social movements
Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation – review
In Reclaiming Participatory Governance, Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu bring together analyses of social movements around the world that engage with democracy-driven or participatory governance. Although the essays in this volume reveal the challenge of bringing grassroots organising into our political systems, they advocate compellingly for nurturing these practices to create fairer and stronger democracies, writes Andrea Felicetti.
Reclaiming Participatory Governance is a compelling investigation of the potential for bottom-up forms of democratic innovations to vitalise our democracies. Anchored on Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu’s concept of “democracy-driven governance” (DDG), this edited volume critically investigates the “potential, limits and opportunities” of social movements’ engagement with participatory and deliberative institutional designs. This is no small feat since social movements and democratic innovations are often seen as crucial in strengthening our democracies.
[Democracy-driven governance] is considered in its capacity for effectively ‘[o]pening up spaces for a deeper critique of minimalist liberal democratic institutions and the neoliberal economy that underpins them’.
From the introduction, expectations are high. Pitted against forms of “governance-driven democratisation” (GDD) that tend to be seen as top-down and markedly bureaucratic, DDG is considered in its capacity for effectively “[o]pening up spaces for a deeper critique of minimalist liberal democratic institutions and the neoliberal economy that underpins them”. Of course, this needs to occur at a time when “space for meaningful citizen input is increasingly constrained by technocratic decision-making and global economic pressure”.
The book presents a highly coherent and impressive collection of in-depth analyses that span theory and empirical research, with a great variety of cases. Spain takes centre stage, and there are no case studies from English-speaking countries, going markedly against the tide. Theory is at the heart of the first section. Drawing from fascinating cases in Germany and Iceland, Dannica Fleuss shows the urgency of thinking about democracy beyond liberal institutions. Nick Vlahos introduces the idea of “participatory decommodification of social need” as an interesting way to think about how participatory governance can combat the worst effects of capitalism, with examples from Toronto, Canada. Based on his extensive fieldwork in Rosario, Argentina, Markus Holdo discusses the concept of “democratic care” to unearth the work performed by activists that needs to be recognised in participatory governance. Finally, Hendrik Wagenaar offers a compelling analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the GDD/DGG pair from a political economy standpoint, building on a well-established threefold distinction between the dominant economic, financial system, the political, administrative sector and civil society.
Vlahos introduces the idea of ‘participatory decommodification of social need’ as an interesting way to think about how participatory governance can combat the worst effects of capitalism
The second part is markedly empirical. Paola Pierri analyses the Orleans Metropole Assise for the Ecological Transition, in France, showing a case of “collaborative countervailing power” that reminds us that the seminal work of Empowered Participatory Governance by Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright remains highly relevant to understand participatory governance. Lucy Cathcart Frodén investigates the parallels between prefigurative social movements and participatory arts projects as well as their potential to contribute to democratic renewal. A rather effective collaboration between “right to the city” activists and local administration is documented in Roberto Falanga’s in-depth analysis of the participatory process for the regeneration of one of the main squares in Lisbon, Portugal. Giovanni Allegretti shows clearly how anticolonial protests irrupt into and benefit participatory experiments in Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland. Mendonça and colleagues, instead, systematically explore strengths and weaknesses of Gambiarra, an unconventional means social movements in Brazil use to break into elites-dominated elections at local and parliamentary level. Bua, Bussu and Davies offer the ultimate comparison about the GDD and DGG models as embodied in the historical trajectories of participatory governance of the cities of Nantes and Barcelona respectively.
The third section highlights problems and limitations. Joan Balcells and colleagues unveil the tension that lay at the basis of the famous participatory platform Decidim. Always focusing on Barcelona, Marina Pera and colleagues look at the Citizen Assets Program showing how lack of trust prevented this very advanced form of democratisation from being embedded into its context. Fabiola Mota Consejero considers another case from Spain where Madrid’s progressive local government broke with a longstanding tradition of conservative patronage but failed to turn its main innovation, Decide Madrid, into an effective means for participatory governance. Patricia Garcia-Espin, instead, shows the fatigue and disappointment of activists involved in another innovation of Madrid’s new municipalist government, the local forums. Finally, Sixtine Van Outryve looks at a fascinating case of a local Yellow Vest organization in Commercy, France, trying to set up an open citizens assembly to have a communalist project represented in the local government that ultimately failed.
Virtually every chapter of this book details a host of challenges participatory governance faces in the context of minimalist democracies dominated by neoliberal economics.
The findings in this book are rather sobering. Employing a rigorous approach devoid of self-celebration or ideological dismissal, virtually every chapter of this book details a host of challenges participatory governance faces in the context of minimalist democracies dominated by neoliberal economics. In many case studies, elements of both GDD and DGG coexist, and sometimes one morphs into the other. Second, empirical investigations highlight weaknesses with DGG. This reduces our expectations about this model of democratisation, yet it also lends it a more realistic and useful outlook. Third, while the theoretical section highlights the political economy of participatory governance as a crucial issue, that remains in the background in the empirical analysis, as it tends to happen in the field. This kind of investigation remains essential.
