Conscious Choice: Participatory Democracy Requires Active Citizens

January 1997 | News of the Earth

Participatory Democracy Requires Active Citizens

by Mark Long

Fascinating election, don’t you think? How is it that a sitting President in a time of peace and relative economic stability, running against a singularly unimpressive opponent, can garner less than 50 percent of the vote? How is it that after two years of inept, misguided, and mean-spirited rule Newt Gingrich is returning to Washington as leader of a “majority” party—in spite of the fact that Democrats won more votes nationally than Republicans? The GOP retained control of both Houses of Congress because of the consolidation of their southern base and some lopsided victories for many Democrats.

Interestingly, neither the fact that the President is beginning his second term without ever having won a majority of the votes, nor the even more anomalous fact that the majority party in both houses of Congress was the losing party in national vote totals is the most interesting fact of the election. The most fascinating is that, once again, the majority of voters stayed home on election day. That a majority of the eligible voters choose to not participate in the seemingly most important function of their citizenship should have profound implications on how we understand the functioning of our democracy.

We must make sense of this massive electoral apathy if we hold any hope of changing the direction of American politics. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin has labeled massive non-voting as an attitude of “rejectionism” and argued that it is “a form of rebellion, a gesture of defiance in the face of a system that is immovable and so interconnected as to be unreformable” in its current manifestation. If we understand non-voting as a political decision which indicates electoral apathy, not necessarily political apathy, it is possible to see potentially far-reaching, if not radical, consequences. Through this lens, non-voting becomes the towering manifestation of a pervasive sense that the system is broken.

The phenomenon of non-voting has certainly not been ignored. Numerous studies offer explanations as disparate as voter satisfaction and failed education. Recently many theorists have begun to re-examine Hanna Arendt’s arguments that pluralist democracy itself threatens public perceptions of citizenship and its attendant duties.

Arendt was suspicious of the rise of pluralism or “interest group” liberalism, the political system that has defined post-war politics in the U.S., because it restricts citizenship to passive roles. While fully accepting, and even celebrating, our unalienable rights, Arendt was concerned that the rise of a bureaucratic, representative democracy would lead to a nation of political spectators who ultimately would lose control over the system. By limiting popular political activity to partial identifications of “interest groups” or to the passive “participation” of voting, citizens would be removed from settings in which they could formulate public identities and see themselves as governors rather than governed.

All too often it seems as if Arendt’s fears regarding pluralist democracy are coming to fruition. We have become a nation of political spectators, participating only in plebiscitary elections while the important business of governing takes place daily in our names but without our input. There is a significant cognitive disjunction between our lived political lives and the rhetoric of democracy in this country. The Ordinary citizen feels this distinction profoundly every day. In fact, it is his felt distinction that gives resonance to conservative polemics against the government as an occupying force in this country. And don’t fool yourself into believing that this rhetoric plays only at Ruby Ridge. It shapes the parameters of elections, conversations, and identities throughout this country, in Democratic as well as Republican strongholds.

By defining citizenship in a passive way people increasingly internalize their status vis-a-vis the state as that of subject, a subject whose rights are granted from on high and not asserted from below as in classic formulations of republican theory. No less a “good American” as Thomas Jefferson expressed similar fears about relying on representative democracy and advocated citizen councils as the most appropriate means of democratic governance. Jefferson believed direct participation would best ensure the position of the people as the source of political power.

The conundrum is such that passive citizenship leads to content exclusion which leads to corporate hegemony which leads to political corruption which leads to public cynicism which reinforces passive citizenship. Thus is created a powerfully closed circle. Putting aside the chicken-and-egg questions regarding the origin of this mess, what is pressing are questions of rupture. How do we open the circle and break the circuit of empty politics?

There are, theoretically, points of rupture anywhere on the circle but the only point at which “we, the people” can reasonably insert ourselves is at the point of citizenship. By moving from a passive to an active conception of citizenship and by aggressively inserting ourselves into the affairs of state (whether in governmental or non-governmental forums), we can pull the plug on an increasingly pointless political process. Only by taking seriously the rhetoric of democracy and acting as if political power emanates from citizens can we begin to chip away at this very old and ensconced entitlement that politicians and their corporate benefactors take for granted.

