Democracy in Theory and Action [1 ed.] 9781614706991, 9781611228021

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GLOBAL POLITICAL STUDIES

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DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND ACTION

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GLOBAL POLITICAL STUDIES

DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND ACTION

PETER HERRMANN

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EDITOR

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright ©2011 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

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Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Democracy in theory and action / editor, Peter Herrmann. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN:  (eBook)

1. Democracy. 2. Political participation. I. Herrmann, Peter, 1955JC423.D38133 2010 321.8--dc22 2010042605

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CONTENTS

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Preface

vii

Chapter 1

Inclusive Democracy as a Theoretical and Political Project Takis Fotopoulos

Chapter 2

E-Democracy: Concepts, Experiences and Challenges Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia

51

Chapter 3

Quality of Democracy and Media Logic in Mexico Carlos Manuel Rodriguez Arechavaleta

93

Chapter 4

Governance Networks and Democratic Ideals: The Case of Thy National Park in Denmark Dorthe Hedensted Lund, Tove Enggrob Boon and Iben Nathan

121

Nanotechnologies, Sustainable Development and International Governance Claire A. Auplat

141

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

The Role of the Social Democratic Welfare State Regime in Reducing Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health: Results from Comparative Studies on British, Finnish, and Japanese Civil Servants Michikazu Sekine, Eero Lahelma and Michael Marmot

1

161

Chapter 7

Experiences in E-Participation: A New Perspective for Democracy Gabriella Bonfanti

183

Chapter 8

Political Journalism as a Democracy Watchman Augusto Gnisci, Angiola Di Conza, and Pierpaolo Zollo

205

Chapter 9

Democracy and the Need Satisfaction of Populations Mike Smart

231

Chapter 10

Lessons of 1989 for European Democracies Today: Outlines of a New Paradigm Ferenc Miszlivetz

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vi Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Contents The Opinions of the Student Teachers Toward the Concept of Democracy Behçet Oral

265

―The Birth of Democracy: Values in War and Politics in Classical Greece‖ N. Kyriazis and X. Paparrigopoulos

277

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Index

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PREFACE This book presents topical research in the study of democracy in theory and action from across the globe. Topics discussed herein include inclusive democracy as a theoretical and political project; the quality of democracy and media logic in Mexico; governance networks and democratic ideals and the role of the social democratic welfare state regime in reducing socioeconomic inequalities in health care. Chapter 1 - This chapter discusses the double nature of ―Inclusive Democracy‖, first, as a political project, which is part of the historical democratic and autonomy traditions and, second, as a theoretical project which, starting with the axiomatic choice for individual and collective autonomy in the interpretation of social phenomena, attempts to analyze historical and present trends in society and, on this basis, to outline the criteria that the form of social organization should meet, so that both the requirements of autonomy and genuine democracy are satisfied and the aforementioned trends are confirmed. It is shown that a society based on direct democracy, economic democracy, democracy in the social realm and ecological democracy, which is also a decentralized society founded on an equal distribution of all forms of social power among all citizens, would not only meet these criteria, but would also provide a way out of the present multi-dimensional crisis (economic, political, social and ecological) that is caused by the concentration of power at the hands of elites and privileged social groups. Chapter 2 - Through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, citizens can access information and services and engage in government issues. Citizen participation is one of the surest ways to bring democracy to life: it generates an ongoing flow of information between citizens and the government that supports the decision making of both. However, for participatory democracy to actually occur, citizens must articulate their views, design proposals, defend them and indicate their choices through public means of communication. Electronic democracy (e-democracy) can make these possible by promoting discussion on issues and problems or by supporting decision making. The main objective of this study is to discuss this advanced stage of e-democracy, participatory democracy. Normally the prerequisite for this is public consultation, which allows those affected by the outcome to debate the issue(s). Then decisions can be made through a deliberative vote, where everyone has the right to cast their vote. These different steps constitute consultative and deliberative processes. The capabilities that ICTs afford have generated growing expectations for electronic democracy. This study discusses different interaction and communication strategies and

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resources governments have used to build bridges toward their citizens. The paper also discusses integration of these resources with the support of modern social networking concepts. This chapter presents background information on e-democracy experiences, problems and challenges, as well as important related concepts. Chapter 3 - Recent literature on political science has demonstrated that there is some sort of anti- Shumpetarian reaction running contrary to the competitive procedural emphasis that embodied the minimum requirement to define democracy. It seems that an awareness has grown whereby the constituent processes and the procedural norms help us define what democracy is, albeit they do not provide much insight as to how it really works (Schmitter; 1996, 43). Chapter 4 - The proliferation of governance networks has been criticized for democratic deficits and hailed for democratic potentials. The recently designated Thy National Park in Denmark was established after a process where local, public involvement was emphasized and is now managed by a governance network. This chapter discusses and evaluates this governance network in relation to democratic ideals identified from literature: liberty, equality, inclusion, and deliberation, and thereby contributes to the discussion of the democratic consequences of using governance networks for policy formation. The analysis of the governance network managing Thy National Park shows that it performs well according to the ideals: inclusion, deliberation, and liberty if interpreted as positive liberty. Equality is more ambiguous. Despite that ideals were not attained, the authors consider them sufficiently approached for the particular governance network to be a democratic venue of governance as the authors consider the strengthening of deliberation and inclusion to outweigh the potential loss in terms of equality. Chapter 5 - The empirical field of this chapter is nanotechnologies. The purpose of the study is to show that the development of nanotechnologies coincides with a new form of international governance where international standards are likely to take precedence over national regulatory frameworks. The study is structured as followed: the author firstly analyze the specificities of nanotechnologies which create the context for institutional change. The author then review the current system of governance of nanotechnologies to outline where it generates openings for change. Using a methodology which rests on the comparative analysis of archival sources complemented by focused interviews, the author show that the development of nanotechnologies coincides with the emergence of a new form of technological democracy with the following characteristics: it embeds the concept of sustainable development, it is globalised and it rests on benchmarks which are testable and certifiable. Chapter 6 - The importance of politics and macroeconomic structures on socioeconomic inequalities in health has been increasingly recognized. It has been hypothesized that social policies and politics influence population health through welfare state structures, labor markets, and economic inequalities. We have conducted a series of international comparative studies among British, Finnish and Japanese civil servants. Britain, Finland and Japan are examples of the liberal, social democratic, and conservative welfare state regimes, respectively. International comparisons of countries representing different welfare state regimes may provide further understanding of the relations between policies, politics, social structures and health. Inequalities in physical and mental health by socioeconomic status (SES) were observed in all three cohorts but the magnitude and patterns of health in equalities

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Preface

ix

differed: for physical health, the generally observed patterns of SES inequalities in health (i.e. the higher the SES, the better the health.) were observed in all cohorts and the health inequalities were somewhat smaller in the Finnish cohort than in other 2 cohorts. For mental health, similar patterns of SES inequalities were observed in the British and Japanese cohorts but the reverse was true for the Finnish cohort (i.e. the higher the SES, the poorer the health.). SES inequalities in psychosocial stress at work were somewhat smaller in the Finnish cohort than in the other 2 cohorts. Work-family balances and mental health were better in the Finnish cohort than in the other 2 cohorts. Finnish employees had smaller SES inequalities in work characteristics which seems to contribute to smaller SES inequalities in health. These results may be partly due to social democratic welfare state regime with an emphasis on universal and egalitarian policies in Finland. In contrast, no consistent patterns of SES inequalities in health risk behaviours such as cigarette smoking, physical activity and alcohol drinking were observed in our study. International differences in cultural characteristics may also explain the international differences in health inequalities. Our international comparative studies on cultures, structures and health is now underway and could contribute to the literature in this area. Pathways from policies and politics to social structures and cultures and through that to health are complex and there is always a time lag from health promoting or damaging factors to their health effects. Evidence is still lacking as to how political, economic, cultural and other factors shape our health and, in particular, health inequalities. We should avoid making social epidemiology research too politicized, but policies and politics do contribute to social determinants of health. Chapter 7 - The paper illustrates the evolution of the different concepts of e-government, e-democracy and, finally, e-participation, lead by the European Union initiatives and analyzes the progress of the Italian government and other pro-active countries, to involve people to express their opinions, at different levels of interaction, ranging from a ―top-down‖ to a ―bottom-up‖ approach. The analysis faces the main aspects of the involvement of citizens in the decision-making process, as security, privacy, respect of freedom and human rights and wants to give an overview on the various opinions of authors and on the strategic actions undertaken by the public administrations. Chapter 8 - Modern democratic countries are regulated according to several criteria devoted to preserving democracy. One of the most debated issues concerns the role of mass media, in particular television, as a means to favor the relation between politics and citizens, on which democratic policy is based. Political journalism is one of the tools developed to favor this link. The present chapter aims to analyze the characteristics of journalists‘ and politicians‘ performances during political interviews. The described theoretical framework rests on the integration of the equivocation theory with the face model applied to political interviews, asserting that equivocal replies provided by politicians arises as a consequence of a communicative conflict, threatening the public image of the politicians or of their party. Studies on the topic conducted in the social psychology field are reviewed and a new study concerning the different treatment reserved by journalists for politicians with respect to other professionals is described. The results show that politicians are more threatened and more equivocal than other types of interviewees, supporting a situational and contextual theory of equivocation and confirming the idea that equivocal language plays the function to preserve one‘s own face from external attack.

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At In the light of previous and new findings, the authors will propose that some linguistic features, such as questions‘ coercion and threats or answers‘ pertinence, are communicative skills, can be learned and monitored in order to obtain a higher quality of professionalism both for journalists and politicians. Furthermore, the authors present some empirical indexes concerning toughness and neutrality of interviewers, which represent key characteristics of fair journalism that is able to favor an impartial treatment of politicians, even constraining them to provide a straight reply conveying the requested information. These tools can prove useful to train politicians and journalists and to monitor the quality of their performances. Moreover, the implications for providing a qualitative criterion to improve the regulation of a fair distribution of communicative resources among different political parts are discussed. If, nowadays, the role of journalism as ―democracy watchman‖ is widely recognized, one of the goals of the scholars should be to provide useful instruments, procedures and indexes for operalizing the concepts characterizing citizen-oriented performances of journalists and politicians. Chapter 9 - Abraham Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs is given an economic interpretation that facilitates measurements of need satisfaction at the national level over time. Each specific need, in sequence from primal to sophisticated: homoeostasis, security, love and belongingness, esteem and self-esteem, and self-actualisation becomes prioritised by an individual once all more basic needs have been satisfied. Economically, the satisfaction of homoeostasis needs, including food, clothing and shelter, depends on the provision of private goods. In contrast, the satisfaction of security needs is highly dependent on the machinery of state, and its ability to provide such public goods as law and order, emergency services, public health, and national defence. The economy contributes little to love and belongingness. Esteem depends on the availabililty and attainability of prestigious roles within society. Panel data is generally available for such homoeostatic indicators as per-capita calorie consumption, and for security indicators such as the durability of political regimes and crime statistics. Measuring the attainment of esteem, especially within a population, is more challenging. Several potential measurement proxies are considered, including the openness and plurality of political institutions. It is argued that in more pluralistic states, a wider range of positions with genuine power exist, and that these roles are available to a larger proportion of the populace. Thus, a link appears likely between democracy and a population‘s degree of satisfaction of esteem needs. Cross-national comparisons of Maslovian need satisfaction over time are presented, based on this measurement methodology. Building on prior work that attempts to explain either GDP growth rates or democratic status in terms of national resource, education, or other characteristics, this chapter explores correlation and causality between these characteristics and the need satisfaction of national populations. Chapter 10 - Evaluating 1989 has divided analysts from the outset. The majority of political scientists and sociologists saw the events as the victory of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus, Jürgen Habermas or Timothy Garton Ash did not see the ‗velvet revolutions‘ as offering anything new, they did not believe that any original or innovative idea appeared or even became institutionalized during the ‗velvet revolutions‘. According to this view, 1989 simply set things right and if we can talk of revolutions at all, even in the best of cases this is the process they served („nachholende Revolution‖, or „rectifying revolution‖)

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Chapter 11 - The purpose of this study is to determine the opinions of the student teachers related to ―the concept of democracy.‖ The study is carried out by the participation of 412 student teachers who attended Ziya Gökalp Education Faculty at Dicle University in 20062007 academic year. The data required for the research are gathered by asking an open-ended question; ―What does the concept of democracy mean to you?‖ The data are analyzed by chisquare method. According to the findings, it is determined that 38.8% of the student teachers give importance to ―Expressing feelings and opinions, individual rights and freedom,‖ which is one of the qualities of democracy. 7.3% of them put negative meaning to the concept of democracy. It is seen that there is a significant difference among their opinions in terms of their participation in the activities related to the democracy. Chapter 12 - In this chapter, the authors analyze the relation of values that emerged due to the creation, sometime between the 8th and the 7th centuries B.C., of a new type of heavily armed infantryman, the hoplite, unknown before that time.

