Unfortunately, like the structural proposals, these suffer the same problem of willing the ends but not the indispensable means.  Critics respond, "Propose away!"  Who is going to initiate the idea?  Where is it to be initiated?  What are its chances of being implemented in an ailing system that by definition has defined out competing ideas?

Herein lies the modern paradox of knowing the solution to the ills of democracy (participation), but not knowing how to get there.  The only antidote to an ailing democracy is more "democracy, - which is denied citizens by the ailing system.  However, to imply that this problem is forever may be a mistake.  That is, to point out that proposals calling for participatory institutions have not been workable in the past is not to say that they will be forever unworkable.  The one thing constant about democratic systems is that their environments change and new factors come into play every day and those changes may contain opportunities for that elusive independent force required to revive American Democracy.  The thesis of this study is that the context of the system has changed and that the emergence of a new public interest institution is exactly what is happening to the American Democratic political system - and that we are in fact witnessing a major transition toward a public interest democracy.  

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Materials
Add David Held stuff and re-write this section and others where this material applies.
Major domains for "experimentation."  The first is the "jury system" of James Fishkin.  The second is "voter feedback mechanisms on central public issues" that would combine television and telephone networks being built by the private sector at present with local governments and national institutions.  These experiments could be designed to improve the process by which citizens' form political judgments and to enhance the mechanisms whereby "professional politicians" are informed about citizens' views and priorities.  Examples might include e-mail access to public fora, special Internet "noticeboards" to create debate and survey opinion on troubling matters, and more elaborate access to television and radio networks to generate new spheres of public debate and information provision."  The third area of experimentation is the extension of the referenda - ranging from purely advisory to binding. (David Held, "Models of Democracy," 2nd Ed., 1996.  

References

Bennett, William J., The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family, 2003.
Barber, Benjamin R., Strong Democracy: Pariticipatory Politics for a New Age (University of California
 Press, Berkeley, 1984)
Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy: Participation & Opposition (Yale University Press, New Haven and
 London, 1971.
Fishkin, James S., The Voice of the People: Public Opinion & Democracy (Yale University Press:
 New Haven, 1995).
Fishkin, James S., Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (Yale
 University Press: New  Haven, 1991).
Held, David, Models of Democracy, 2nd Edition (Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1996).
Kaufman, Arnold, "Human Nature and Participatory Democracy," in Carl J. Friedrich, (Ed.),
 Responsibility: Nomos III (The Liberal Arts Press, New York, 1960).
Lippmann, Walter, The Public Philosophy (New York, 1955).
Mill, John Stuart, Considerations on Representative Government (Liberal Arts Press,
New York, 1958).
Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (3rd ed.; New York, 1950).
Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1970).
Patterson, Thomas E., The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty
(Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2002).

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