Can Participatory Engineering Bring Citizens Back In? vergrößerte Ansicht in democracy to provide more opportunities for political participation and bring.
Table of contents
They thus can be seen as elements of a common debate that can be synthesized and reconstructed to serve as a theoretical basis to discuss, evaluate and inform a strategy of participatory engineering. This will be the task of the following analysis. It will be based on a simple organizing argument. On the basis of a comprehensive reading and a synthesis of the theory of participatory democracy, the chapter distinguishes between three different strategies of participatory engineering that emphasize different linkage mechanisms related to different institutional options to be implemented in the course of democratic reform.
I label these strategies as expansive democratization, integrative democratization and efficiency-oriented democratization. These different strategies are analytical constructs that cannot be equated with any single author. They rather follow from distinct lines of argumentation which are sometimes clumsily intertwined or which are frequently simply kept implicit within the debate on participatory democracy.
They provide a comprehensive road-map to comparative and empirical research on participatory engineering and the question of its effectiveness. They also alert us to the existence of vital tradeoffs between the political feasibility and effectiveness of particular democracy policies and to a reform dilemma that I will outline in the course of this analysis. Integrative democratization The strategy of integrative democratization describes the relationship between individual actors and institutions in a distinct way.
Institutions are seen as a factor that shapes the very goals and perceptions of individuals Hall and Taylor With a view to increasing political participation, this notion is linked to the classical argument that people are not born as citizens. Rather, democracy must be learnt and this can be ensured only through relevant institutional frameworks that empower people by educating them. The notion of individual growth and self-transformation triggered through institutional context is probably a dominant paradigm among theorists of participatory democracy Warren At the same time, it is the most difficult aspect of participatory theory to deal with because the notion of citizeneducation has been perverted by dictatorships across the globe.
However, the 12 Thomas Zittel decisive difference between a totalitarian concept of education and participatory theory lies in the interrelationship between education and political choice. Participatory theory does not substitute political choice with self-transformation as totalitarianism does. Choice and education stand in a complementary relationship rather than being substitutes for each other. The emphasis on political choice does not only distinguish participatory theory from totalitarianism. It also provides the crucial institutional principle to specify concrete institutional structures and to distinguish them from those structures that are related to liberal democracy.
Participatory theory argues that participatory institutions maximize opportunities to affect policy decisions. This stands in contrast to liberal democratic theory that stresses the significance of institutions that allow only for the selection of political personnel. Having stated these crucial principles of participatory theory and the strategy of integrative democratization that flows from it, I will have to turn to several follow-up questions.
The strategy of integrative democratization raises first and foremost the question of which educational goals this perspective ought to address. In other words, it asks what are the individual characteristics of good citizens who are motivated and capable to participate. Participatory theory proposes various answers to this question. Carol Pateman points towards the notion of political efficacy that recognizes at the individual level a basic disposition in relation to the possibility of exerting political influence Pateman Political efficacy is less about cognitive knowledge of political issues that are at the center of a decision and of constitutional rights to participate in decision-making.
It is also not a behavioral concept that assumes that individuals actually participate all the time in any given situation. This concept rather points to the attitudinal level. The Habermasian autonomous self is distinguished by a balance between self-referentialism and the capacity for internal and external reflection. The notion of internal reflection suggests that the self is critical toward his or her own impulses and motivations in the process of generating a preference.
It touches upon the awareness that individual preferences have to be reconciled with the interests and preferences of other actors. According to Habermas, it is from this balance — which can be considered a psychological state of mind — that Participatory democracy 13 flows the ability to cooperate and to be part of a community that forms the basis of collective action.
Incubator objectives
Rather, the autonomous self seems much more to arise from a basic psychological predisposition that — drawing on theories of cognitive psychology — can be seen as a stage in the development of individuals whose formation is shaped by external environments and their effects Warren This assumption raises questions regarding the nature of this environment and regarding the role that institutional reform could play in this respect. While the theory of participatory democracy does not explicitly discuss problems of institutional design, it does make an important more or less implicit statement regarding this very aspect.
It stresses that transformative environments, meaning environments that educate the self to become a good citizen, cannot be located at the level of constitutional structures. Quite the contrary; on this view, political apathy is a consequence of thin democracy that functions solely through procedures and formal institutions at the constitutional and subconstitutional level and this has no residual effect on the subjective dimension of democracy Barber The reason for this lack of impact on the part of constitutional structures is seen in the lack of microstructures that could be able to shape the daily experiences of citizens and to provide an infrastructure for political learning and political socialization.
Integrative democratization promotes a conception of democracy as social practice that can be seen as a crucial prerequisite for the process of selftransformation into a citizen. Social groups appear as the core building block of democracy here, since they appear as central agents of socialization. From this perspective the integration of individuals into the group is a central prerequisite for building citizen virtues that are in turn directly related to political participation.