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Chapter 1

INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY AS A THEORETICAL AND POLITICAL PROJECT Takis Fotopoulos

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ABSTRACT This chapter discusses the double nature of ―Inclusive Democracy‖, first, as a political project, which is part of the historical democratic and autonomy traditions and, second, as a theoretical project which, starting with the axiomatic choice for individual and collective autonomy in the interpretation of social phenomena, attempts to analyze historical and present trends in society and, on this basis, to outline the criteria that the form of social organization should meet, so that both the requirements of autonomy and genuine democracy are satisfied and the aforementioned trends are confirmed. It is shown that a society based on direct democracy, economic democracy, democracy in the social realm and ecological democracy, which is also a decentralized society founded on an equal distribution of all forms of social power among all citizens, would not only meet these criteria, but would also provide a way out of the present multi-dimensional crisis (economic, political, social and ecological) that is caused by the concentration of power at the hands of elites and privileged social groups.

1. INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY AS A POLITICAL PROJECT A meaningful discussion of the Inclusive Democracy (ID) project has first to make the crucial distinction between the view of it as: 

a political project, which is part of the historical tradition for individual and collective autonomy, as expressed politically through direct democracy (autonomy/ democracy tradition), and as

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a theoretical project, as it was developed in the seminal book entitled Towards An Inclusive Democracy1(TID) and other publications,2 as well as in the pages of the theoretical journals Democracy and Nature (1992-2003) and its successor The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (2004-).

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE AUTONOMY/DEMOCRACY PROJECT

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As regards the view of ID as a political project, one could argue that this project emerged in classical Athens, where, for the first time in human history, the institution of society was questioned both at the institutional and the imaginary level. This was in contrast to the state of heteronomy, which characterized all societies until then and has characterized almost all societies since then, i.e. the state in which “a society, despite the fact that it is always a selfcreation which creates its own institutions, still, in order to protect these institutions it imagines and legislates that they are not a human creation but an extra-social creation: a creation of God, or of the laws of Nature, History or Reason, which therefore we cannot change.3 Although it is, of course, true that power relations and structures did not disappear in the Polis (not only at the economic level, where inequities were obvious, but even at the political level, where the hierarchical structure of society was made clear by the exclusion of women, immigrants and slaves from the proceedings of the ecclesia), Athenian democracy was, nevertheless, the first historical example of the identification of the sovereign with those exercising sovereignty. As Hannah Arendt pointed out: [T]he whole concept of rule and being ruled, of government and power in the sense in which we understand them, as well as the regulated order attending them, was felt to be prepolitical and to belong to the private rather than the public sphere . . . equality therefore far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership and to move to a sphere where 4 neither rule nor being ruled existed.

Therefore, although classical Athenian democracy lasted for more than a century, it was only the sperm of a genuine democracy because of its inherent limitations and contradictions. In fact, as I pointed out in TID,5 it can be shown that the final failure of Athenian democracy was not due, as is usually asserted by its critics, to the innate contradictions of democracy itself (or to external factors) but, on the contrary, to the fact that the Athenian democracy 1

Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New liberatory Project (London/New York: Cassell/Continuum, 1997/1998). The book has already been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Greek. 2 See e.g. Global Capitalism and the Demise of the Left: Renewing Radicalism through Inclusive Democracy (ed. by Steven Best) A publication of the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (Vol. 5, No. 1, special issue winter 2009) 3 Cornelius Castoriadis, “The West and the Third World’ in The Broken World (Athens, 1992, p. 79; See, also his Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) pp. 158-170 4 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 32-33 5 Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, p.194

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never matured into an inclusive democracy, i.e. a full economic and direct democracy, as well as a democracy in the social realm. In other words, the collapse of the first direct (political) democracy cannot adequately be explained by simply referring to the immature 'objective' conditions, the low development of productive forces and so on — important as these may be — because the same objective conditions prevailed at that time in many other places all over the Mediterranean, not only in the rest of Greece, and yet democracy flourished only in classical Athens. This, assuming of course that John Keane‘s6 assertion that democracy emerged some 2,000 years before the classical Athenian one in ancient Mesopotamia, is just a groundless naivety, which also betrays a high degree of academic incompetence based on a complete ignorance of the fundamental preconditions for democracy and particularly of its intrinsic connection with rationalism and consequently secularism. Instead, for this ―expert‖, any kind of assembly decision-taking is democracy—something that implies that even monks who take decisions in assemblies (a common practice in many monasteries) also exercise a form of direct democracy! Obviously, for Keane democracy is just a procedure and not a polity and clearly he has never heard that ―democracy,‖ as Castoriadis puts it, ―is the project of breaking the closure at the collective level (as) philosophy …is the project of breaking the closure at the level of thought‖7 – a fact which could well explain the simultaneous rise of democracy and philosophy in classical Athens. No wonder that the same establishment ―expert‖ argues that representative ―democracy‖ (which Castoriadis aptly called ‗liberal oligarchy‘) is a form of democracy, again, because of his obvious ignorance of the fact that the modernity concepts of democracy, (liberal democracy, social democracy, Third World democracy, Soviet democracy e.tc.) are not, in fact, forms of democracy. This is not because they are hardly related to the classical Greek conception, but because they bear no relation at all to any conception of democracy as self-government by the people (which is the original meaning of demo+cracy, i.e. the power of the people) and, as such, constitute an abuse of the word. The autonomy/democracy project, having reached its peak in classical Athens, was eclipsed for almost 15 centuries, a period during which heteronomy was dominant. However, this project reappeared in the twelfth century AD, in the medieval free cities of Europe, although it soon came into conflict with the new statist forms of heteronomy which, in the end, destroyed the attempts at local self-government and federalism.8 In fact, the period beginning with the Enlightenment and in particular the two centuries 1750-1950 were characterized by a fierce political, social and ideological conflict that developed between the two traditions. The heteronomy tradition was expressed by the spread of the system of the capitalist market economy and its political complement, representative ―democracy‖, which established new social forms of hierarchical organization. These forms embodied a new 'social paradigm' that was also mainly adopted by the socialist movement, i.e. the boundless spread of 'rational domination', which identified progress with the development of productive forces and the idea of dominating Nature. During the same period, the autonomy/democracy project, under the influence of the Enlightenment's ideas, was radicalized at the intellectual, social and political levels, as it was expressed by the direct-democracy forms of organization in the Parisian Sections of the early 6

John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (W.W. Norton, 2009) Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 21 8 For a classic description of the medieval free cities see P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (London, 1902) CBS. V&V 7

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1790s, the first soviets in the Soviet revolution (before the communist party assimilated them), the collectives in the Spanish Civil War and the May 1968 events in Paris, which represented an attempt for anti-systemic change in Western Europe that well transcended the usual uprisings of the last century. Thus, the May ‘68 demands questioned not only the unequal distribution of economic and political power, but also every form of social power as well-- the very power relations and structures of any hierarchical system—along with the meaning of post-Enlightenment Progress itself and consequently of economic growth and consumerism and, indirectly, the Society-Nature relationship. The dominant trend in May ‘68 was that of overthrowing the ―system‖ ―in the broad sense of any hierarchical form of social organization, whether ―capitalist‖ or ―socialist‖ (either in the form of ―actually existing socialism‖ or social democracy)― as well as its values. The rationale behind this trend was that no previous social system had ever succeeded in really liberating humans from the domination of various elites, even though the socialist system had been more successful in satisfying the basic needs of all citizens than the capitalist one. Therefore, the rebels of May ‘68 took for granted the achievements of both the then ―actually existing socialism‖ and of social democracy and were fighting for total freedom in the sense of individual and collective autonomy and true democracy at every level. That is, they were, in fact, fighting for what we call Inclusive Democracy today, i.e. the political project which theorizes the autonomy/democracy project, creating a synthesis of the socialist and democratic traditions along with the anti-systemic currents within the ―new social movements‖ which emerged in the aftermath of May ‗68 (i.e. within the feminist and Green movements, minority movements and so on). Yet, despite May 1968, it is obvious that in the present era (1950 onwards), both the heteronomy and the autonomy/democracy projects have entered a period of serious crisis. Thus, although the spread of the market economy's rational domination has accelerated and this system together with its political complement in representative ‗democracy‘ has become almost universal, the system itself based on this project is in a deep crisis, a crisis not in the Marxist sense of the capitalist relations of production hindering the further development of forces of production, but in the sense of the multidimensional crisis that we shall see in the next section. However, the autonomy/democracy project, paradoxically, after its brief explosion in the late 1960s, is also in a state of 'total eclipse', a fact illustrated by the lack of serious social, political and ideological conflicts, despite the increasingly frequent insurrections which also embody the same forms of political, social and economic organization that characterized the autonomy/democracy traditions in the last two hundred years or so (e.g. the Argentinian insurrection of 2000, or the Greek insurrection of 2008).

Is Democracy a Product of Historical Evolution or a Social Creation Representing a Break in Historical Continuity? The issue that arises here is whether changes in the historical forms of social organization reveal some kind of directionality towards an autonomous/democratic society in the above sense, which would represent the graded actualization of unfolding human potentialities (in the dialectical sense of the word) for freedom (as e.g. dialectical naturalism maintains9), or 9

Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology (Montreal: Black Rose Press, 1995) ch 1.

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whether, instead, they do not reveal any form of directionality, since the form society takes each time just represents social creations conditioned (but not determined) by time and space constraints, as well as by institutional and cultural factors. The former view sees history as a process of progress, the unfolding of reason, and assumes that there is an evolution going on towards autonomous or democratic forms of political, economic and social organization, a view which, to my mind, is not supported by history10. The latter view sees the autonomous society as a rupture, a break in the historical continuity that the heteronomous society has historically established. Of course, 'autonomy/heteronomy' is not an ironclad distinction. Autonomous and heteronomous forms of social organization historically interact with each other, and elements of both may coexist within the boundaries of the same society. For instance, the Athenian democracy was a form of society that embodied strong elements of autonomy (direct democracy — as regards free citizens) and heteronomy (economic inequality, gender inequality, slavery — as regards the rest). Furthermore, in today's sophisticated heteronomous societies, there are several elements of autonomy (although they are diminishing in the era of neoliberal globalization), remnants, usually, of past conflicts between the autonomy and the heteronomy tradition. Taking, therefore, for granted the interaction between autonomy and heteronomy, (in other words, explicitly assuming that the two traditions themselves change and, to some extent, change each other over time), the real issues are, first, whether the two traditions are qualitatively different and, second, assuming they are, whether any evolutionary pattern may be established towards the autonomous form of social organization. As regards the first question, I think few would disagree with the thesis that autonomy and heteronomy are not just quantitatively but qualitatively different. Although, historically, both the autonomy and heteronomy traditions have been embodied in various forms of social organization (from the Athenian ecclesia to the Parisian Sections and the Spanish collectives as regards the former, and from absolute and constitutional monarchies to parliamentary 'democracies' and state socialism as regards the latter), the basic characteristic that all autonomous forms of social organization share is that they are all based on the fundamental principle of equality in the distribution of power, whereas the opposite is true for all heteronomous forms. It is, therefore, obvious that the differences between the various types of heteronomous (as well as types of autonomous) forms of social organization are quantitative, whereas the differences between the autonomous and heteronomous forms themselves are qualitative. Autonomy and heteronomy are two fundamentally different traditions expressing completely different 'paradigms' about social living; they are incommensurable in the Kuhnian11 sense. The question here, therefore, is whether, as the famous Hegelian 'law' maintains, quantitative differences beyond a certain point are transformed into qualitative changes, or whether, instead, there is no possibility of establishing any sort of evolutionary process between the autonomy and the heteronomy traditions. According to the ID view presented here, despite the development within each tradition and the possible interaction, still, no development between them may be established. For instance, one may support the case that although constitutional monarchy did express a more sophisticated form of heteronomy than absolute monarchy and, by the same token, parliamentary 'democracy' does represent the most sophisticated form of oligarchy in history, 10 11

see for a critique of dialectical naturalism Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, pp. 328-340 T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970)