Further, after reading this book, one has the feeling that contemporary participatory governance grapples with two important limitations. First, the promotion of participatory governance remains primarily within the purview of a select group of political actors: progressive parties, particularly those with a robust radical left presence. As we move to the centre of the political spectrum, the idea of reinvigorating democracy, let alone doing so by means of radical participatory governance, seems to lose attractiveness. Indeed, the book consistently shows that, in those uncommon cases in which progressive parties that champion participatory governance take power, they downscale their democratisation ambitions as they face the challenges implied in participatory governance. These can vary from administrative hurdles in implementing innovation to more endogenous problems relating, for example, to internal conflicts arising from differing conceptions of democracy that exacerbate fatigue and disillusionment. Second, the book gives the sense that contemporary participatory governance still has a mass democracy problem. It is still missing any substantial connection with the public at large. Except for occasional influence during electoral campaigns, none of the studied experiments have garnered sustained support or substantial interest from the public at large.
This volume stands as proof of the ongoing efforts to use participatory governance in critical and democratising ways around the world
This might seem disheartening, especially because there is no practical solution in sight. The electoral defeat of Spanish municipalism, central to this book, heightens this sensation. Yet, there is not much use in despairing, and a temporal prospective might offer some hope. As Gianpaolo Baiocchi reminds in his refreshing concluding remarks, it is not so long ago that the idea of participatory democracy made its irruption in our democracies. Initially championed by social movements and to a lesser extent Left political projects in the 1960s, this idea was later taken up by mainstream policymakers and international agencies. Unsurprisingly, participatory governance has not been able to singlehandedly compete with the broader political trend towards neoliberal governance; indeed, it has had to adapted to it to some extent. The resistance it meets today shows major limitations. Yet, this volume stands as proof of the ongoing efforts to use participatory governance in critical and democratising ways around the world. It also speaks to the fact that there is great social scientific scholarship trying to understand and strengthen this phenomenon.
The book often refers to the value of learning from and with activists. Indeed, one of its the most significant contributions is its ability to forge an expanded understanding of participatory governance.
The book often refers to the value of learning from and with activists. Indeed, one of its the most significant contributions is its ability to forge an expanded understanding of participatory governance. This volume goes beyond the perpetual dispute between different conceptions of democracy. It shows how participatory governance todays draws from a rich tapestry of diverse ideas and practices – both old and new. The fact that concepts such as “care”, the “right to the city”, “communalism”, “new municipalism”, “gambiarra” and “decolonisation” are brought together in this volume speaks to the eclectic nature and vitality of contemporary participatory governance. Despite its challenges, participatory governance continues to attract the ingenuity of people and their eagerness for democracy. Persistence is crucial, as these are fundamental ingredients in the struggle to build a more equal and just world.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Dedraw Studio on Flickr.
We make our own history – A call to action!
As we become political subjects on our own behalf, recognise ourselves in each other and see the connections between our different movements, we come closer to being able not only to articulate the hope of “another world”, but also to bring it about.
With these words, Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen conclude their latest book We make our own history: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism. In this blog post, I will provide a critical appraisal of this important book.
The challenge to academia
The first important contribution by Cox and Nilsen is their challenge to traditional academic theorising and here especially its missing relevance for practice. ‘The academic mode of production … encourages the contemplative mode (critical or celebratory) and discourages a praxis-oriented one; the net effect … is to disengage theory from practice and construct a mystified relationship between the two’. Problems are perceived as structurally generated and, therefore, beyond the possibility of being addressed. ‘This is often very welcome for the senior academics who act as professional gatekeepers, as it combines the display of great cleverness with the practical conclusion that there is nothing to be done – prefiguring a transition to a resigned worldly wisdom’. From a movement perspective, what is required instead is a praxis oriented theory, which directly informs the choice of strategies in concrete struggles. ‘Theory, in this sense, is a tool that we use to figure out what is happening to us, why it is happening, and what to do about it, by going beyond the immediacy and situatedness of a particular experience’.
When reading the book within the Marxism Reading Group in the School of Politics and IR at the University of Nottingham, we were not always convinced that the authors succeeded in living up to their own demands. Especially Chapter 2 on ‘needs’ and ‘capacities’ as fundamental ontological categories reads more like a highly complex, traditional academic analysis than a movement relevant, easily accessible text, with which concrete strategies can be thought through and developed. Nonetheless, the book serves well as a critical reminder to left-wing academics, not to submit to the standard requirements of the discipline, but to reach out to struggles and involve themselves in their concrete manifestations.
