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Deepening Democracy the Real Utopias Project

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Deepening Democracy the Real Utopias Project Deepening Democracy The Real Utopias Project Series editor: Erik Olin Wright The Real Utopias Project embraces a tension between dreams and practice. It is founded on the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. The fulfillment of such a belief involves ‘real utopias’: utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials for redesigning social institutions. In its attempt at sustaining and deepening serious discussion of radical alternatives to existing social practices, the Real Utopias Project examines various basic institutions – property rights and the market, secondary associations, the family, the welfare state, among others – and focusses on specific proposals for their fundamental redesign. The books in the series are the result of workshop conferences, at which groups of scholars are invited to respond to provocative manuscripts. Volume I ASSOCIATIONS AND DEMOCRACY Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers Volume II EQUAL SHARES: MAKING MARKET SOCIALISM WORK John E. Roemer Volume III RECASTING EGALITARIANISM: NEW RULES FOR COMMUNITIES, STATES AND MARKETS Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis Volume IV DEEPENING DEMOCRACY: INSTITUTIONAL INNOVATIONS IN EMPOWERED PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright Deepening Democracy Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance The Real Utopias Project IV ———————N——————— ARCHON FUNG and ERIK OLIN WRIGHT with contributions by Rebecca Neaera Abers, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Joshua Cohen, Patrick Heller, Bradley C. Karkkainen, Rebecca S. Krantz, Jane Mansbridge, Joel Rogers, Craig W. Thomas, and T.M. Thomas Isaac VERSO London · New York First published by Verso 2003 © in the collection Verso 2003 © in individual contributions the contributors 2003 All rights reserved The moral rights of the authors and the editors have been asserted Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014–4606 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN 1–85984–688–2 ISBN 1–85984–466–9 (pbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Sabon by The Running Head Limited, www.therunninghead.com Printed by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn, www. biddles.co.uk Contents Preface: The Real Utopias Project vii Erik Olin Wright Acknowledgements ix Part I Introduction 1 Thinking about Empowered Participatory Governance 3 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright Part II Case Studies 2 Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment 45 Gianpaolo Baiocchi 3 Democracy and Development: Decentralized Planning in Kerala 77 T.M. Thomas Isaac and Patrick Heller 4 Deliberative Democracy, Chicago Style: Grass-roots Governance in Policing and Public Education 111 Archon Fung 5 Habitat Conservation Planning 144 Craig W. Thomas Part III Commentaries 6 Practice–Thought–Practice 175 Jane Mansbridge 7 Reflections on What Makes Empowered Participatory Governance Happen 200 Rebecca Neaera Abers 8 Toward Ecologically Sustainable Democracy? 208 Bradley C. Karkkainen vi CONTENTS 9 Cycles of Reform in Porto Alegre and Madison 225 Rebecca S. Krantz 10 Power and Reason 237 Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers Part IV Epilogue 11 Countervailing Power in Empowered Participatory Governance 259 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright References 291 Index 305 Preface The Real Utopias Project Erik Olin Wright “Real Utopia” seems like a contradiction in terms. Utopias are fan- tasies, morally inspired designs for social life unconstrained by realistic considerations of human psychology and social feasibility. Realists eschew such fantasies. What is needed are hard-nosed proposals for pragmatically improving our institutions. Instead of indulging in utopian dreams we must accommodate to practical realities. The Real Utopias Project embraces this tension between dreams and practice. It is founded on the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. Self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful forces in history, and while it may be Pollyanna-ish to say “where there is a will there is a way,” it is certainly true that without “will” many “ways” become impossible. Nurturing clear-sighted understandings of what it would take to create social institutions free of oppression is part of creating a political will for radical social changes to reduce oppression. A vital belief in a utopian destination may be necessary to motivate people to leave on the journey from the status quo in the first place, even though the actual destination may fall short of the utopian ideal. Yet, vague utopian fantasies may lead us astray, encouraging us to embark on trips that have no real destinations at all, or worse still, which lead us over some unforeseen abyss. Along with “where there is a will there is a way,” the human struggle for emancipation confronts “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” What we need, then, are “real utopias”: utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian destinations that have pragmatically accessible waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practi- cal tasks of muddling through in a world of imperfect conditions for social change. These are the goals of the Real Utopias Project. viii DEEPENING DEMOCRACY The Real Utopias Project is an attempt at sustaining and deepening serious discussion of radical alternatives to existing institutions. The objective is to focus on specific proposals for the fundamental redesign of basic social institutions rather than on either vague, abstract formu- lations of grand designs, or on small reforms of existing practices. In practical terms, the Real Utopias Project consists of a series of work- shop conferences, each revolving around a manuscript that lays out the basic outlines of a radical institutional proposal. The essays presented at these conferences are then revised for the books in the Real Utopias Project. The conference which was the basis for this volume in the Real Utopias Project was held at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin in January 2000. For that conference four people who had done research on empirical cases of innovative forms of participatory democracy in different parts of the world were asked to write papers in which they analyzed their cases in terms an earlier version of the model of empowered participatory governance which appears in revised form as chapter 1 in this book. Other participants at the conference then commented on these cases and on the ideas in the general model. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Vilas Trust of the University of Wisconsin and the editorial board of Politics & Society for their generous support in funding the conference, “Experiments in Empowered Deliberative Democracy,” held in January, 2000, in Madison, Wisconsin, which formed the basis for this book. The staff of the A.E. Havens Center – Patrick Barrett, Shamus Khan, and Grace Livingston – provided in- valuable help in organizing the conference. Earlier versions of a number of papers included in this volume were previously published in a special issue of Politics & Society, copyright Sage Publications, Inc., March 2001, vol. 29, no. 1, and are reproduced here with permission. They are: Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Deepening Democracy: Innova- tions in Empowered Participatory Governance,” pp. 5–42 Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “Participation, Activism and Politics: the Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative Democratic Theory,” pp. 43–72 Archon Fung, “Accountable Autonomy: Toward Empowered Deliber- ation in Chicago Schools and Policing,” pp. 73–104 Craig Thomas, “Habitat Conservation Planning: Certainly Empow- ered, Somewhat Deliberative, Questionably Democratic,” pp. 105–30 PART I Introduction 1 Thinking about Empowered Participatory Governance* Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright** As the tasks of the state have become more complex and the size of polities larger and more heterogeneous, the institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteenth century – representative democracy plus techno-bureaucratic administration – seem increas- ingly ill suited to the novel problems we face in the twenty-first century. “Democracy” as a way of organizing the state has come to be narrowly identified with territorially based competitive elections of political leadership for legislative and executive offices. Yet, increasingly, this mechanism of political representation seems ineffective in accomplish- ing the central ideals of democratic politics: facilitating active political involvement of the citizenry, forging political consensus through dialogue, devising and implementing public policies that ground a pro- ductive economy and healthy society, and, in more radical egalitarian versions of the democratic ideal, assuring that all citizens benefit from the nation’s wealth. The Right of the political spectrum has taken advantage of this apparent decline in the effectiveness of democratic institutions to esca- late its attack on the very idea of the affirmative state. The only way the state can play a competent and constructive role, the Right typically argues, is to dramatically reduce the scope and depth of its activities. In addition to the traditional moral opposition of libertarians to the activist
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