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still, the differences between the political regimes involved refer to the size and the composition of the ruling elites, not to the fundamental distinction itself between ruling elites and the rest of the population - a distinction that excludes the vast majority of the population from any effective political decision-taking. Similarly, the Parisian Sections of the early 1790s,12 in which women had an equal share in the distribution of political power, did express a more complete form of democracy than the Athenian assemblies. Finally, the Spanish collectives in the Civil War,13 which contained a significant element of economic democracy, did express a more complete form of autonomy than both the Athenian and the Parisian assemblies. Furthermore, although it is recognized that the break with the heteronomy tradition takes place in a specific time and place and therefore that history, tradition, and culture certainly condition the form that society takes, institutional and historical factors never determine when and where this break will take place, or even the specific form that the autonomous organization of society will take. An autonomous form of social organization has always been a creation expressing a break with past development. The rare historical cases of relatively free forms of social organization came about as a result of the fact that at certain historical moments, for reasons that only partly refer to the concrete historical circumstances, a new paradigm expressing the autonomy project had become hegemonic and had led to a rupture of the dominant social paradigm of heteronomy, although this should not be taken to mean, as ecologists and Castoriadians believe, that society could change just by changing our values or ―imaginary significations‖ respectively.14 That such ruptures do not fit into any unfolding dialectical pattern of history, and cannot even be considered as 'reactions' to heteronomous forms of organization, is made obvious by the fact that similar, if not identical, institutional and historical circumstances have repeatedly led, throughout history, to very different forms of social organization. As a rule, they have led to heteronomous forms of social organization and only very exceptionally to attempts at autonomy. Representative 'democracy' is a characteristic example. As I tried to show elsewhere15, it was the ―Founding Fathers‖ of the US constitution who, in the last quarter of the 18th century, literally invented representative ―democracy‖, an idea without any historical precedent in the ancient world. Up until that time, democracy had expressed the classical Athenian meaning of the sovereignty of the demos, in the sense of the direct exercise of power by all citizens. The Founding Fathers considered as completely unacceptable this direct exercise of power, ostensibly, because it was supposed to institutionalise the power of the ―mob‖ and the tyranny of the majority. In fact, however, their real aim was the dilution of popular power, so that the claims of representative ―democracy‖ about equal distribution of political power could be made compatible with the dynamic of the market economy, which was already leading to a

12

M. Bookchin, The Third Revolution, Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, (London: Cassell, 1996) vol 1, ch 19 13 Sam Dolgoff (ed.)The Anarchist Collectives: Workers‘ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-39 (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974) 14 see Takis Fotopoulos, ‗Recent Theoretical Developments in the Inclusive Development project‘ in Global Capitalism and the Demise of the Left: Renewing Radicalism through Inclusive Democracy (ed. by Steven Best) 15 Takis Fotopoulos, The multidimensional A publication of the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (special issue August 2005), ch 1

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concentration of economic power at the hands of an economic elite.16 Therefore, the more or less simultaneous institutionalisation of the system of the market economy and representative ―democracy‖, during the Industrial Revolution in the West, introduced the fundamental element of modernity: the formal separation of society from the economy and the state that has been the basis for modernity ever since. Furthermore, it could be shown that the gradual extension of the right to citizenship to the vast majority of the population ―a process that was completed only in the twentieth century― did not offset the effective loss of the meaning of citizenship, in terms of the exercise of power. Thus, not only is representative democracy not a form of democracy in the proper sense of the word, but it cannot, in any way, be seen as a stage in the development of democracy. This is obvious not only from the fact that direct democracy historically preceded parliamentary 'democracy' but also because, as the experience of the past two centuries or so has shown, parliamentary democracy only evolves – if at all – into a further concentration of political power at the hands of professional politicians' elites, at national or supra-national levels. Therefore, social development, in terms of political organization, is not 'cumulative', i.e. one leading from various forms of 'democracy' which reflect quantitative differences (constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, etc.), towards direct democracy - which is clearly a qualitative change. In conclusion, a democratic society will simply be a social creation, which can only be grounded in our own conscious selection of those forms of social organization which are conducive to individual and social autonomy. An important side effect of this approach is that it avoids falling into the trap of grounding the free society in 'certain' truths at the very moment when most certainties, not only in social sciences but even in natural sciences, are collapsing. However, the fact that a democratic society represents a conscious choice does not mean that this is just an arbitrary choice. This is clearly implied by the very fact that the autonomy project turns up at various points in history again and again, particularly in periods when heteronomous society is in crisis. Furthermore, the fact that heteronomous society has been the dominant form of social organization in the past is not indicative of its intrinsic superiority over an autonomous society. Heteronomous societies have always been created and maintained by privileged elites, which have aimed at the institutionalization of inequality in the distribution of power, through violence (military, economic) and/or indirect forms of control (religion, ideology, mass media). Finally, the grounding of a free society in a conscious choice does not deprive us of an ethical criterion by which to assess the various forms of social organization. In fact, the degree to which a form of social organization secures an equal distribution of political, economic and social power is a powerful criterion by which to assess it. But this is a criterion chosen by us and not implied by some sort of evolutionary process. In other words, it is a criterion which is consistent with the view that I will develop in the next section, namely that the project for a democratic society can neither be grounded in scientism and objectivism nor in utopianism and irrationalism.

16

E.M. Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 214-15

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2. INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY AS A THEORETICAL PROJECT By a ―theoretical project,‖ I do not mean, as I will try to show next, a project based on some supposedly ―objective‖ economic or natural laws or tendencies (e.g. the Marxist project or the project of social ecology), nor do I mean, as is currently fashionable among those following the postmodern critique of ―objectivist‖ political projects, some intellectual‘s vision about the future society based on the moral values he or she more or less arbitrarily selects17. What I mean by a ―theoretical project‖ is a fully comprehensive political program which, integrated into one of the historic traditions of the Left, derives ―on the basis of an axiomatic choice― a systematic analysis of past and present society and the trends within it, and then draws the organizational principles of the future society and the consequent conclusions on a strategy and tactics that will move us from here to there. To my mind, the truly radical objective today is to fight for the creation of a new anti-systemic movement aiming at the equal distribution of political and economic power, so that society could be re-integrated not only with the economy and polity but with Nature as well. This implies the need for a new liberatory politics, like that proposed by the Inclusive Democracy project, that would be a synthesis -- as well as a transcendence -- of the ‗universalist‘ politics that characterized the radical movements of modernity with the ‗politics of difference‘, which came into the forefront in the last quarter of a century with the emergence of the ‗new social movements‘ (feminist, Green, identity movements etc). In fact, the ID project represents the synthesis as well as the transcendence of existing traditions and movements. It expresses a synthesis of the classical democratic and socialist traditions, whilst it also encompasses the anti-systemic trends within contemporary movements for emancipation (Greens, feminists and others). As such, the ID project is not a ―model‖ to be copied, but it simply defines the institutional preconditions for the equal distribution of all forms of power (i.e. for individual and collective autonomy), and at the same time it describes how an economy based on such an institutional framework could function in a way that covers the needs of all its citizens.

Do We Still Need a ‗Universal‘ Project of Human Emancipation? It is true that a series of recent developments have indeed induced the double need to abandon ‗grand narratives‘ and, also, to recognise the importance of social divisions beyond those of strict economic class divisions, which marked the previous forms of modernity. Such developments were the collapse of Soviet Marxism, the decline of social democracy and parallel technological developments that led to the drastic reduction of the working class and the rise of the ‗new social movements‘. However, recognition of such developments in no way legitimizes the stand adopted by many in the (postmodern) Left in favour of abandoning any ‗universal‘ project of human emancipation. To my mind, it is this stand which leads them to submit to the ‗inevitability‘ of the market economy and representative ‗democracy‘ and, in the interests of the politics of ‗difference‘ and ‗identity‘, also to dispose of any notion of class divisions. Instead, class divisions need to be redefined (beyond the original conception of 17

see e.g. Michael Albert, Parecon, Life after Capitalism (London/NY: Verso, 2003)

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them which was restricted to the economic sphere) and a new universalist project of emancipation should be adopted that would incorporate a new model of social divisions, which would embrace the politics of ‗difference‘ and ‗identity‘. It seems, therefore, that the postmodern emphasis on plurality and ‗difference‘, in combination with the simultaneous rejection of every idea to develop a universal project for human emancipation, in effect, serves as an alibi for abandoning liberatory analysis and politics and conforming to the status quo. Similarly, as regards the rejection of essentialism, postmodernists, yet again, throw away the baby with the bath water. It is, of course, right to reject Marxist essentialism which subsumed all forms of oppression to economic domination and exploitation, i.e. to the economic form of power which, however, is only one form of power among an ensemble of numerous other sources of power characterizing every form of collective life. But, to draw the conclusion out of this rejection of Marxist essentialism that there is no centre, or essence of power, is a very big jump indeed. In fact, as I attempted to show elsewhere18, there is a unifying element which may unite members of the subordinate social groups around a liberatory project like the Inclusive Democracy project: this is their exclusion from various forms of power —an exclusion which is founded on the unequal distribution of power that characterizes today‘s main political and economic institutions and the corresponding values. This means that the postmodern fragmentation and ‗localisation‘ of social struggle around ‗local‘ social divisions, namely, divisions determined by identities ―something that inevitably leads to reformism and conformism― is neither necessary nor desirable. Finally, I would not raise any objections concerning the rejection of closed systems and ‗objectivity‘ in favour of indeterminacy, uncertainty, ambiguity, as well as of a transdisciplinary approach based on the assumption of a language and culture-conditioned truth (particularly as regards the interpretation of social reality), as this is obviously the core of the epistemological basis of the Inclusive Democracy project.19 However, this does not imply that we have to adopt the postmodern relativism which equates all traditions and all kinds of reason, nor does it mean that, without some kind of ‗objective‘ criterion, our choice for freedom becomes an arbitrary one, ‗a mere matter of opinion‘. 20As I attempted to show in TID21, the choice for freedom is not an arbitrary utopia but is based on the chronic multidimensional crisis that has emerged since the rise of modern society, as a result of the concentration of power to which the institutions of the market economy and representative ‗democracy‘ had, inevitably, led.

―Class‖ Divisions in Today‘s Society In this problematique, the main thesis of the Inclusive Democracy project is that the hierarchical totality that constitutes today‘s society consists of a multiplicity of hierarchical sub-totalities defined on the basis of economic, political and social criteria —each totality 18

see Takis Fotopoulos, ―Class Divisions Today-The Inclusive Democracy Approach‖, Democracy & Nature, vol.6, no.2, (July 2000), pp. 211-251 19 Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, Ch. 8. 20 Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, (Montreal: Black Rose, 1995) p. xix. 21 Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, chs 5 & 8

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with its own dominant and subordinate social groups. The present social divisions between dominant and subordinate social groups in the political sphere (professional politicians versus the rest of citizenry), the economic sphere (company owners, directors and managers versus workers, clerks etc) and the broader social sphere (men versus women, whites versus blacks, ethnic majorities versus minorities and so on), as well as within them, are based on hierarchical structures that institutionalize an unequal distribution of power in all its forms, as well as being based on the corresponding cultures and ideologies. In modern society, the main structures which institutionalize the unequal distribution of power are the market economy and representative democracy, although other structures which institutionalize the unequal distribution of power between sexes, races, ethnicities etc cannot just be ‗reduced‘ to these two main structures. However, as the economic element, in a market economy, is the dominant one, we may assume that although material interests alone are not enough in determining identities, still, the individual‘s position within the economic sphere is the necessary condition in determining one‘s own identity, whereas one‘s position within the other sub-totalities, defined on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity etc, is the sufficient condition. The ‗class‘ position of an individual in such a hierarchical totality is, therefore, determined by one‘s position within the ensemble of social groups constituting society, namely by one‘s membership of a number of social groups, either in a dominant or in a subordinate position. The individuals‘ class position affects their politics in the sense that the way, for instance, women, racial or ethnic minorities behave is determined not only by their gender, racial, or cultural identity respectively, but also by their overall position within the ensemble of social groups and, particularly, by the degree of political and economic power they share, which also affects their position within the ‗identity‘ social group in which they classify themselves. Furthermore, the class position of an individual affects their life chances, their access to education, health, housing etc, as well as their general social status. The unifying element that may unite those in subordinate positions around a liberatory project is their exclusion from various forms of power. At the same time, the differentiating element which differentiates members of the various social groups is not just the attitude of their members towards the established system, as Castoriadis22 argues, but also the very basis of their subordination, i.e. whether their subordinate position is founded on the unequal distribution of political, economic, or social power in general. It is, therefore, clear that the Inclusive Democracy project, while recognising the different identities of the social groups that constitute various sub-totalities, at the same time locates these differences within an overall socio-economic system which institutionalizes the concentration of power between and within various social groups. In other words, it is the concentration of power in all its forms, as a result of the prevailing power relations and structures, which, according to the Inclusive Democracy project, defines the ‗universalist‘ character of the social struggle today, as against the hierarchical structures based on identities, which, according to the postmodernist paradigm, define the ‗particularist‘ character of the localised struggles around identities. As one could expect, the adoption or, correspondingly, the rejection of ‗universalism‘ by the Inclusive Democracy project and the postmodern paradigm respectively, is crucial both 22

see Castoriadis‘ introductory interview in The Castoriadis Reader, edited by David Ames Curtis, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) pp.26-27.