This benevolent perspective on social groups is not uncontested in democratic theory. This is due to the fact that social groups, as long as they are voluntary, are characterized by high interest homogeneity and stark demarcation from their social environment. Accordingly, the history of political ideas was shaped until well into the nineteenth century by the conviction that organized social interests endanger the common good, fostering both instability and high-intensity conflict.
Their political theories differ in many respects, except in their very skepticism regarding social groups Hirschman Both theorists subscribe to the notion that social groups are hardly suitable as socialization agents for transforming individuals into responsible citizens. This gloomier picture of the impact of social groups has been recognized by proponents of the strategy of integrative democratization as well.
It triggered a more differentiated picture regarding the type of social group which could support democracy. The concept of workplace democracy represents one crucial 14 Thomas Zittel element of this picture. Advocates of this concept argue that organized interests, which primarily carry out linkage functions within the framework of representative democracy, hardly fulfill the role of a socializing agent. Instead they point to the importance of functionally defined group relationships in general and the workplace in particular.
From this perspective, worker cooperatives are viewed as suitable agents of socialization in democracy because they are characterized by a greater heterogeneity of interests and are perceived to be grounded in the netherworld of daily life, raising real world problems of social cooperation Pateman The theory of deliberative democracy has been a recent alternative to the concept of workplace democracy. It also stresses political learning and opinion formation as a core feature of the democratic decision-making process Dryzek ; Fung and Wright In contrast to the concept of workplace democracy, its focus is not primarily on the economic system as a basis for deliberative politics but rather on the notion of the public sphere.
Habermas explicitly understands the public sphere as a practice carried out beneath constitutional practices and as embodying a specifically social bias Dryzek As a result, we are directed to a sociological analysis which explores the social prerequisites of the public sphere from a historical point of view. The concept of the public sphere developed by Habermas describes at a very abstract level the image of a social space shaped by a particular form of double autonomy.
This form of autonomy is based on the idea of the absence of statesanctioned hierarchical relationships, on the one hand, and societal — marketsanctioned — inequality on the other Habermas He traces the reality of this social basis to the literary circles of the emerging bourgeoisie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
According to Habermas, this social realm provided the basis for critical reasoning free of social and political pressures, and generated a form of public opinion that embodied moral authority and that could serve as a check on political decision-making Habermas ; Habermas views modern democracy as shaped by a decay of the public sphere because of the influence of mass media and the economic imperatives they operate under.
However, he perceives emancipatory movements as a fragile foundation for revitalizing the democratic public sphere and for providing a new basis for political socialization and opinion formation. The dominance of debate, discourse and the exchange of ideas are viewed as a safeguard towards the frenzy of particular interest that has been related to the group basis of politics among its critics.
Participatory theory stresses neighborhood groups in the local context as another basis for personal growth and self-transformation. In this context, the purpose of descending to the local level is to guarantee the social embeddedness of individuals in types of groups that are rooted in everyday practices as well as shared memories and traditions. Participatory democracy 15 A further key question that must be asked of integrative democratization strategies relates to the degree to which political control can be exercised over social integration and resulting patterns of political attitudes.
The existence of socialization agents necessary for this kind of integration, such as social groups, is seen by the proponents of integrative strategies themselves primarily as the result of historical, cultural or economic developments that would defy shortterm control through political measures and participatory engineering. Indeed, the integrative strategy runs into problems if deficiencies in the subjective and social foundations of democracy can be established, and the question consequently arises of what short- to medium-term solutions are possible.
According to Jane Mansbridge, unitary democracy makes formal and extends to the level of a polity the social relations of friendship Mansbridge But is it possible to engineer friendship once it has experienced serious setbacks? This question concerning the ability to control and engineer social integration has been answered by participatory theory in five ways that can be only briefly mentioned here.
The first response relates to the previously mentioned concept of workplace democracy. It advocates the democratization of this functionally defined social arena. This can be achieved through regulatory policies, among others Warren More coordinated welfare-state economies such as those of Germany provide some faint examples in this regard Streeck ; Hall and Soskic The second answer relates to debates about the public sphere and the concept of civil society.
In recent times, however, it has remained focused on new democracies in Eastern Europe via foreign policy efforts. A third answer focuses on initiatives to revitalize local democracy. To become a broad-based strategy towards participatory engineering, rather than a project-driven approach, these initiatives have to be integrated in a national strategy, apply potent incentives for communities to implement participatory measures and stress politically meaningful and consequential opportunities to participate in local politics.
The fourth answer stresses structured communication as a means within a strategy of integrative democratization. This approach stipulates that microstructures that could serve as an agent for political socialization and selftransformation can be artificially created by way of structured communication. The model of the deliberative opinion poll proposed by James Fishkin offers an example that has been tested practically in numerous experiments. It encompasses a representative selection of citizens who are brought together to deliberate on a specific issue and to reach a decision at the end.