Movements from above in the making of history
A second major contribution of the volume is the emphasis that any given order is not a structural given, but an order made by dominant forces, the so-called movements from above. As a result, it becomes clear that oppressive systems too are human made and, therefore, can also be changed by human agency. In the words of the authors, ‘the concept of social movements from above enables us … to grasp that “the way things are” has been consciously produced, not only in the here-and-now, but also across historical time and across different spatial scales’.
Neoliberalism since the early 1970s, including also the most recent wave of austerity policies, is understood as a project by movements from above, open for potential contestation by movements from below. History, in short, is understood as the outcome of a continuing struggle between movements from below and above. In a way, this is a tremendously empowering vision in that it makes clear that the current dominant order can be changed.
Stalemate in current struggles
While neoliberalism has increasingly come under criticism as a result of the global financial crisis since 2007/2008, and more and more social movements from below have started to contest it, nonetheless current austerity policies continue the dominant neoliberal line of restructuring. Cox and Nilsen’s third key contribution is to define the current situation as a situation of stalemate. ‘What of times of stalemate, when we are doing everything we can, they are clearly on the defensive, and yet we are not moving forward?’ The concept allows us to comprehend that while there is increasing contestation, policies continue unaltered. This does not, however, imply that resistance would be without impact. In a way, the dominant forces, the movements from above, have to resort more and more to authoritarian forms of policy implementation to maintain the current order. In other words, increasing violence in rolling out cuts to public services is a sign of weakness, not of strength by the dominant forces.
Movements, strategy and state power
The authors also make important observations in relation to concrete struggles. First, while they do not reject engagement with state power, unlike autonomist Marxists, they council caution vis-à-vis the possibilities of obtaining change through the structures of electoral democracy. ‘The recognition of potential gains in engaging with the state should be joined to an equally clear perception of what is risked in a strategy that does not seek to move beyond the institutionalisation of political power in the state’. This point reminds one of Karl Marx’s assessment of the achievements by the Paris Commune in 1871. Having taken over state power, the revolutionaries immediately embarked upon transforming key institutions of the bourgeois state including education and the police (see Karl Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat).
Cox and Nilsen also provide a useful assessment of the potential role of political parties and, by extension, trade unions. On the basis of the revolutionary history of the last 100 years, they strongly warn against the political party leading the movement in a top-down fashion. Instead, the primary emphasis has to rest on the movement and the activism of its members. ‘A party is worthy of Marxist interest only to the extent that it is successful in placing the movement first’.
Movement struggle and the structural tendencies of capitalism
The struggle of movements from below and above is at the core of the book’s argument. Structure, in turn, is generally only perceived as the result of these struggles. Rethinking structure as collective agency, ‘this leads to an analysis of social structures and social formations as the sediment of movement struggles’, the authors write. And yet, I am sceptical whether this reflects a proper assessment of structure and its implications for human agency. I am not convinced that structure can simply be viewed as the result of ‘a struggle over how human needs are to be satisfied and how human capacities are to be deployed’. When capitalists engage in relentless competition with other capitalists over ever more market share and higher profits, then this is not the result of capitalists wanting to satisfy their human needs. Capitalists such as Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, have long amassed more than enough wealth to satisfy all their possible needs. If Microsoft engages in competition for yet further profits, then this is an activity which cannot be explained with satisfying needs.
In order to unravel the underlying dynamic, we need to look at the structural tendencies resulting from the way capitalist production is set up. Organised around the private ownership of the means of production and wage labour, not only workers but capitalists too have to reproduce themselves through the market. Capitalists are in constant competition with each other over market share and are, therefore, driven generally though the introduction of new technology to produce new and better products in order to out-compete their fellow capitalists and secure and increase their market share. In turn, their rivals have to do everything possible in order to match and overtake them. Otherwise, they are in danger first to lose market share and then to go bankrupt. As Marx noted, ‘under free competition, the immanent laws of capitalist production confront the individual capitalist as a coercive force external to him’ (Marx, 1867/1990: 381).
If capitalists, driven by competition for survival, engage in constant activities of further expansion, then this is the result of structural imperatives, not because of the fulfilment of personal needs. It is this structuralist dimension of the capitalist social relations of production, which is overlooked by Cox and Nilsen. Appreciating this structuralist dimension does not imply that agency would be side-lined. Rather, it is absolutely essential to comprehend these structural tendencies in order to assess properly the best strategies for resistance.
Overall, this is a hugely important book, a must-read for those interested in movement-relevant theorising with the goal of engaging in praxis leading towards a future beyond capitalism.
This post was originally posted on Trade Unions and Global Restructuring (23 December 2014) and appears here as one of the texts originally read in the Marxism Reading Group.
The post We make our own history – A call to action! appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).