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with respect to the politics proposed by the two paradigms, as w ell as to the conception of democracy, which they correspondingly adopt. As regards, first, the politics suggested by post-Marxists as opposed to supporters of the Inclusive Democracy project, it is not accidental that the former propose ―alliances and coalitions between and amongst groups otherwise engaged in ‗single issue‘ politics,‖23 whereas the latter propose the building of a massive programmatic political movement which would unite all the subordinate members of society on the basis of a comprehensive programme for systemic change that reintegrates society with economy, polity and Nature, through the institutionalization of the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for the equal distribution of power at all levels. In other words, it would unite the victims of the market economy system in its present internationalized form, i.e. the unemployed, the low-waged, farmers under extinction, the occasionally employed; workers and clerks who are exploited and alienated by the hierarchical structures at the workplace; citizens, particularly those belonging to the ‗middle groups‘, who are alienated by the present statecraft which passes as ―politics‖; women who are alienated by the hierarchical structures both at home and in the workplace; ethnic or racial minorities who are alienated by a discriminatory ‗statist‘ democracy which divides the population into first and second class citizens; those concerned about the present eco-damaging process in which they have no real ‗say‘ and so on.24 Therefore, the problem in emancipatory politics today, according to this approach, is how all the members of social groups who potentially form the basis for a new liberatory subject would be united by a common worldview, a common paradigm, which sees the ultimate cause of the present multidimensional crisis in the present institutionalized structures (and the corresponding value systems) that secure the concentration of power at all levels.

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The Philosophical Justification for a New Universalist Project An important philosophical question arising here is how we ‗justify‘ such a project, i.e. the issue is whether there is in fact a genuine dilemma in attempting to justify the democratic project, a dilemma that forces us to choose between either a modernist 'objectivist' approach (like the one used, for instance, by Marx to justify the socialist project ‗scientifically‘) or, alternatively, a postmodernist subjectivist approach. The choice of the former implies that, following the modernist tradition, in order to justify the need for an inclusive democracy, we have to rely on objective theories and methods, i.e. on procedures that are valid, irrespective of our expectations, wishes, attitudes and ideas. The implicit argument in favour of such an approach is that such theories and methods, in fact, reflect 'objective processes' at work in society or the natural world. However, as I showed elsewhere25, the choice of an 'objectivist' method to justify the need for an inclusive democracy is both problematic and undesirable. It is problematic because few still believe today, after the decisive introduction into twentieth-century science of the 23

See e.g. Simon Tormey, ―Post-Marxism, Democracy and the Future of Radical Politics‘, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No, 1 (March 2001) pp. 119-134 24 See Takis Fotopoulos, ―Class Divisions Today-The Inclusive Democracy Approach‖, Democracy & Nature, vol.6, no.2, (July 2000), pp. 211-251 25 Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, Ch. 8.

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uncertainty principle and chaos theory, that it is still possible to derive any 'objective' laws or 'tendencies' of social change. If cause and effect can be uncertain even in physics, the most exact of sciences, and the reference to necessary and universal laws is disputed even with respect to the natural world, it is obvious that postulating objective laws or tendencies that can be applied to society is absurd. And, it is undesirable because, as the case of the socialist project has shown, there is a definite link between the 'scientification' of that project at the hands of Marxist-Leninists and the consequent bureaucratization of socialist politics and the totalitarian transformation of social organization. But, if modernist objectivism seems problematical and undesirable, this does not mean that postmodernist subjectivism is less problematical, as it may easily lead to general relativism and irrationalism, if not to the complete abandonment of radical politics. Thus, adopting the post-modern 'generalized conformism'26, in effect, implies the abandonment of any idea of a liberatory project under the (miserable) pretext of letting 'polyphony' flourish and under the (right) banner that 'politics, rightly understood, is firmly subjective'.27 Yet, today, it is possible to show that the above dilemma is, in fact, a false one, in other words, it is possible to define a liberatory project for an Inclusive Democracy without recourse to controversial objective grounds or to post-modern neo-conservatism. Thus, if we define freedom and the liberatory project in terms of the demand for social and individual autonomy, as I did in TID,28 we do so because we responsibly choose autonomy, as well as its expression in democracy, and we explicitly rule out the possibility of establishing any 'objective' laws, processes or tendencies which, inevitably, or 'rationally', lead to the fulfilment of the autonomy project. However, once we have chosen, broadly, the content of the liberatory project, some definite implications follow regarding our interpretation and assessment of social reality. In other words, the very definition of a liberatory project conditions the 'way of seeing' and criticizing social reality. Therefore, the fact that the project of autonomy is not objectively grounded does not mean that 'anything goes' and that it is, therefore, impossible to derive any definable body of principles to assess social and political changes, or to develop a set of ethical values to assess human behaviour. Reason is still necessary in a process of deriving the principles and values which are consistent with the project of autonomy/democracy and, in this sense, are rational. Therefore, the principles and values derived within such a process do not just express personal tastes and desires and, in fact, they are much more 'objective' than the principles and values that are derived from disputable interpretations of natural and social evolution. The logical consistency of the former with the project of autonomy/democracy could be assessed in an indisputable way, unlike the contestable 'objectivity' of the latter. This implies that the liberatory project for an Inclusive Democracy can only be based on a democratic rationalism which transcends 'scientism' and irrationalism as well as general relativism. Furthermore, the fact that the liberatory project cannot be 'scientified' or 'objectivized' does not mean that it is just a Utopia in the negative sense of the word. A liberatory project is not a utopia if it is based on today's reality. And today's reality is summed up by an 26

Cornelius Castoriadis, ‗The retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalised Conformism‖, in World in Fragments (ed. by David Ames Curtis) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) 27 Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason (London: Verso, 1987), p. 306. 28 Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, Ch. 5 Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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unprecedented crisis of the 'growth economy', a crisis which engulfs all societal realms (political, economic, social, cultural) as well as the Society-Nature relationship, as we shall see in the next section –a crisis which has brought into question the main institutions of present society as they were formed in modernity and particularly the system of the capitalist market economy and its political complement in representative ―democracy‘. Last, but not least, a liberatory project is not a utopia if a close correspondence can be shown between this project as a theoretical project and as a political project, as I tried to do in the previous and present sections. The rejection of the view which sees the liberatory project as a 'scientific' project, or, alternatively, as a utopia, has very important implications, as far as political organization is concerned. First, it rules out the traditional form of hierarchical radical organization ('those who know' and therefore have an automatic right to lead, and those who do not). Second, it rules out the various lifestyle strategies which explicitly exclude direct involvement in the political process. However, discarding scientism (Marxist or otherwise) should not push us to the alternative trap of general relativism and irrationalism. As regards relativism, first, we should make an important distinction between political and democratic relativism on the one hand and philosophical relativism on the other. It is obvious that democratic relativism,29( i.e. that all traditions, theories, ideas, etc. are debated and decided upon by all citizens), is an essential element of democracy. The same applies to political relativism, (i.e. that all traditions have equal rights). Still, a strong case can be made against philosophical relativism (i.e. that all traditions have equal truth value, in the sense of all being accepted as equally true or false). This is particularly the case when philosophical relativism contradicts democratic relativism.30 Thus, although one may accept the postmodernist view that history cannot be seen as a linear (Kant et al.) or dialectical (Hegel, Marx) process of progress that embodies reason, this does not imply that we should assign equal value to all historical forms of social organization: from classical Athens, the Swiss cantons and the Parisian sections, to the present 'democratic' regimes. This type of general relativism, which is adopted by postmodernism, simply expresses the latter's abandonment of any critique of the institutionalized social reality and a general retreat into conformism, as was pointed out above. Ιn other words, one cannot assign equal value to the autonomy and the heteronomy traditions, as the adoption of the latter precludes democratic relativism itself. The very possibility of instituting democratic relativism depends on the rejection of philosophical relativism: a conscious choice has, therefore, to be made between these two traditions and the implied conceptions of politics. It is only in this way that one may avoid the pitfalls of scientism/objectivism, without falling into the postmodernist trap of a general relativism that will assign equal value to all traditions. But, once we have made a choice among the main traditions, in other words, once we have defined the content of the liberatory project in terms of the autonomy/democracy tradition, certain important implications follow at the ethical level, as we have seen above, as well as at the interpretational level. For instance, environmentalist (liberal or social-democratic), mystical and metaphysical 'solutions' to the ecological problem should be rejected, not because they are not compatible with supposedly 29 30

P. Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, p. 59. No wonder that even Feyerabend, a strong supporter of relativism, did not go as far as to adopt philosophical relativism; P. Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society, pp. 82-3.

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'objective', social or natural, processes at work, but because they could be shown to be incompatible with social and individual autonomy, that is, incompatible with freedom itself. The problem today, therefore, is not either to adopt general relativism, a stand that may lead to a post-modern conformism or, alternatively, to adopt some kind of 'objectivism'. What is lacking today is not a new 'objective' justification of the liberatory project, but the political will to define it and take part in its realization! Another important issue that arises once scientism/objectivism is rejected is how we can avoid the retreat into the various types of irrationalism that currently abound in the Green movement (e.g. deep ecology), the feminist movement (some versions of eco-feminism) and so on. As is well known, versions of irrationalism and spiritualism are frequently adopted widely both in the North (revival of the old religions, adoption of some spiritualist currents from the East, like Taoism, which influence several Anglo-Saxon anarchists, etc.) and in the South (Muslim fundamentalism). In my view, the stand on relativism that was suggested above, combined with the conscious choice of the autonomy/democracy tradition, which is implied by democratic relativism, rules out all forms of irrationalism. This is so because the common characteristic that the various forms of irrationalism share is that they all lie outside the field of logon didonai (rendering account and reason), which, as Castoriadis puts it, 'in itself entails the recognition of the value of autonomy in the sphere of thinking'31 that is synonymous with reason itself. In this sense, science, properly understood, is a form of logon didonai. In other words, from the democratic viewpoint, the essence of science lies not in its content, although of course the natural sciences, by fostering a secular approach to reality, played a significant liberatory role in subverting religious and metaphysical beliefs; the essence of science lies in the constant questioning of truths, i.e. in the procedures it uses to derive its truths. Scientific 'truths', as well as the procedures used to derive them, unlike mystical, intuitional and irrational 'truths' and procedures in general, are subject to constant questioning and critical assessment. By the same token, the fact that autonomy is not an 'individual' affair and it is 'decisively conditioned by the institution of society'32 implies that the project of autonomy can only be realized through the autonomous activity of the people, within a process of creating social institutions, which make autonomous thinking possible, and not through some kind of spiritual process of 'self-realization', as deep ecologists, for instance, suggest.33 In fact, such a process of self-realization could only enhance privacy and the withdrawal from the social process that institutes society. A hierarchical society based on the domination of human over human could perfectly survive the self-transformation (usually of its middle classes) in the form of Mahayana Buddhism's enlightenment, or reborn Christianism. It is not accidental, anyway, that the self-transformation of millions of Americans and Western Europeans along these lines, in the past three decades, was fully compatible with one of the ruling elites‘ most vicious attacks in the form of neoliberal policies (Reaganomics, Thatcherism, etc.). So, democracy, as a process of social self-institution, implies a society which is open ideologically, namely, which is not grounded in any closed system of beliefs, dogmas or 31

C. Castoriadis, 'The crisis of Marxism and the crisis of polities', Society and Nature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), p. 209. Ibid. 33 According to Arne Naess, the father of deep ecology, 'The higher the self-realization attained by anyone the broader and deeper the identification with others', Arne Naess, Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 196. 32

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ideas. Therefore, in a democratic society, dogmas and closed systems of ideas cannot constitute parts of the dominant social paradigm, although, of course, individuals can have whatever beliefs they wish, as long as they are committed to upholding the democratic principle, namely the principle according to which society is autonomous, institutionalized as inclusive democracy. So, the democratic principle is not grounded in any divine, natural or social 'laws' or tendencies, but in our own conscious and self-reflective choice between the two main historical traditions: the tradition of heteronomy which has been historically dominant, and the tradition of autonomy. The choice of autonomy implies that the institution of society is not based on any kind of irrationalism (faith in God, mystical beliefs, etc.), or on 'objective truths' about social evolution grounded in social or natural 'laws'. This is so because any system of religious or mystical beliefs (as well as any closed system of ideas), by definition, excludes the questioning of some fundamental beliefs or ideas and, therefore, is incompatible with citizens setting their own laws. In fact, the principle of the 'nonquestioning' of some fundamental beliefs is common to every religion or set of metaphysical and mystical beliefs, from Christianity to Taoism. Thus, as far as Christianity is concerned, it is rightly pointed out that 'Jesus' ethics are theologically based: they are not autonomous, i.e. derived from the needs of human individuals or society'.34 Similarly, Taoism (adored by some anarchists today!) also explicitly condemns reasoning and argumentation ('Disputation is a proof of not seeing clearly' declares Chuang Tzu).35 Therefore, the fundamental element of the autonomy/democracy project is the creation of our own truth, something that social individuals can only achieve through direct democracy, that is, the process through which they continually question any institution, tradition or 'truth'. In a democracy, there are simply no given truths. The practice of individual and collective autonomy presupposes autonomy in thought, in other words, the constant questioning of institutions and truths. This could also explain why in classical Greece it was not just democracy that flourished, but also philosophy, in the sense of questioning any 'truths' given by custom, tradition or previous thought. In fact, questioning was the common root of both philosophy and democracy. While popular assemblies, as a form of decision-taking, existed both before and after the Athenian ecclesia (usually having their roots in tribal assemblies), the differentiating characteristic of the Athenian ecclesia was the crucial fact that it was not grounded in religion or tradition but in citizens' doxa (opinion). Thus, all the laws approved by the ecclesia started with the clause 'ἔδοξε τῃ Βουλῄ και τῳ Δήμῳ' (i.e. this is the opinion of the Demos) and any reference to God was inconceivable. This is in sharp contrast to the Judeo-Christian tradition, where, as Castoriadis points out, the source of the laws in the Old Testament is divine, with Jehovah giving the laws to Moses. However, if it is neither feasible nor desirable to ground the demand for democracy in 'scientific' or 'objective' 'laws' or 'tendencies' which direct social 'evolution' towards the fulfilment of objective potentialities, then this demand can only be founded on a liberatory project, like the Inclusive Democracy project., which synthesises and transcends existing traditions and trends.