According to Fishkin this decision will reflect a considered, collective will that differs from a decision that is based upon the mere aggregation of individual preferences Fishkin , ; Luskin et al. The assumption is that this will transform individuals into social beings Rheingold ; Poster ; Zittel So-called cyber-optimists see the future of this development as being shaped to a large extent by regulatory policy that is considered to be the prerequisite both for universal access to the Internet and for shielding the autonomy of the medium from commercial imperatives and state intervention de Sola Pool ; Kubicek ; Wilhelm Prudent regulation is seen as a prerequisite for the Internet to provide the vantage point for a new age of digital reasoning and a reincarnation of a critical public sphere in the Habermasian mould.
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Expansive democratization The debate on participatory democracy entertained among others the notion of political apathy as a rational decision. This is taken to be based on the belief that established participation rights within the framework of liberal democracy offer no real opportunity to exercise political influence and thus no actual benefits.
It is furthermore assumed to be based on the fact that individuals are short of resources such as time and energy. Given the assumption that individuals aim at positive utility functions — meaning that they behave rationally — under these conditions they will draw back to the private sphere because it guarantees greater returns to the investment of scarce resources.
From this perspective, the assertion of the liberal-democratic theory that individuals value their private life more than politics is not wholeheartedly disputed, but it is unmasked as an artefact of a specific institutional context rather than being an authentic goal. The strategy of expansive democratization aims to increase the utility of political participation by expanding rights to participation.
Claims regarding the positive effect on political participation of expanding rights to participate have hardly been elaborated on by advocates of participatory democracy in terms of theoretical plausibility. Theories of participatory democracy make no mention of those mechanisms that link the institutional and behavioral levels of politics. I argue in this chapter that one particular reading of participatory theory suggests a utilitarian motivation on the part of individual citizens based upon specific goals and a particular relationship between institutional context and political behavior.
Regarding individual goals, it is clearly based on the assumption that having political impact is at least of some importance in the mind of each individual. One could argue that even in a more participatory frame, citizens might decide not to participate either because they are ignorant of the goal to participate or because they value other goals more, and thus abstain from participation. Theorists of participatory democracy obviously do not side with this assumption but regard political influence as one important goal among others.
A second crucial assumption is that institutional structures pattern the behavioral strategies of each citizen in light of the goal of having political impact. It is assumed that in some way opportunities to participate are Participatory democracy 17 adequately perceived and evaluated among citizens in terms of political impact and thus provide behavioral incentives at the individual level. What does it mean to expand rights to participate at the institutional level? In this book, Pateman sees the concept of participatory democracy as the product of an intellectual development over time with Jean Jacques Rousseau as its founding father.
Looking through these intellectual lenses, she specifies what participatory democracy is not in terms of political institutions. According to Pateman, it ought not to be based on representative institutions which Rousseau considered incompatible with the principle of public sovereignty. As Pateman stresses, participation for Rousseau is participation in the making of decisions Pateman This observation points to a positive definition of the institutional basis of participatory democracy. It can be rephrased in terms of an institutional principle by stating that institutions of participatory democracy should allow for participation in decision-making in contrast to participation in the selection and election of political personnel.
In participatory theory, expanding rights to participate clearly has qualitative rather than quantitative connotations. It cannot be increased solely by increasing the number of opportunities or channels to participate. It is rather increased by allowing for certain forms of participation in contrast to others. According to participatory theory, the criteria here is access to policy decisions and the ability to influence these decisions.
In contrast to this, any form of participation that is linked to the selection of political candidates can be seen more or less as a source of legitimacy for governing elites Salisbury Mather ; Saward Some students of participatory democracy even use both concepts as synonyms Becker She clearly stresses other institutional means to implement the notion of participatory democracy rather than paying attention to direct democracy.
But from a purely utilitarian point of view, direct democracy as a specific instrument of expansive democratization makes perfect sense for various reasons. It is specified in the sense of taking binding policy decisions rather than merely having an influence in this very process. The model of direct decision-making thus prescribes that binding decisions within a political community are taken by all its citizens. This empirical model can be considered as a natural element of 18 Thomas Zittel participatory democracy. From a logical point of view, it stands in direct contrast to representative democracy and it has been discussed in this sense quite extensively in modern democratic theory.
From the perspective of an expansive strategy of democratization, the institution of direct democracy is most relevant and most closely related to the notion of participatory democracy. This is because it defines the most far-reaching way to participate in the making of decisions and to have an effect in this regard. It therefore can be assumed that it also provides the most far-reaching incentives to citizens to actually participate. Political scientist Ted Becker The scope and comprehensiveness of direct decision-making and the level of jurisdiction are among them and shall be subject to some further remarks.
