Participatory Democracy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The notion of participatory democracy indicates a form of democratic theory that emphasizes the active involvement of citizens in all aspects of decisions that affect them. Much like advocates of direct democracy, those who favor participatory democracy reject the adequacy of contemporary for ms of representative government as largely undemocratic as well as authoritative or centralized forms of social and cultural control. The ideas of participatory democracy drew on the work of twentieth-century theorists as diverse as C. Wright Mills, Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, and members of the Frankfurt school.

Precursors to modern understanding of participatory democracy might include ancient Greek notions of assembly democracy, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s conception of direct democracy. In the former, all citizens could actively participate and make decisions as an assembly. In the latter, all citizens met periodically in order to discuss, approve, or reject laws. However, both of these models of direct democracy depended on smaller communities, as well as the theoretical assumption of a community sharing a common republican ethos.

Modern theories of participatory democracy rose with the influence of the new left in the 1960s and 1970s. Advocates of participatory democracy are committed to individual rights as well as modernist ideals of self-realization through individual creativity and self-expression. Under this ideal, political solidarity is not achieved through a preexisting ethos but through the ongoing cooperation of like-minded individuals.

C.Wright Mills’s observation of the decline of public life in America influenced new left founders such as Tom Hayden. The Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society, the first statement of the new left, criticized American democracy as largely undemocratic. The new left charged that “representative democracy” in America was, in most respects, not very representative at all, and that it isolated individuals from both government and community. Proponents argued that U.S. democracy rested on the creation of a passive citizenship, despite the view of the United States as an international model for democratic states.

Political theorist Arnold Kaufman is generally credited with coining the term participatory democracy to describe forms of democracy in which each citizen has a direct responsibility for decisions. Kaufman’s radical liberalism joins with developmental democracy in advancing the notion that democracy is to maximize the development of individual powers and individual responsibility in order to maximize social solidarity. This radically modernist version of developmental democracy defines theoretical participatory democracy. Drawing on the civil rights movement, it aimed to reestablish the action-oriented participation as the norm.

Ideas of economic democracy were central to the early vision of the new left. Later, theorists like Carol Pateman drew upon Rousseau and John Stuart Mill to elaborate a view of participatory democracy that stands in contrast to the competitive elitist conception of democracy, and an American postwar pluralism that ostensibly undermined popular participation. Participatory democracy in this view linked to extensive economic democracy and worker’s control. The Praxis philosophers of Eastern Europe, who stressed worker’s democratic participation in production, also informed this line of thought. Developing another line of thought, the American professor Jane Mansbridge contrasted adversarial character of Western parliamentary representation and elections with a model of unitary democracy, based on consensus building, that employs direct and informal methods of decision making.

Elements of participatory democracy have also been an important component of environmentalist political theory. Green parties often laud grassroots democracy, which stresses participation and small-scale organization. Many ecological political theorists— such as Murray Bookchin, Robert Paelke, and Douglas Torgerson—have been advocates of participatory democracy.

Critics of participatory democracy question its viability in larger, more complex societies, and express skepticism about the capacity and commitment of ordinary citizens to sustain extensive participation. Many U.S. democratic theorists reject populism or popular democratic theory. Notable alternatives include pluralists, who favor balancing large interest groups; rational choice theorists, who argue that politics of the general will are impossible; and neoconservatives, who see participatory democracy as making excessive and unwieldy demands on the political system.

Bibliography:

Bookchin, Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2005.
Crozier, Michael, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. The Crisis of Democracy. New York: New York University Press, 1975.
Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1954.
Flacks, Richard. “On the Uses of Participatory Democracy.” Dissent 13 (November 1966): 701–708.
Kaufman, Arnold. “Participatory Democracy and Human Nature.” In Responsibility, Nomos 3, edited by Carl Friedrich, 266–289. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960.
Mansbridge, Jane. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Markovic, Mihalio. From Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975.
Mill, John Stuart. Considerations on Representative Government on Liberty and Other Classics. Edited by John Grey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Miller, James. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.
Mills, C.Wright. The Power Elite. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Paelke, Robert, and Douglas Torgerson. Managing Leviathan: Environmental Problems of the Administrative State. 2nd ed. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2005.
Pateman, Carole. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Riker, William. Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. “The Social Contract.” In The Social Contract and Other Late Political Writings, edited by Victor Gourevitch, 39–152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Students for a Democratic Society. The Port Huron Statement, 1962. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1990.
Torgerson, Douglas. The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.

This example Participatory Democracy Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.