34 35

Paul J. Achtemeier (ed.) Harper's Bible Dictionary (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 481. Quoted in Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (London: Fontana, 1983), p. 126.

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Democratic Rationalism Therefore, neither ‗objectivism‘ nor irrationalism has any role to play in the process that will move us towards an Inclusive Democracy. As I tried to show above, democracy is incompatible with 'objectivist' types of rationalism, similar to the ones we inherited from the Enlightenment. Furthermore, Inclusive Democracy (which is premised on the constant questioning of any given truth) is not only fundamentally incompatible with irrationalism, i.e. irrational belief systems which take for granted certain ‗truths‘ derived through irrational methods; it is also incompatible with objective rationalism in the form of closed systems of ideas, i.e. rational ideologies, which take for granted certain ‗truths‘ derived through rational methods, within the framework of ‗objective‘ rationalism. This is particularly the case with ‗objective truths‘ about social evolution grounded in social or natural ‗laws‘. This means that the democratic institution of society presupposes that the dominant social paradigm not only cannot be founded on some form of irrationalism, but also on any form of ‗objective‘ rationalism (e.g. ‗dialectical materialism‘, ‗dialectical naturalism‘, etc.). Citizens should be setting their own laws and developing their own ‗truths‘ about their society. So, democracy is compatible with only one form of rationalism, democratic rationalism, namely, rationalism founded in democracy as a structure and a process of social selfinstitution. This implies that a confederal inclusive democracy is non-viable when some of the communities in the confederation believe in ‗given truths‘ (i.e. truths or values not emerging from rational democratic discussion but from ‗sacred‘ laws given by God, or spiritual truths, or even ‗laws‘ derived from a specific reading of social and/or natural evolution). In a democratic society, either the majority of citizens accept the principle that every decision affecting social life, including values and ethical codes conditioning individual behaviour, is democratically taken and everybody has to abide by the relevant decisions -- irrespective of whether these decisions come into conflict with his/her belief in Christ, Mohammet, Buddha or voodoo -- or it is not democratic at all.Therefore, if our aim is to reach a synthesis of the autonomous-democratic, libertarian socialist and radical Green and feminist traditions, I think that our starting point should be the fact that the creative element in History plays a crucial role with respect to social change. This implies that the project for democracy may be grounded only in our own conscious choice between the heteronomous and the autonomous traditions. I think that this way of thinking avoids the traps of both objectivism and relativism. Thus, it avoids objectivism because the liberatory project is not 'objectivized': democracy is justified not by an appeal to objective tendencies with respect to natural or social evolution, but by an appeal to reason in terms of logon didonai, which explicitly denies the idea of any directionality as regards social change. Furthermore, it avoids relativism because it explicitly denies the view that all traditions such as, in this case, the autonomy and heteronomy ones, have equal truth-value. In other words, taking for granted that autonomy and democracy cannot be 'proven' but only postulated, we value autonomy and democracy more than heteronomy because, although both traditions are true, it is autonomy and democracy which we identify with freedom and we assess freedom as the highest human objective.

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3. THE PRESENT MULTIDIMENSIONAL CRISIS AND INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY On the basis of the axiomatic choice for autonomy vs. the alternative principle of heteronomy we can, a) analyze the past and the present, b) outline a future society on the basis of existing trends in human History and c) describe a transitional strategy towards an alternative society. In fact, these three issues have also constituted, historically, the main elements of any universalist political project. In this section, I will deal with the first issue and in the last section I will deal with the second issue, referring also briefly to the third one.

The Characteristics of The Present Crisis and Inclusive Democracy Few people today would doubt that present society, which takes the form of a neoliberal market/growth economy and representative ‗democracy‘ everywhere, faces a profound and widespread crisis encompassing all spheres of social life—although there are, of course, too many explanations around about the causes of this crisis and what is to be done to overcome it. The main characteristics of this crisis are the following: 

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



It is a multi-dimensional crisis in the sense that it involves the economic, the political, the ecological, the social as well as the cultural levels. It is a universal crisis in the sense that it calls into question practically every structure and idea that supports contemporary heteronomous societies in East and West, North and South. Therefore, the present crisis calls into question not just the political, economic, social and ecological structures that emerged with the rise of the market economy, but also the actual values that have sustained these structures and particularly the post-Enlightenment meaning of Progress and its partial identification with growth. In fact, it is precisely the universal character of this crisis that differentiates it from other crises in the past. The causes of this multidimensional crisis can all be attributed to the very institutions of modernity which today have been universalized. It is, in particular, the dynamics of the market economy and representative ‗democracy‘ that have led to the present concentration of power at all levels --a fact which creates an extra incentive for the elites controlling these institutions to support such trends fully, further enhancing their momentum. It is in this sense that the concentration of power at all levels can be considered to be the ultimate cause of every dimension of the present crisis. It is, therefore, clear that the ID approach is not deterministic, as it explicitly assumes that historical development is always the outcome of the interaction between, on the one hand, ―objective‖ factors, i.e. the dynamics of the prevailing institutions and, on the other, ―subjective‖ factors, i.e. the outcome of the social struggle between the ruling elites/privileged social groups and the rest of society.

Let us see the dimensions of this crisis in more detail, however, and why all these dimensions or aspects of the crisis could be traced back to the concentration of power at all levels. Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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The Economic Dimension of the Crisis It can be shown that the decisive element of the economic crisis consists in the fact that the system of the market economy is not inherently capable of creating an economically even world. This is the result of the fact that the concentration of economic power and the parallel growing inequality worldwide are not just consequences, but also preconditions for the reproduction of the market/growth economy, both from the economic and the ecological points of view. In other words, it is the dynamics of the market economy itself, in association with the role of the state in supporting this dynamics, which has led, first, to the historical concentration of economic power within each country and, second, to the present internationalized market economy, characterized by a gigantic concentration of economic power at world level, mostly at the hands of the Transnational Corporations, with a corresponding concentration of political and economic power at the hands of what I call the transnational elite.36 The starting point of the ID analysis is that at the beginning of the 19th century a selfregulating market system was created which, for the first time in human history, established the institutional separation of society into an economic and a political sphere. Previously in society, there had never been a separate economic system under either tribal, feudal or mercantile conditions. In other words, the crucial element that differentiated the market economy from all past economies (where markets were also self-regulating, since all markets tend to produce prices that equalise supply and demand) was the fact that, for the first time in human history, a self-regulating market system emerged ―a system in which markets developed even for the means of production, that is, labour, land and money. The control of the economic system by the market, according to Polanyi, ―means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market: instead of economy being embedded in social relations (as in the past), social relations are embedded in the economic system‖.37 Competition, which was the motor force of the new system, ensured that the grow-or-die principle characterized its dynamics. These same dynamics imply that the market economy, once installed, will inevitably end up as an internationalized market economy. So, during the Industrial Revolution, the combination of mechanized production and conditions of private ownership and control of the means of production inevitably led to: 

marketization, as the outcome of the effort of those controlling the market economy to minimize social controls on the markets and,



economic growth, as the outcome of a process which, at the micro-economic level, involves the pursuit of profit through the continuous improvement of efficiency.

Thus, marketization and growth, fuelled by competition, constituted, historically, the two fundamental components of the system of the market economy. Both orthodox and Marxist economic theory could be used to show that the maximization of efficiency, which is necessitated by competition, crucially depends on the further division of labour, specialization and the 36

See T. Fotopoulos, ―Globalisation, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalisation «Movement»,‖ Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001), pp. 233-280 37 Polanyi, The Great Transformation, the Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944/1957) p. 57. Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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expansion of the size of the market. This is why modern technology has always been designed to maximize economic efficiency, through further expansion of the division of labour and the degree of specialization, irrespective of the broader economic and social implications. No wonder that the institutionalization of this new system of economic organization set in motion the marketization process, i.e. the historical process that has transformed the sociallycontrolled markets of the past into the ―market economy‖ of the present in a process predominantly characterized by the attempt of the elites controlling the market economy to minimize effective social controls for the protection of labour and the environment over markets. However, economic growth, extension of division of labour and exploitation of comparative advantages implied a departure from the principle of self-reliance—a departure which had considerable repercussions at the economic level (unemployment, poverty, economic crises in the market economy and economic irrationalism in socialism), the cultural level (disintegration of social ties and values), the general social level (drastic restriction of individual and social autonomy) and, as we shall see, the ecological level. So, the inevitable consequence of the pursuit of profit, through maximization of efficiency and the size of the market, has been the concentration of economic power at the hands of the elites that control the economic process. Yet, concentration of economic power has not been the prerogative of the capitalist growth economy as a similar concentration took place in the socialist growth economy. Therefore, the difference between the two types of growth economy with respect to concentration was simply reduced to who owns the means of production and how they are allocated among different uses. Concentration of economic power does not, of course, constitute a new phenomenon. In all hierarchical societies, some concentration of wealth has always accompanied the concentration of political and military power at the hands of the various elites —a fact usually ―justified‖ through a system of social rules based upon religion. The new element in the growth economy is the fact that the reproduction of the social system itself, as well as of the power of the elite controlling it, crucially depends on the realization of the growth objective which, in turn, is ―justified‖ through the identification of Progress with growth. So, economic growth functions not just as a fundamental social and economic goal, but also as a basic means to reproduce the structures of unequal distribution of economic and political power which characterize the modern hierarchical society, as well as being a central element of the ideology that supports it. Therefore, the hierarchical society took a new form with the rise of the market economy in the West and the planned economy in the East. In this new form, the elite draws its power not only from the concentration of political, military or, in general, social power (as in the past), but, primarily, from the concentration of economic power, whether this concentration is brought about by the market mechanism, or through the control of the central planning. In this context, it can easily be shown, either by orthodox or by Marxist economic theory, that the concentration of economic power, as a result of commodity relations and the grow‑or‑die dynamic of the market economy, has led to a chronic economic crisis. Thus, the result of the present universalization of the market/growth economy in its present neoliberal form ―necessitated by the opening and liberalization of the markets due to the massive expansion of transnational corporations in the last quarter of a century or so― has been the creation of a bipolar world consisting of :

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one world which includes the privileged social groups benefiting from globalization, either in the North or the South (what we call ―the new North‖) and



another world which is deprived of the supposedly ―universal‖ benefits of neoliberal globalization and which includes the marginalized majority of the world population, either in the North or the South (―the new South‖).

So, neoliberal globalization has led to an unprecedented increase in world inequality, as also confirmed by a recent International Labour Organization (ILO) report, which concluded that since the early 1990s, i.e., the time that neoliberal globalization began to flourish all over the planet, income inequality has grown dramatically in most regions of the world. As Raymond Torres, Director of the Institute responsible for the Report stressed:38

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This report shows conclusively that the gap between richer and poorer households widened since the 1990s (…) This reflects the impact of financial globalization and a weaker ability of domestic policies to enhance the income position of the middle class and lowincome groups. The present global financial crisis is bound to make matters worse unless long-term structural reforms are adopted.

Thus, as the Report shows, between 1990 and 2005, approximately two thirds of all the countries surveyed experienced an increase in income inequality, with the income gap between the top and bottom 10 per cent of wage earners increasing in 70 per cent of the countries for which data were available. At the same time, the income gap between top executives and the average employee widened even further: in 2003, the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the 15 largest companies in the U.S.A. were earning 360 times more than the average worker; by 2007 they were earning 520 times more! Finally, as I attempted to show elsewhere39, the present financial crisis (which began in 2008, and which has now been converted –through a sovereign debt crisis--into an effective recession in the US, Europe and Japan), could also be attributed to the same concentration of economic power created by the dynamics of the internationalized market economy and the consequent opening and liberalization of markets. This is in contrast to the prevailing view, according to which the crisis is due to unscrupulous bankers and financiers (if not to the state itself, as neoliberals assert), or simply to the neoliberal deregulation of financial markets (as social-liberals assume who are calling for a ―new Bretton Woods‖). It could be argued, instead, that the deregulation of the financial markets is only part of the story and that this alone could not explain, for instance, where the ―unscrupulous‖ financiers found the huge capital resources to engage in their activities. Clearly, many more factors have to be brought into the picture, apart from the deregulation of financial markets, to answer these questions. Thus, without the opening and deregulation of capital markets, neither the move of massive investment capital by multinational corporations from the West to low-cost ―paradises‖ like China and India, nor, later on, the opposite flow of finance capital from these countries to the

38

ILO, World of Work Report: Income inequalities in the age of financial globalization (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2008). 39 Takis Fotopoulos, ―The myths about the economic crisis, the reformist Left and economic democracy‖, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol.4, No.4(October 2008) http://www. inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol4/vol4_no4_takis_economic_crisis.htm.