An expansive strategy of democratization is confronted with the objection that a single individual vote is insignificant for the overall outcome of decisionmaking on account of the size of modern democracy. One relevant type of cost here would be so-called opportunity costs, meaning the cost of something in terms of an opportunity foregone and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity.
The theory of participatory democracy has given little attention to this objection so far. However, a similar problem has been debated in the theory of the rational voter. The conclusions of this debate should be of interest for a utilitarian approach to participatory democracy as well.
The fact that a large number of people bothers to vote despite a negative utility function has been explained in classical studies on the rational voter in various ways. The notion of procedural utility that is attached to the act of voting plays a prominent role in this respect. By this it is meant that voters benefit from the act of voting itself, independent of the advantages they may get from realizing a specific type of policy outcome Downs ; Riker and Ordeshook For example, the act of voting allows for self-expression and it can also be perceived as a core feature of democracy which has to be supported in order to secure the stability of democratic government.
The support for direct democracy documented by opinion polls suggests that similar considerations of procedural utility might be attached to this institution. The most recent practical experiences with direct democracy facilitate similar conclusions. David Butler and Austin Participatory democracy 19 Ranney point to a significant increase in the use of direct democracy, although they have to admit that these trends are limited to a few cases Butler and Ranney According to Susan Scarrow, public support for direct democracy becomes more visible when measured along the lines of actual institutional change.
On the basis of this criterion, she observes a comprehensive cross-national trend towards the implementation of means of direct democracy Scarrow These empirical indicators suggest that citizens in many countries value the process of direct democracy and that they might therefore participate in it in greater numbers as soon as this option becomes available to them.
Specific forms of implementing direct democracy might also increase the individual benefits attached to this tool of participatory democracy, despite the size of modern democracy. The weight of individual votes in the process of direct decision-making is affected by the particular design of direct democracy in a threefold way. First, the comprehensive implementation of all available measures of direct decision-making increases the weight of strong preferences by opening up opportunities to shape the governmental agenda.
It gives those with intense preferences on an issue the opportunity to promote their concerns and to bring them up for vote if enough public support can be mobilized. This is not an option if the implementation of direct democracy restricts itself to the referendum process. In a referendum, the initiative lies with political elites, not with ordinary citizens. They may pursue this initiative voluntarily or as a result of legal requirements. However, in any of these versions of the referendum, political elites will be able to control the range of alternatives that are up for decision.
Ordinary citizens are restricted to casting their vote on given alternatives in the context of given issues. A large number of policy positions taken by popular vote will most likely have a reverse effect on turnout per single ballot vote. Turnout should decrease with a large number of direct votes because citizens will not be ready to bear the costs of constantly taking a trip to the voting booth. If we assume that turnout in a referendum has to be perceived as a function of political interest, voters will bother to participate only in those issues they care most about.
Low turnout obviously has a positive effect on the weight of an individual vote: This compares in positive ways to the representative mode of decision-making which is characterized by one popular vote every two to six years. The turnout in such elections is comparatively high, but the weight of individual votes rather weak. Critics of direct democracy stress the relatively low turnout in single ballots 20 Thomas Zittel as an argument against this mode of decision-making and as an indicator that it is not suited to increasing the level of political participation.
This negative conclusion rests on a direct comparison between turnout in single ballot measures and turnout during one parliamentary or presidential election at a time. However, these critics tend to forget that compared with representative systems and the electoral process, the number of citizens participating in the aggregate across all ballot measures is far higher during one legislative cycle in direct democracies. Direct democracy moreover optimizes the weight of an individual vote in matters most dear to the individual participants.
We have to note that this holds true only if a large number of issues are decided by popular vote, because only in this case will citizens concentrate on the issues they care most about and they will not bother to vote on other cases. The institutionalization of direct democracy as a routine procedure in a given polity is a prerequisite for this very fact. One could speak of such a routine procedure to exist once a full-blown system of autonomous direct decision-making had been fully incorporated as an integral component of the political process Gebhardt The level of jurisdiction of direct democracy is a third institutional feature that affects the impact of individual votes in the aggregate decision.
Direct democracy at the local level features the reduction in the number of decision makers and thus the increase of the political weight of each individual vote with respect to the overall result. Many advocates of participatory democracy who stress direct decision-making as a core characteristic of this model of democracy are simultaneously supporters of local democracy.
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This suggests that they comprehend the low impact of individual votes on a national scale and that they acknowledge local democracy as a feasible solution Wolfe However, in the context of an expansive strategy of democratization, strengthening direct democracy at the local level begs the question of the distribution of competencies between the levels of the state. If the local arena enjoys only marginal power of collective self-determination, then democratization at this level remains symbolic from the perspective of an expansive strategy.