The process is cultural, intellectual, and practical. If people believe that democracy matters then they will begin to act as if democracy matters. If people see themselves acting as if democracy matters they will empower themselves (to use the lingo of the day) and believe that democracy matters. Theory and practice enforcing one another. Praxis. We have seen this before.

One of the things that so fascinates me about cultures undergoing revolutionary transformations—whether the colonies in the eighteenth century, Russia in the early twentieth, or Eastern Europe more recently—is the way in which people suddenly begin to alter their behavior as if political rhetoric mattered. One need only look at the ongoing demonstrations in Serbia to see how profoundly revolutionary it is when people understand the term “public” to include them. When you perceive that you have a right to access in a “public” building, a “public” meeting or “public” information because you are a citizen of the state you have brought into question the very structure of the existing regime. There is no more profoundly revolutionary act in a representative democracy than taking the state at its word.

What all this means for what is broadly called the left is debatable. I would argue that any shift toward active citizenship will be a boon for progressive politics, in spite of the reactionary politics of the “masses.” There is a seamless link between active citizenship and “radical democracy,” that vision of democracy wherein all social institutions are democratic and all social questions are open ended. Radical democracy as envisioned by prominent American and European left intellectuals is a project of process, not results. Many of the pitfalls that left/liberal politics cannot seem to avoid currently can be sidestepped, in part, by focusing on creating a process that is truly democratic rather than on particular policy objectives. Policy victories are likely to follow anyway, as the terrain of politics shifts from the unfriendly landscape of pluralism to the friendly confines of a more direct democracy. On the other hand, if we continue to focus exclusively on policy objectives in a pluralist democracy, we are likely to continue losing most of the big battles. The private interests that resist the reforms we advocate are both well-funded and highly organized.

In fact, the “private sector” seems, at times, to be inviolable. Yet, once the radical expansion of the democratic process is under way all sources of public power are likely to fall under its sway. When active citizens begin to experience the power of democratic involvement, the currently immutable distinction between public/private sectors will be exposed as an ideological distinction without a difference.

Corporations themselves are fictions of the state—legal entities that exist with and only with state sanction (in spite of the fact that the courts have given them the same constitutional rights as citizens). Consequently, they are inherently subject to democratic stricture. Child labor laws, workplace safety laws, environmental controls, and a whole host of government regulations establish legal and ethical precedents for exercising democratic control on public institutions, which corporations are by definition.

Think about all the myriad ways in which government and business are intermingled in the form of state sponsorship of business. The extremely powerful broadcasting networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) exist only because they were granted exclusive use of public resources. Imagine our existing economy functioning without the use of public roads or airports or electric power or the postal service (the vast majority of mail it handles is publicly subsidized business mail), all government provided or subsidized activities. In a very literal sense we, as a public, created these institutions and are paying for their continuance; we damn well have the right to determine how and in what manner they function.

The question posed by the major parties and the corporate media is “Should the government be involved in the affairs of business?” That question is answered everyday by corporate lobbyists and their in-the-pay political functionaries to the advantage of private interests. In reality, that question is moot. The relevant question is “What claim does democracy have on public supported corporations?” That question can only be posed and answered by an active citizenry. If we have any desire to hold the large and powerful institutions of this society accountable to serving the public interest then we must take it upon ourselves to inch that process forward on a daily basis. We must act in millions of large and small ways as if we take the notions of democracy seriously. We must act in whatever capacity is available to each of us.

What is important here is not ideological purity or even a particular set of policy objectives, but the task of involving people in the process of democracy and allowing them to deconstruct the mysteries of power for themselves. Only then will the profoundly far-reaching, even radical, potential of democracy take root in a manner that is secure. An active citizenry perceives itself as the locus of social power and concedes nothing, prima facie, to private sources of public power.

Editors note: This is Mark Long’s last regular News of the Earth column for Conscious Choice. He has gone back to school to pursue his doctorate, however, he has promised to write an occasional feature article. Ben Lilliston will begin reporting News of the Earth in March.

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