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bank vaults of countries in the North, would have been possible. So, it is the opening and deregulation of all markets —not just the financial markets – i.e. the very essence of neoliberal globalization, that is involved here. But how was this major structural change in the market economy brought about? Was it just that the ideologues of neoliberalism and the Chicago school of economics, which suddenly prevailed over the Keynesian orthodoxy of the statist post-war period, persuaded the political elites in the USA and the UK to impose these ―ideologies‖ or ―bad policies‖? Or was it, instead, the fact that the arrangements adopted in the post-war period in order to open and liberalize the markets predominantly institutionalized (rather than created) the present form of the internationalized market economy, as the ID approach40 suggests? According to the ID approach, it was the market economy‘s grow-or-die dynamic and, in particular, the emergence and continuous expansion of transnational corporations (TNC) and the parallel development of the Euro-dollar market, which led to its internationalized form today, as part of a historical trend41 (which was set in motion by the elites controlling the market economy at the time of its establishment) to minimize social controls over markets, particularly those aiming to protect labour and the environment, which interfered with economic ―efficiency‖ and profitability. In fact, the arrangements to liberalize the markets constitute the essence of what has been called ―neoliberalism‖/―neoliberal policies‖ ―in effect, a misleading term, since such policies have been introduced worldwide by governments of all persuasions, not only of the ―Right‖ (Reagan, the Bush family, Thatcher, et. al.), but also of the ―Left‖ (what I call social-liberals) in Europe, Australasia, etc. It is, therefore, clear that these policies reflect the structural changes of the market economy and the corresponding business requirements of late modernity and, in this sense, they are ―systemic‖ or endogenous policies necessitated by the dynamics of the market economy. In fact, the neoliberal policies initiated by the economic elites of late modernity to liberalize the newly-opened international markets were a plain repetition of a similar process that was initiated by the economic elites of early modernity, at the beginning of the 19th century, to liberalize the ―national‖ markets which had emerged at the end of the 18th century. However, for the reformist Left, neoliberalism as well as globalization are merely ―utopias‖ that the economic elites attempt to impose, in the context of a ―project‖ that ‗aims to create the conditions under which the neoliberal ―theory‖ can be realised!42 Yet, the very fact that there is a broad consensus between all major political parties in the major market economies to implement such policies is an obvious indication that the presently universal neoliberal policies, far from being a ―utopia‖, in fact, reflect the structural changes of late modernity.

40

T. Fotopoulos, ―Globalisation, the reformist Left and the Anti-Globalisation «Movement».‖ T. Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, ch. 1. 42 See e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, ―The essence of neoliberalism,‖ Le Monde Diplomatique (December 1998) 41

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The Ecological Dimension Similarly, as regards the ecological crisis, it can be shown43 that there is a definite relationship between the development of the ecological crisis and the parallel emergence of the growth economy, which, in turn, has been determined by the dynamics of the market economy, as it was the rise of the system of the market economy which has led, through different processes and for different reasons, to the two types of growth economy. By growth economy I mean the system of economic organization which is geared, either ‗objectively‘, through its own dynamics (as in the case of the capitalist market economy) or deliberately (as in the case of the now defunct ‗actually existing socialism‘), towards maximizing economic growth. The rise of these two types of growth economy cannot, however, be explained solely by referring to ‗objective‘ economic and technological factors (as Marxists do) or to ‗subjective‘ factors alone, i.e. imaginaries and corresponding values and ideas (as some Greens have attempted to do). Instead, to account for the rise of the growth economy fully, we need to refer, once again, to an interaction between ‗objective‘ and ‗subjective‘ factors. Thus, the objective factors refer to the grow-or-die dynamic of the market economy, whereas the subjective factors refer to the role of the growth ideology. Contrary, therefore, to the claims made by most currents in the Green movement, it is not the growth ideology that is the exclusive, or even the main, cause of the emergence of the growth economy. The growth ideology has simply been used to justify the market economy and its dynamics ―which inevitably led to the capitalist growth economy. The implication is that the main issue today cannot just be reduced to a matter of changing our values, as some radical Greens naively argue, or even condemning economic growth per se. Although, as mentioned above, concentration of economic power does not constitute a new phenomenon, the fact that the reproduction of the social system itself, as well as of the power of the elite controlling it, crucially depends on the realization of the growth objective (which, in turn, is `justified‘ through its identification with Progress), is a new phenomenon indeed. So, economic growth functions not just as a fundamental social and economic goal, but also as a basic means to reproduce the structure of unequal distribution of economic and political power which characterizes modern hierarchical society, as well as being a central element of the ideology that supports it. The upsetting of ecological systems, the widespread pollution, the threat to renewable resources, as well as the running out of non-renewable resources and, in general, the rapid downgrading of the environment and the quality of life have made the ecological implications of economic growth manifestly apparent in the past 30 years or so. It is also no accident that the destruction of the environment during the lifetime of the growth economy, in both its capitalist and state socialist versions, bears no comparison to the cumulative damage that previous societies inflicted on the environment. The fact that the main form of power within the framework of the growth economy is economic, and that the concentration of economic power involves the ruling elites in a constant struggle to dominate people and the natural world, could go a long way towards explaining the present ecological crisis. So, to understand 43

T. Fotopoulos, ―The Ecological Crisis as Part of the Present Multi-dimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy,‖ The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 2007). http://www.inclusivedemocracy. org/journal/vol3/vol3_no3_takis_torino.htm

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the ecological crisis we should not simply refer to the prevailing system of values and the resulting technologies (as the environmentalists and the deep ecologists suggest) nor exclusively to capitalist production relations (as eco‑Marxists propose) but mainly to the growth economy itself and the instrumentalist view of Nature implied by it (in which Nature is seen as an instrument to human welfare and economic growth). This is particularly evident with the greenhouse effect, which is now widely accepted as the main symptom of the ecological crisis. As is generally accepted, the greenhouse effect is already leading to catastrophic climatic consequences, which will not be prevented by the half-measures suggested by the international climate conferences like the latest Copenhagen Accord which, even if fully implemented, as recent research has shown,44 would not stop the world‘s temperature from rising by 3.5C by 2100—a rise which would be likely to have disastrous effects on agricultural production, water availability, natural ecosystems and sea-level rise across the world, producing tens of millions of refugees. It is not difficult to show that the cause of the greenhouse effect is the very pattern of living implied by the growth economy which, in turn, has been determined by the dynamics of the market economy and, in particular, the concentration of income and wealth between and within countries, the consequent urban concentration, the car culture and so on. This means that effective action against the greenhouse effect would require a complete change in today‘s pattern of living, a process of radical decentralization in production, consumption and living itself which would require a systemic change rather than just a technological change or a change of values etc. as, for instance, the De-growth movement suggests, effectively assuming that the change in our imaginary, from a growth-oriented one to a de-growth one, would also bring about the institutional changes required.45 Another example of a by-product of the same concentration process is industrial farming, which is clearly the outcome of intensive agriculture, as part of the same process of economic growth. Industrial farming has already led not only to the elimination of small farmers and the need to industrialize farming further through genetic engineering (supposedly, in order to solve the looming food crisis due to the growth in population), but also to the spread of diseases like ‗mad cow‘ disease. It is, therefore, clear that the environmental effects of globalization are due to systemic causes that refer to the system of concentration of power, which is institutionalized by the market economy and representative ‗democracy‘, rather than to ‗bad‘ economic policies and practices. However, the very fact that modern hierarchical society relies for its reproduction on the maximization of economic growth constitutes, also, its fundamental contradiction. This is not because the continuation of the growth economy has serious environmental implications, as is usually argued, but because the necessary condition for the reproduction of the growth economy is the concentration of its benefits within a small section of the world population, in other words, the huge inequality in the distribution of world income. For instance, the present rapid growth rate in countries like China is physically sustainable only if the parallel huge increase in inequality continues. In fact, as various reports show, the faster the country has grown, the more the gap has widened between the urban rich on the east coast 44

see two recent analyses of the Copenhagen Accord and its pledges by Dr Sivan Kartha of the Stockholm Environment Institute, and by the Climate Action Tracker website, in Michael McCarthy‘s ―Why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe: 3.5°‖, The Independent, 31/08/2010. 45 Takis Fotopoulos, ―Is degrowth compatible with a market economy?‖, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.3, no.1, (January 2007) http://www.inclusivedemocracy. org/journal/vol3/vol3_no1_ Takis_degrowth.htm

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and the rural poor in the western interior46. So, concentration of power and ecological disintegration do not simply constitute consequences of the establishment of the growth economy, but also fundamental preconditions for its reproduction. Therefore, contrary to the neo-Keynesian argument of ‗civil societarians‘ that the transnational elite, facing the threat of inadequate demand because of growing inequality, will be induced to introduce a world mixed economy, the opposite is, in fact, the case. The growth economy in the North not only is not threatened by the growing inequality of the present internationalized market economy but, rather, it depends on it. Thus, just as the production of the growth economy is not possible without the plundering of nature, its reproduction is equally impossible without further concentration of economic power.

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The Political Dimension Then, as regards the crisis in what passes as politics today, it can be shown that the ultimate cause of it is the concentration of political power introduced, more or less at the same time as the capitalist market economy, some two hundred years ago, through the institutionalization of representative ―democracy47, which adopted the the formal separation of society from the economy and the state. As a result, people were made institutionally incapable not just of controlling the product of their work as direct producers but, also, of directly exercising political power as citizens. In other words, it is not only economic power which has constantly become more concentrated at the hands of economic elites since they emerged about two hundred years ago, as a result of the grow-or-die dynamics of the market economy. A similar process of concentration of political power at the hands of political elites has also been occurring during the same period, as from the last quarter of the 18th century,. Thus, the concentration of political power at the hands of parliamentarians in liberal modernity led to an even higher degree of concentration at the hands of governments and the leadership of ‗mass‘ parties in statist modernity, at the expense of parliaments. In the present neoliberal modernity, the combined effect of the dynamics of the market economy and representative democracy has led to the conversion of politics into statecraft, with think tanks designing policies and their implementation. Thus, a small clique around the prime minister (or the President) concentrates all effective political power in its hands, particularly in major market economies that are significant parts of the transnational elite. In other words, the continuous decline of the State‘s economic sovereignty is being accompanied by the parallel transformation of the public realm into pure administration. A typical example is the European Central Bank (ECB), which has taken control of the Euro and makes crucial decisions about the economic life of millions of citizens, independently of political control. So, a ‗crisis in politics‘ has developed in the present neoliberal modernity that undermines the foundations of representative ‗democracy‘ and is expressed by several symptoms which, frequently, take the form of an implicit or explicit questioning of fundamental political institutions (parties, electoral contests, etc.). Such symptoms are the 46

No wonder China today has one of the highest Gini coefficients (this is the index used to measure inequality) in the world ― even worse than that of neo-liberal Britain and the U.S.A. and almost twice that of the Nordic countries! World Bank, World Development Indicators 2010, table 2.9 47 T. Fotopoulos, The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy, (The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 2005) ch. 1, http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/ss/ch1.htm

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significant and usually rising abstention rates in electoral contests, particularly in the USA and the UK, the explosion of discontent in the form of frequently violent riots, the diminishing numbers of party members and the fact that respect for professional politicians has never been at such a low level, with the recent financial scandals in countries like the USA, the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Greece and elsewhere simply reaffirming the belief that politics, for the vast majority of politicians —liberals and social democrats alike— is just a job, i.e. a way to make money and enhance social status. No wonder that in the major demonstrations in Athens last May against the legislation by Parliament of the harshest economic measures imposed (by the IMF, the ECB and the EU Commission) on any European country (so that its creditors in foreign banks may be fully reimbursed), tens of thousands of people outside the Greek parliament were shouting ―burn parliament‖! The historic cause of the present crisis in politics can be traced back to what Castoriadis called ―the radical inadequacy, to say the least, of the programs in which (the project of autonomy) had been embodied—be it the liberal republic or Marxist-Leninist ‗socialism‘".48 In other words, it was the inadequacy of representative ‗democracy‘ to create genuine democratic conditions which may be considered as the ultimate cause of the crisis. However, the question still remains as to why this crisis has become particularly acute in the last decade or so. To my mind, the answer has to be found in the cumulative effect of the changes in the ‗objective‘ and ‗subjective‘ conditions which have marked the emergence of the internationalized market economy since the mid-seventies and in particular: 

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





the growing internationalization of the market economy that has effectively undermined not only the state's power to control economic events but, by implication, the belief in the efficacy of traditional politics; the acute intensification of the struggle for competitiveness among the countries of the EU, NAFTA and the Far East which, in turn, has resulted in the collapse of social democracy, the establishment of the ‗neoliberal consensus' and the consequent effective elimination of ideological differences between political parties; the technological changes that have led to the present post-industrial society and the corresponding changes in the structure of employment and the electorate, which, in combination with massive unemployment and underemployment, have led to the decline of the power of the traditional working class and the consequent decline of traditional politics; The collapse of ‗actually existing socialism‘, which has led to the myth of ‗the end of ideologies' and further enhanced the spread of the culture of individualism that has been promoted by neoliberalism.