In this connection, local democracy presupposes the decentralization of policy competency. Only under these circumstances will a sufficient degree of political influence be achieved to offer a positive incentive — and thus a rational basis — for political participation. Strengthening direct democracy at the local level also raises questions regarding the comprehensiveness of this approach.
As stressed above, I take issue with a project-based, piecemeal approach to participatory democracy. As a consequence, local democracy as a means of expansive democratization presupposes institutional guarantees at the federal level that restrict the discretion of communities to implement these measures. Some theorists of participatory democracy suggest far-reaching reforms of the representative system as an alternative solution to the problem of the marginal impact of individual votes and its negative consequences for rational political participation.
These reform schemes aim to form functional equivalents of direct democracy in the guise of representative structures. According to one strand of participatory theory, functional equivalence is reached when represen- Participatory democracy 21 tatives retire as autonomous decision makers and instead adopt the role of delegates or deputies who act on behalf of their constituencies Pitkin Reform measures such as the option to recall individual MPs by popular initiative are perceived as concrete means to achieve this aim Cronin Another strand of participatory theory promotes the random selection of ordinary citizens as members of representative decision-making bodies to achieve the goal of functional equivalence.
According to its advocates, this alternative scheme of recruitment minimizes the elitist bias of representative assemblies and ensures a perfect congruence between social interests and political decision-making. From this perspective, elections breed oligarchies, and broad-based political engagement and responsive government is only possible if the decision makers are a representative sample of the people concerned Burnheim The costs of political participation can be captured theoretically via the concept of transaction costs.
This concept is rooted in an essay by economist Ronald Coase, which concentrates on the question of why we end up seeing the establishment of firms in free markets and thus a restriction of the free market principle. Coase believes that the answer to this question lies in the point that firms carry out the function as a means of reducing transaction costs Coase This concept essentially incorporates three types of costs that individual actors incur in market processes: Coase saw firms as a means of lowering each of these types of costs and thus as contributing to an increase in the efficiency of market processes.
The work of Weingast and Marschall on the committee system in the American Congress is one such example Weingast and Marschall The concept has also been used in efforts to explain the voting paradox alluded to earlier.
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In this context, political parties are seen as organizations whose existence can be explained by the function they perform of reducing information costs. This basic intention has shaped a range of specific proposals related to the concept of electronic democracy, which promotes the use of the Internet in order to increase opportunities for political participation Zittel The reduction of information costs through the spread of political information via the World Wide Web WWW is in this context an important, but not necessarily the most consequential, development in an increasingly networked society.
Demands for utilization of the Internet as a means of reducing negotiation and coordination costs may be of greater significance from a democratic theory perspective. Demands for elections on the Internet and the concept of online-consultation have attracted the most attention in public as well as academic debates.
Remote elections on the Internet would allow voters to cast their vote from home at any given moment during a fixed period of time. This opportunity cuts the amount of time needed to travel to a poll station in order to cast a vote in public. Onlineconsultations organize an electronic debate on policy issues between political representatives and citizens. The issue of Internet elections continues to present unresolved questions against the backdrop of core principles related to democratic elections and the need for a secure voting process.
Regarding security, it is difficult to ensure that votes are authentic and that voting results will not be manipulated by third parties in a medium fundamentally based on openness and a decentralized structure. The search for a technological solution to this particular problem is central to numerous pilot programs currently being carried out in Europe and North America Buchstein and Neymanns ; Gibson At the level of democratic principles, e-voting causes among others questions regarding the public nature of political participation and the secrecy of the vote.
Voting in elections is not a private act. Rather, it puts a special burden on us to consider the social implications of our decisions. Privatizing public participation via e-voting downplays the public nature of participation at a symbolic level and thus might compromise our ability to remember this very fact during the act of voting. Voting in our living room also opens up this process to coercion and influences from third parties that ought to be neutralized by the secret nature of the vote.
Compared with Internet elections, the concept of online-consultation poses considerable structural and organizational problems. The question here is how a system of electronic debates between citizens and the state based on specific political issues can be incorporated into existing processes of decision-making that are primarily based upon the electoral connection and the notion of party government.
So far, developments in the UK provide the most extensive experience dealing with this question, as the lower chamber has undertaken several experiments with Internet-based consultations in cooperation with the Hansard Society Coleman ; Needham In the US Congress the idea Participatory democracy 23 of online-consultation has been realized within the framework of the existing procedure of committee hearings.
Here, the physical presence of witnesses is increasingly abandoned and they instead give testimony and participate in the hearing via digital means. This strand of electronic democracy exhausts by no means the agenda of an efficiency oriented approach to participatory engineering. One alternative measure for example has been debated and implemented in the context of the socalled motor voter legislation in the US that was designed to decrease the costs of registering to vote Franklin and Grier However, electronic democracy is one important feature of efficiency-oriented democratization that shall serve as an example to clarify the core assumptions of this approach.
Efficiency-oriented democratization does in no way aspire to transforming established liberal democracy. In some cases the focus is simply on reducing negotiation and cooperation costs within the framework of established forms of political involvement. It can therefore be emphasized that this approach is not wholeheartedly affiliated with the participatory democracy paradigm, which has been characterized as an alternative to liberal democracy at the institutional level.
However, these reforms are debated with regard to their effects on the level of political participation and they could have considerable effects if their theoretical assumption holds. For this very reason cost-efficient democratization can be perceived as a third approach to participatory engineering.
Conclusion and discussion The chapter develops a theoretical basis to analyze empirically as well as to inform political moves to engineer participation through democratic reform. It argues that theories of participatory democracy can be synthesized and reconstructed along three different mechanisms that theoretically link democratic institutions and political behavior in plausible ways.
Fuchs, Dieter
These three mechanisms point to different concrete instruments and institutions of participatory democracy that affect political behavior through different types of stimuli in different ways. In the following concluding remarks, I will sketch three problems that emerge from this analysis and that define the agenda for further research. Let me briefly outline this dilemma. The integrative approach to democratization should ideally be the most effective one in simultaneously increasing the quantity and quality of participation. It stresses measures for democratic reforms that promote various types of participation alongside taking policy choices.
Taking part in social meetings or discussing community problems are assumed to have educative transformative effects at the attitudinal level that will enable individuals to strike the difficult balance between private interests and the common good, as well as between 24 Thomas Zittel voice and loyalty. Compared with integrative strategies, expansionist and cost-efficient strategies are more susceptible to the risk that an increase in the quantity of participation will actually endanger other values of democracy such as individual rights.
This is because they do not allow for inherent mechanisms which ensure the quality of participation. A reform dilemma arises because the strategy most effective is politically the least feasible. A reform of liberal democracy has to be implemented by political elites through law making and constitutional reform, so they must be understood and accepted at the elite level. The expansive and efficiency-oriented approaches are the most straightforward and direct in terms of their instruments and the way they are assumed to affect individual behavior.
In contrast to the expansive and efficiency-oriented approaches, the instruments proposed by the integrative approach are much less specific. For example, the concept of discursive or deliberative democracy is not easily applicable within the political world. There is a remaining gap between normative and empirical theory despite the recent empirical turn in deliberative theory for two reasons. First, empirical approaches to participatory democracy suffer from confusion between projects and institutions.
They focus on participatory events such as deliberative opinion polls and their design, and disregard the connection with a given decision-making system and the institutions that need to be adopted to establish this connection. Further developing this process as a serious option for democratic reform would presuppose an answer to the question of how deliberative opinion polls can be adapted to fit into constitutional decision-making structures.
Second, the integrationist approach is focused on small-scale institutions at the local level without asking about their institutional basis at the federal level of government in terms of guaranteed jurisdiction and enabling incentives to foster their diffusion across the whole system Fung and Wright , , McLaverty Moreover, the causal mechanisms by which strategies of integrative democratization are seen to exert effects on participation are far less direct, since they stress the attitudinal level as a crucial linkage between political institutions and political behavior.
Owing to the lack of specificity and the indirect causal mechanism promoted by integrative democratization, it can be assumed that this strategy will be the one which is the least feasible in political terms. One reservation ought to be raised with regard to the hypothetical reform dilemma outlined above; feasibility is, of course, not solely dependent upon the nature of the measure itself but also upon the particular political context in which the measure is applied. A similar argument holds true for the notion of effectiveness which should be affected in its impact at the behavioral level by a complex web of cultural, political and individual factors as well.
The politics of democratic reform as well as the actual effects of participatory institutions and their contextual prerequisites should be subject to further empirical inquiry. Ideally, this research should be comparative, including a range of most different systems to aid understanding of the dilemma of democratic reform and to search for possible resolutions. The second question concerns the process of researching participatory engin- Participatory democracy 25 eering and the reform dilemma that we have associated with such efforts.
It is obvious that this research ought to be comparative, covering a large number of cases, i. The collection of the broad basis of data would clearly overburden an individual researcher in terms of skills language and time. The development of a research network provides a solution to the problem but needs to avoid one pitfall. These kinds of endeavors end up all too easily with a selection of case studies that are based on very different concepts and ideas and that can thus not be accumulated.
What is needed is an integrated research network based on similar concepts and research objectives. A third and final question concerns the relevance of participatory democracy for future democratic reform efforts. One possible resort to avoid the reform dilemma outlined above would be to pursue marginal reforms in the context of the established order of representative democracy. There can be little doubt that this system was most successful in the past in securing the quantity and quality of participation at the same time and in balancing conflicting values.