Thus, in the context of the present neoliberal consensus, the old ideological differences between the Left and the Right have disappeared. Elections have become beauty contests between "charismatic" leaders and the party machines backing them, which compete against each other to attract the attention of the electorate, in order to implement policies constituting variations on the same theme: maximization of the freedom of market forces at the expense of both the welfare state (which is being phased out) and the state's commitment to full employment (which has irrevocably been abandoned). 48

Cornelius Castoriadis, ‗The retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalised Conformism‖, in World in Fragments, p. 43

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In fact, the peoples of France and the Southern European countries (Italy, Spain and Greece) were the last to resist the attempts of their elites to introduce various social-liberal reforms, in effect, abolishing social rights such as pensions, workers‘ rights and other social rights won long ago —until the present capitalist crisis gave the ruling elites the pretext to begin their effective dismantlement. Therefore, the German Ifo Institute aptly predicted a few years ago that ―Europe's welfare system... will not survive globalization. It may take another decade or two for politicians to understand this, but in the end they will. There is no way to turn back the tide of history‖.49 No wonder that today's electoral contests are decided by the ‗contended electoral majority‘,50 while the ‗underclass‘, which has been created by neoliberalism and automation, mostly does not take part in such contests. Therefore, the growing apathy towards politics does not mainly reflect a general indifference regarding social issues, as a result, say, of consumerism, but a growing lack of confidence, especially among the weaker social groups, in traditional political parties and their ability to solve social problems. Anyway, it is not accidental that the higher abstention rates in electoral contests usually occur among the lower income groups, who are no longer able to see any significant difference between Right and Left, i.e. between neoliberal and social-liberal parties respectively. This is also reflected in the withdrawal of many, particularly young, people from traditional politics. Thus, the collapse of 'socialist' statism in the East, instead of functioning as a catalyst for the building of a new non-authoritarian type of politics which would further develop the ideas of May 1968, simply led to a general trend — particularly noticeable among students, young academics and others— towards a post-modern conformism and the rejection of any ‗universalist‘ antisystemic project. The rest, including most of the underclass, who are the main victims of the neoliberal internationalized economy, have resorted to political apathy and an unconscious rejection of established society –a rejection that has usually taken the form of an explosion in crime and drug abuse, and sometimes violent riots. Yet, Seattle and Genoa some years ago, as well as Paris or Athens recently, are clear indications of the fact that today‘s youth is apathetic not towards politics (as conceived in the word‘s classical meaning, to imply self-management) but towards what passes as politics today, i.e. the system which allows a social minority (professional politicians) to determine the quality of life of every citizen. In other words, the growing realization that the concentration of political power at the hands of professional politicians and various "experts" (as a result of the dynamics of representative ‗democracy‘) has transformed politics into statecraft, is what has turned many people away from this sort of ‗politics‘. 


The Social Dimension As one might expect, and as the above mentioned International Labour Office report showed, the present huge and growing concentration of income was accompanied by the worsening of a parallel social crisis. It is clear that the growth economy has already created a growth society, the main characteristics of which are consumerism, privacy, alienation and 49

Hamish Mcrae, ‗Why there will be many more angry voters and hung elections in Europe‘, Independent, 12/4/2006 50 J.K. Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993) Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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the subsequent disintegration of social ties. The growth society, in turn, inexorably leads toward a ―non-society,‖ that is, the substitution of atomized families and individuals for society ―a crucial step towards barbarism. Furthermore, the social crisis has been aggravated by the expansion of the market economy into all sectors of social life, in the context of its present internationalized form. It is, of course, well known that the market is the greatest enemy of traditional values. It is not, therefore, surprising that the social crisis is more pronounced in precisely those countries where marketization has advanced the most. This becomes evident by the fact that neither campaigns of the ‗back to basics‘ type (Britain), nor the growth of religious, mystic and other similar tendencies (United States) have had any restraining effect on the most obvious symptoms of the social crisis: the explosion of crime and drug abuse that has already led many states effectively to abandon their ‗war against drugs‘.51 Thus, in Britain, for instance, it took 30 years for the (reported) crime rate to double, from 1 million incidents in 1950 to 2.2 million in 1979. However, in the 1980s, the crime rate more than doubled again and it reached the 5 million mark in the 1990s, while the present rate is approaching the 6 million mark! The ruling elites have been responding to the explosion in crime by building new jails. Thus, the prison population in England and Wales increased from 64,000 at the beginning of the present decade to 77,000 a couple of years ago, while a 2005 Home Office report forecast a jail population of up to 90,000 by 2010.52 Similarly, it took the United States 200 years to raise its prison population to a million, but only the last 10 years to raise it to almost 2.2 million, with 680 people in jail for every 100,000 ―a quarter of the world's total prison population! In fact, the explosion in crime (also caused by the criminalization of major sectors of the population, e.g. in the USA African-Americans constitute about 12% of the population, but represent half the prison population), as Martin Woolacott53 had predicted almost 15 years ago, now tends to take the form of an insurgency in urban conglomerations all over the world, and is treated as such by the ruling elites. However, the concentration of economic power, as a result of the marketization of the economy, has not only increased the economic privileges of the privileged minority. It has also increased their insecurity. This is why the new overclass increasingly isolates itself within luxury ghettos. At the same time, marketization and, in particular, the flexible labour market, have increased job insecurity—a phenomenon that affects everybody today, apart from the very few in the overclass. No wonder that at the very beginning of the present decade the International Labour Organisation Report 2000 found that the stress levels in advanced market economies had reached record levels because of the institutionalization of flexible labour markets which increased employers‘ pressures for greater labour productivity!

The Cultural Dimension Finally, the present crisis is also a cultural crisis, as the establishment of the market economy implied sweeping aside traditional cultures and values. This process was accelerated in the twentieth century with the spread of the market economy and its offspring, the growth 51

T. Fotopoulos, Drugs: Beyond penalization and liberalization (in Greek) (Athens: Eleftheros Typos, 1999). Sam Jones, ―More than half of jails in England,‖ The Guardian (13/8/2005). 53 Martin Woolacott, ―The March of a Martial Law,‖ The Guardian (20 Jan. 1996). 52

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economy, all over the world. As a result, there is an intensive process of cultural homogenization at work today, which not only rules out any directionality towards more complexity, but is in effect making culture simpler, with cities becoming more and more alike, people all over the world listening to the same music, watching the same soap operas and DVDs, buying the same brands of consumer goods etc. Thus, the rise of neoliberal globalization in the last quarter of a century or so has further enhanced this process of cultural homogenization. This is the inevitable outcome of the liberalization and deregulation of markets and the consequent intensification of the commercialization of culture. As a result, traditional communities and their cultures are disappearing all over the world and people are being converted into consumers of a mass culture, produced in the advanced capitalist countries and particularly the USA. In this context, the recent emergence of a sort of ―cultural‖ nationalism in many parts of the world expresses a desperate attempt to maintain a cultural identity in the face of market homogenization. But, the marketization of the flow of communications has already established the preconditions for the downgrading of cultural diversity to a kind of superficial differentiation akin to a type of folklorism. Finally, one should not underestimate the political implications of the commercialization and homogenization of culture. Thus, the escapist role traditionally played by Hollywood films has now acquired a universal dimension, through the massive expansion of TV culture and its almost full monopolization by Hollywood subculture. Last, but not least, there is also a related ideological dimension to the cultural crisis. The changes in the structural parameters marking the transition to neoliberal modernity were accompanied by a parallel serious ideological crisis, which brought into question not just the political ideologies, (what postmodernists call ―metanarratives‖), or even ―objective‖ reason54 in general, but reason itself. This is shown by the present flourishing of irrationalism in all its forms: from the revival of old religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam to the expansion of various irrational trends, e.g. mysticism, spiritualism, astrology, esoterism, neopaganism and the ―New Age‖ movement, as well as the rejection of scientific medicine in favour of various forms of alternative therapy, which use methods that usually have nothing to do with reason and testable hypotheses etc. The rise of irrationalism, in particular, is a direct result of the crisis of the growth economy in both its capitalist and ―socialist‖ versions. As I attempted to show elsewhere,55 the collapse of the two main projects of modernity, i.e. the socialist and the project for the economic development of the Third World,56 together with with the parallel ―credibility crisis‖ of science that developed in the last quarter of a century or so, were crucial in bringing about the present flourishing of irrationalism. The credibility crisis of science has been particularly responsible for systematically undermining many scientific ‗truths‘, especially those on the basis of which we used to justify our ‗certainty‘ concerning the interpretation of social and economic phenomena. However, as science plays a double role with respect to the reproduction of the growth economy, (on the one hand, a functional role in the material reproduction of the growth economy, through its 54

See, e.g., Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Imre Lakatos, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975) 55 See Takis Fotopoulos, ―The Rise of New Irrationalism and its Incompatibility with Inclusive Democracy,‖ Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3 (July/November 1998), pp. 1-49. 56 See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, chs 2 & 3

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decisive contribution to the effort to dominate the natural world and maximize growth and, on the other, an equally important ideological role in justifying the growth economy ‗objectively‘) this crisis was particularly significant. Thus, firstly, the realization, of the effects of economic growth upon Nature and, subsequently, upon the quality of life, called into question the functional role of science in advancing Progress . Secondly, when the credibility of scientific truths themselves was also challenged, (whether those truths had originated in orthodox social science or in the alternative science of socialism – Marxism), the moment of truth for the growth ideology had come. Yet, it is not science itself and rationalism in general that should be blamed for the present multi-dimensional crisis, as irrationalists of various types usually assert. Like technology, applied science is not ‗neutral‘ with respect to the logic and dynamics of the market economy. Science belongs to the autonomy tradition from the point of view of the methods it uses to derive its truths and, sometimes, even from the point of view of its content (e.g. in its demystification of religious beliefs). Therefore, what is needed today is not to jettison rationalism altogether in the interpretation of social phenomena, but to transcend 'objective' rationalism (i.e. the rationalism which is grounded in ‗objective laws‘ of natural or social evolution) and develop a new kind of democratic rationalism. Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, the collapse of socialist statism and the rise of neoliberalism resulted in a radical critique of ‗scientific‘ socialism, statism and authoritarian politics which did not, however, function as a catalyst for further development in non-authoritarian left thinking. Instead, the critique of scientism was taken over by postmodernist theoreticians and was developed into a general relativism, which inevitably led to the abandonment of any effective critique of the status quo and to the consequent theorization of conformism. So, the present era of neoliberal modernity has already developed its own paradigm and the events of May 1968, as well as the collapse of Marxist structuralism, played a crucial role in the development of the postmodernist paradigm with its three main rejections of: 

 

first, an overall vision of History as an evolutionary process of progress or liberation (‗grand narratives‘), in favour of plurality, fragmentation, complexity (‗local narratives‘); second, closed systems, essentialism and determinism, in favour of uncertainty, ambiguity and indeterminacy and, third, ‗objectivity‘ and ‗truth‘, in favour of relativism and perspectivism.

As a result of these trends and, particularly, the influence that the postmodernist rejection of the universalist project has had on the ‗new social movements‘, we now face the end of the old type of anti-systemic movement, which was the main expression of social struggle for the past hundred and fifty years or so.57 It is in the hope of helping to create a new anti-systemic project and social movement that the theoretical project of Inclusive Democracy has been developed.

57

T. Fotopoulos, ‗The End of Traditional Anti-systemic Movements and the Need for A New Type of Antisystemic Movement Today‘, Democracy & Nature, vol 7 no 3 (November 2001) pp. 415-456,

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4. INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY AS A WAY OUT OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL CRISIS

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Inclusive Democracy Defined As the present multidimensional crisis continuously deteriorates it is no wonder that, today, many people all over the world, for the first time in many years, are raising crucial questions about things that they used to take for granted within the bubble created by the growth economy and the consequent growth society (or consumer society). So, following the first obvious question raised (―why the present crisis?‖) to which I tried to give an answer on the basis of the ID approach in the previous section, the next logical question being asked is whether there could be an alternative form of society with which we could replace the present one. Finally, the logical question following the previous two is how we move from here to there. In fact, these three questions have, also, historically constituted the main elements of any anti-systemic political project and the ID project is exactly such a project, attempting to give answers to all three of the above questions on the basis of the axiomatic choice for individual and collective autonomy that we examined above. So, if we accept the hypothesis we made in the previous section, that the ultimate cause of the present multidimensional crisis is the huge and growing concentration of all forms of power at the hands of various elites, as a result of the dynamics of the main institutions of modernity, the system of the market economy and representative ―democracy‖, the logical conclusion is that, what is needed is a society based on institutions that secure the equal distribution of all forms of power among all citizens. This means, a society based on the abolition of power relations and structures at the political level, (i.e. a political or direct democracy), at the economic level, (i.e. an economic democracy), in the social realm --the workplace, the education arena, the household etc (i.e. a democracy in the social realm) and, finally, at the ecological level (i.e. an ecological democracy) where, at the moment, the society-nature relationship is characterized by the clear attempt of the former to dominate the latter. But this is exactly what an Inclusive Democracy is about -- a society aiming to abolish power relations and structures and all forms of domination through:    

direct political democracy, which institutionalizes the direct control of the political process by citizens; economic democracy, which institutionalizes the ownership and direct control of economic resources by the citizen body; democracy in the social realm, which institutionalizes the self-management of workplaces, educational institutions and any other institutions belonging to the social realm by workers, farmers, students and so on; and ecological democracy, which aims to reintegrate society with Nature.