I close with the argument that marginal reform short of participatory institutions is the least likely option in the long run. This is not primarily because of the empirical fact that citizens are disaffected with the current structure of democracy. It is primarily because of reasons that account for this dissatisfaction. Due to social change representative institutions are to a lesser and lesser extent able to aggregate interests and link them to the system of government.
The growing fragmentation and individualization of advanced societies results in the fact that either more and more individuals no longer feel represented in the political process or that more and more individuals feel that crucial interests of theirs are no longer represented. If the worst comes to the worst, these individuals feel so cross-pressured by multidimensional issue spaces that they leave the political arena out of frustration and despair.
This frustration and despair will accelerate the pressure towards reform in the future and it gives way to the pressing need to find a way out of the reform dilemma outlined in this chapter. Notes 1 See Fuchs in Chapter 2 in this volume for this position. University of California Press. Ward eds Reinvigorating Democracy? British Politics and the Internet, Aldershot: Westle eds Demokratie und Partizipation.
Die Chancen der Freiheit. Soskice eds Varieties of Capitalism: Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. Participatory democracy 27 Jones, P. Ein internationaler Vergleich, Bern: What Makes for the Deliberative Competence of Citizens? International Perspectives on Organisational Democracy, Chichester: Their concern is fed by two sources: This understanding is implicit in the democracy concept, for government by the people, however it may operate in detail, and is quite simply inconceivable without the political participation of the citizens.
However, there are widely differing ideas about the necessary extent and type of participation. They depend on the normative model that serves as our point of reference. The issue of political participation by the citizen can accordingly not be discussed in isolation; it can be meaningfully addressed only in the framework of normative models of democracy. The first goal of the following analysis is to outline the most important democracy models and the status they confer on political participation.
Our account is simplified: First, antique democracy is described. There are several reasons for taking this as our point of departure. It was the first democracy in history and also a form of democracy in which the people literally governed themselves. It is therefore archetypal and exemplary for many modern models of participatory democracy. In addition, taking this point of reference can avoid the frequent overburdening of the democracy concept with almost arbitrary content and criteria Eder Finally, the democracy of antiquity can provide insight into the conditions under which participatory democracy can be realized.
The second step is to describe modern democracy, generally referred to as liberal democracy, and which, from an institutional point of view, is representative democracy. We are interested not so much in providing yet another compilation of its characteristics but in comparing it with antique democracy. The intention is to demonstrate that, although both models can be understood as democracy, they imply quite different meanings of the term.
In the third step we turn to participatory and electronic democracy. The two 30 Dieter Fuchs terms can subsume a multitude of approaches. With regard to participatory democracy, we concentrate on what is presumably the most important variant under discussion in contemporary democracy, namely deliberative democracy. As regards electronic democracy, we consider only ideas that are committed to the ideal of participatory democracy.
Proponents argue that participatory democracy can be realized under the conditions of modern societies thanks to technological innovations in information and communication media: The subject of this third step of analysis is therefore participatory democracy as electronic democracy or electronic democracy as participatory democracy.
The second goal of our chapter is to discuss how realistic it is to uphold the ideal of participatory democracy under present-day circumstances, and the extent to which it can be realized even approximately. It is, of course, beyond the ambition of this paper to settle this controversial issue, but theoretical plausibilities and scholarly findings can contribute to the discussion. Antique democracy The antique democracy is perceived as a model in a double meaning of the word.
First, in the sense that it is a descriptive model that gives a simplified account of the complex reality of Athenian democracy in antiquity and which is restricted to identifying essential characteristics. Second, in the sense of a normative model, since for many modern theoreticians and practitioners, this antique democracy has been a natural example to be emulated. In describing antique democracy we are guided by both components of the democracy concept.
What are the essential characteristics of the demos and the kratos in the original form of democracy? We begin with a formal definition of the demos, going on to deal with the kratos. Certain normatively relevant characteristics of antique democracy are then discussed in greater detail, and in this context we return to a consideration of the demos. In the democracy of antiquity, the demos included all citizens, i. When in antiquity it was said that the demos rules, two meanings have to be distinguished: Poor and rich citizens, less well and well-educated citizens had equal part in government regardless of class and education.
If the notions that the people should rule and that all are equal in the system Participatory, liberal and e-democracy 31 of rule are considered fundamental to democracy Bleicken , it begs the question of how they have been institutionalized. The structure of the democratic system of government in antique Athens was based on four institutions: Every Athenian citizen had the right to attend and speak.
And the vote of every citizen had equal weight. The number of participants presumably varied between a tenth and a fifth of the citizenry. This was ensured by a number of arrangements. In a famous passage from his Politics a40—b7, see also a31ff. Finally, we look at certain aspects of the reality of antique democracy that are very important for current participatory democracy theories: Every year councilors and about magistrates were required, and a further or so magistrates were active for the Maritime League. If we include the 6, citizens from among whom the officers of the courts of justice were chosen by lot, we have a total of about 8, citizens who held and exercised public office in the polis each year.
Given an approximate total of 35, citizens this amounts to almost a quarter. The enormous extent of political engagement on the part of Athenian citizens is incontrovertible. According to Meier This practice of participation in oratory and deliberation also determines the type of opinion-building by the demos and the type of decisions made. To this extent one can indeed speak of a collective will of the demos that is more than an aggregation of individual opinions. The principle that guided deliberations was the common good of the polis.
This is shown, for example, by a passage in Euripides What is useful for the polis is also seen as equitable. If we express these notions in the language of contemporary democracy theory, contributions by speakers were legitimate only if they appealed to the common good and were therefore nonparticular in nature. He could ascribe every spoken contribution to a specific citizen and attribute every decision to the present gathering of citizens including himself. The demos of Participatory, liberal and e-democracy 33 Athenian democracy was thus constituted not as an imagined collective subject as is the case in modern nation states but as a tangible collective subject.
And this satisfies a demand associated with the democracy concept. The subject of government should not be merely an aggregate of single citizens but the demos as a whole. Political discussions were conducted in other public places, the marketplace, gymnasiums, etc. If one considers the relatively small number of citizens, it is highly probable that people came across acquaintances on public occasions and in the exercise of public offices.
This commonality experienced in public places was underpinned by the marked ethnic-cultural homogeneity of the citizenry. This homogeneity was grounded in a long, organic and unquestioningly accepted tradition which was highly valued as such by Athenians. Modern democracy Institutional and procedural characteristics of modern democracy Modern democracy — generally termed liberal democracy — differs fundamentally from the antique democracy. Before we address these differences, some of its characteristics shall be considered. This can be done rather succinctly. As a result, the principle of democracy merged with the principle of representation.
And this had profound institutional and procedural consequences. In both institutions representatives perform the business of governing. Since the representation principle is not a democratic one per se, it gains its democratic character only through the specific selection of the representatives of the people by the people. This is done through elections, and elections are democratic only if the voter has alternatives, if all citizens who wish to take part can indeed do so, and if every vote has equal weight. These criteria are met in liberal democracy by the institution of periodic and competitive elections, generally implemented by the constitution.
The institutionalization of modern democracy through elections and through parliaments and governments has a far-reaching impact on what democracy means, transforming it dramatically. If, after election, these representatives were willing and 34 Dieter Fuchs able to govern only according to their own wishes without any regard for the demos, the idea of government by the people would be completely devoid of sense. It must therefore be ensured with the institution of elections that representatives rule in accordance with the will of the demos. The concept of responsiveness Dahl ; Fuchs has become established to describe this state of affairs.
According to the theory of liberal democracy, responsiveness is to be structurally generated through the periodicity of elections and the possibility of a change in government. The prospect of the next elections obliges the rulers to take heed of the opinion of the demos in their own interest. The responsiveness of rulers to those ruled introduces a completely new criterion to the semantics of democracy. It played no role in antique democracy.
If there is identity of ruler and ruled, there can perforce be no difference between them. His most recent book is Shell. Greenpeace, and the Brent Spar, Palgrave Most recent articles appeared in with D. His main research interests are in the theory and practice of democracy and public participation.
His main research interests are in the areas of interest group politics, social capital, political involvement and non-participation. He has published extensively in these areas and is currently completing a volume with Grant Jordan entitled Interest Groups and the Democratic Process: Silvano Moeckli is associate professor at the University of St.
Gallen in Switzerland and president of the Parliament of the Canton of St. His major research interests cover direct democracy, demography and politics, and democracy assistance. His major recent publications include Die demographische Herausforderung. Chancen und Gefahren einer Gesellschaft lang lebender Menschen, Paul Haupt and an article in Zeitschrift fiir Politikwissenschaft. His main subjects of research are local and regional governance and democracy. She was senior lecturer in public policy at The Robert Gordon University from to , and before joining RGU was principal researcher in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, responsible for political and legal research services for Scottish Parliament committees and MPs.
His research interests include political parties, electoral reform and candidate selection methods. His current research includes a book in progress, The Bulging Pocket and the Rule of Law , which examines the linkages among corruption, inequality and trust. His research interests cover normative and empirical theories of democracy, electronic democracy and political representation. Democratic reform and political participation Thomas Zittel and Dieter Fuchs. Democratic reform and political participation: Participatory democracy and political participation Thomas Zittel.
Participatory, liberal, and electronic democracy Dieter Fuchs. Democratic reform and political responsiveness. Political participation in party primaries: Gideon Rahat and Reuven Y. Peter McLaverty and Sue Morris. Democratic reform and direct democracy.