Such a society, on the basis of what was said in the previous sections, is both desirable and feasible. It is desirable, as it transcends the main causes of the chronic and presently sharply-deteriorating multidimensional crisis that we have seen above in a way which is perfectly compatible with the principle of individual and collective autonomy. And it is feasible, not only because the arrangements it proposes are perfectly feasible, as we shall see

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next, but also because, as was shown above, it is not just a utopia or an intellectual‘s vision but a form of social organization which institutionalizes the historical trends of autonomy/democracy that I already examined in section 2. In this sense, the ID project attempts to create a new libertarian synthesis, which is founded on the lessons we have learned from the historical experience of the failed revolutions and insurrections of the past 150 years or so. In fact, it is a synthesis of the two historic traditions existing within the broad libertarian (or autonomy) tradition I mentioned above, i.e. the classical democratic tradition and libertarian socialism, as well as of the anti-systemic currents within the ―new‖ social movements that emerged since May ‘68, (the women‘s liberation movement, the Green movement and so on). As is evident, the above definition of Inclusive Democracy is based on a clear distinction between the two main societal realms, the public and the private, to which we may add an ―ecological realm,‖ defined as the sphere of relations between the natural and the social worlds. In this conception, the public realm, contrary to the thinking of many supporters of the republican or democratic project (Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis, Murray Bookchin et al) includes not just the political realm, but also the economic and ―social‖ realms; in other words, any area of human activity in which decisions can be taken collectively and democratically. Thus, the political realm is defined as the sphere of political decision-taking, the area in which political power is exercised. The economic realm is defined as the sphere of economic decision-taking, the area in which economic power is exercised with respect to the broad economic choices that any scarcity society has to make. Finally, the social realm is defined as the sphere of decision-taking in the workplace, the place of education and any other economic or cultural institution which is a constituent element of a democratic society. It is, therefore, obvious that the extension of the traditional public realm to include the economic, ecological and ―social‖ realms is an indispensable element of an Inclusive Democracy. Correspondingly, the first three elements of Inclusive Democracy (political democracy, economic democracy and democracy in the social realm) constitute the institutional framework which aims to secure the equal distribution of political, economic and social power respectively; in other words, the system which aims effectively to eliminate the domination of human being over human being. Similarly, ecological democracy is defined as the institutional framework which aims to eliminate any human attempt to dominate the natural world, in other words, the system which aims to reintegrate humans with nature. In this sense, Inclusive Democracy is a new conception of democracy which, using as a starting point its classical definition, aims to bring about a form of social organization which reintegrates society with polity, economy and nature.

Direct Political Democracy as a Component of ID In the political realm, there can only be one form of democracy, what we may call political or direct democracy, where political power is shared equally among all citizens. So, political democracy is founded on the equal sharing of political power among all citizens, the self-instituting of society. However, as the direct democratic control of the economy and society is only possible today in a highly decentralized society (which, initially, does not need to be physically decentralized but only administratively so), it is obvious that self-reliance is a

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necessary condition for political and economic autonomy. Self-reliance is meant here in terms of autonomy, rather than in terms of self-sufficiency, which, under today's conditions, is neither feasible nor desirable. Thus, although self-reliance implies maximal utilization of local resources and sources of energy, it should not be confused with autarchy and should always be seen within the context of confederalism. Therefore, an Inclusive Democracy today can only take the form of a confederal democracy that is based on a network of administrative assemblies (regional and confederal), whose members or delegates are elected by popular face-to-face democratic assemblies in each demos, i.e. the citizen body of an area which may encompass a town and the surrounding villages, or even a neighbourhood of a large city. The members of these administrative assemblies (regional assemblies, confederal assembly) are strictly mandated, recallable and responsible to the assemblies that choose them in each demos, what we may call the demotic assemblies. The sole function of regional and confederal assemblies is that of co-ordinating and administering the policies formulated by the demotic assemblies themselves, in other words, their function is a purely administrative and practical one, not a policy-making or deliberative one. In addition to the demotic assemblies, which are the basic unit of decisiontaking in the confederation where people, as citizens, take all-important political and economic decisions at the local level, there are also workplace assemblies, where citizens, as workers, farmers, teachers etc take all decisions related to the running of the corresponding workplaces. As such, workplace assemblies, together with demotic assemblies, constitute the core of an Inclusive Democracy. On the basis of the above general principles, we may define the basic conditions which have to be met for a society to be characterized as a direct political democracy. a) Democracy is grounded in the conscious choice of its citizens for individual and collective autonomy and not in any divine or mystical dogmas and preconceptions, or any closed theoretical systems involving social/natural ―laws‖, or tendencies determining social change. In a nutshell, the ID political project is a project which, taking for granted that autonomy and democracy cannot be ―proven‖ but only postulated, values autonomy and democracy more than heteronomy. b) All residents of a particular geographical area and of a viable population size (e.g. 30-50,000) beyond a certain age of maturity (to be defined by the citizen body itself) and irrespective of gender, race, ethnic or cultural identity, are members of the citizen body and are directly involved in the decision-taking process. c) The ultimate policy-making institution in each self-reliant demos is the demotic assembly, namely, the assembly of the demos. We are talking about the demos and not the state, because the existence of a state means the separation of the citizen body from the political and economic process. d) No institutionalized political processes of an oligarchic nature. This implies that all political decisions (including those relating to the formation and execution of laws) are taken by the citizen body collectively and without representation (not necessarily, of course, by meeting in a single place, as modern technology would allow a demotic assembly to meet in several places simultaneously to constitute a single assembly, if so required). The demotic assembly delegates power to demotic courts, militias and other executives. It must be stressed that, as regards delegates to regional and confederal assemblies, the mandates in an ID are specific. This differentiates it

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completely from forms of ―democracy‖ (like Participatory Politics ― Parpolity)58 where delegates to higher level councils are not bound to vote as the sending council might wish – an arrangement which would inevitably lead to a situation where the members of each higher level council would concentrate a higher degree of power than those at lower level councils, culminating in the highest level of council which, to all intents and purposes, would play the role of a kind of Central Committee on legislation! e) No institutionalized political structures embodying unequal power relations. This means that where delegation of authority takes place to segments of the citizen body, in order to carry out specific duties (e.g., to serve as members of popular courts, or of regional and confederal councils etc.), the delegation is assigned, on principle, by lot, on a rotational basis, and it is always recallable by the citizen body. This is an effective step towards the abolition of hierarchical relations, since such relations today are based, to a significant extent, on the myth that ―experts‖ supposedly need to control everything, from nature to society. However, apart from the fact that the knowledge of these so-called experts is doubtful (at least as far as social, economic and political phenomena is concerned), in a democratic society, political decisions would not be left to the experts but to the users, the citizen body. This principle was consistently applied by the Athenians for whom ―all citizens were to take part, if they wished, in running the state, but all were to be amateurs ... professionalism and democracy were regarded as, at bottom, contradictory.59 f) The demoi are co-ordinated through regional assemblies at the regional level and a confederal assembly at the confederal level. For example, 1,500 delegates (15 delegates per demotic assembly of 30,000 citizens) could constitute a regional assembly for 3m citizens, whereas 1,800 delegates (6 delegates per demotic assembly) could constitute the confederal assembly for a confederation of 9m citizens. These assemblies consist of mandated, recallable and (possibly) rotating delegates. Such assemblies are necessary because many issues have to be dealt with at the regional/national/supra-national level. These issues include problems generated by the unequal distribution of energy supplies, natural resources and the consequent unequal distribution of income between the confederated demoi; problems generated by the free mobility of labour between demoi, or by the exchange of goods and services between citizens of different demoi or between the confederated demoi themselves; problems created by the supra-local character of the environmental implications of production and consumption; problems of transportation/ communication; problems of technology transfer etc.

58

Stephen Shalom, ―ParPolity: Political Vision for a Good Society‖, Znet (22/11/2005) http://www. zcommunications.org/parpolity-political-vision 59 Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) p. 308. Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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Economic Democracy as a Component of Inclusive Democracy

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If we define political democracy as the authority of the citizen‘s body, the demos, in the political sphere, then economic democracy could be correspondingly defined as the authority of demos in the economic sphere — which implies the existence of economic equality in the sense of equal distribution of economic power. Economic democracy, therefore, relates to every social system that institutionalizes the integration of society with economy. This means that, ultimately, the demos controls the economic process, within an institutional framework of demotic ownership of the means of production. This, in turn, implies that the proposal which I am going to describe briefly,60 explicitly presupposes a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy that precludes private accumulation of wealth and the institutionalization of privileges for some sections of society ―without having to rely on a mythical post-scarcity state of abundance, or having to sacrifice freedom of choice. Furthermore, neither direct democracy nor economic democracy are feasible in a highly centralized society and economy like the present one. An Inclusive Democracy is only feasible at the level of a confederation of demoi. This differentiates it from planning models which are inevitably based on centralized systems where individual freedom of choice is non-existent. Inevitably, because exclusive reliance on planning for the allocation of resources, combined with non-differentiation between basic and non-basic needs (which is a crucial differentiation we make in the ID project), results in a system where each citizen‘s consumption, production and workload ultimately has to conform to some sort of ―average‖61. Although it is, of course, up to the citizens‘ assemblies of the future to design the for m that an inclusive democracy will take, I think that it is important to demonstrate that such a form of society is not only necessary, but feasible as well. So, in accordance with the definition of political democracy, the following conditions have to be satisfied for a society to be characterized as an economic democracy: a) No institutionalized economic processes of an oligarchic nature. This means that all ―macro‖ economic decisions, namely, decisions concerning the running of the economy as a whole (overall level of production, consumption and investment, amounts of work and leisure implied, technologies to be used, etc.) are taken by the citizen body collectively and without representation, and implemented through a democratic planning process, although ―micro‖ economic decisions at the workplace or household levels are taken by the demotic enterprises and by individual consumers respectively (through a system of personal vouchers, or a credit card scheme ―but without the involvement of money, which is banished from this scheme). b) No institutionalized economic structures embodying unequal economic power relations. Any inequality of income is, therefore, the result of additional voluntary work at the individual level. Such additional work, beyond that required by any capable member of society for the satisfaction of basic needs, allows only for additional consumption, as no individual accumulation of capital is possible, and any wealth accumulated as a result of additional work is not inherited. Thus, demotic ownership of productive resources provides the economic structure for democratic 60 61

For the full version of this model see, T. Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, ch. 6. See e.g. M. Albert‘s Parecon, pp 132-138

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ownership, whereas direct citizen participation in economic decisions provides the framework for a comprehensively democratic control process of the economy. The demos, therefore, becomes the authentic unit of economic life, since economic democracy is not feasible today unless both the ownership and control of productive resources are organized at the local level. So, unlike other definitions of economic democracy, the definition given here involves the explicit negation of economic power relations and implies the authority of the demos in the economic sphere. In this sense, economic democracy is the counterpart, as well as the foundation, of direct democracy and of an Inclusive Democracy in general. c) Demotic self-reliance, i.e. a demos-centred self-reliance. Thus, self-reliant demoi constitute the only way to reverse the process of overproduction and overconsumption, which is the main effect of the ―growth economy,‖ as well as the main cause of the ecological threat. The radical decentralization involved in this process implies, in fact, the reversal of the type of development that has, historically, identified Progress with economic growth and efficiency. A self-reliant decentralization can only be founded on the horizontal interdependence of economically self-reliant communities (demoi). The economic relations between the confederated demoi should, therefore, be structured in such a way as to enhance mutual self-reliance, in the context of collective support, rather than domination and dependency, as is the case today. This could only be achieved within the framework of a confederal democratic planning process. d) Demotic ownership of productive resources, which implies that the means of production and distribution are collectively owned and controlled by the demos (the citizen body), and are then leased freely to the employees of each production unit (the demotic enterprise) on a contract basis. The rationale behind this arrangement is that economic democracy requires another type of social ownership which secures a democratic ownership and control of productive resources, and that neither private ownership nor a socialist system of ownership can secure both. The former implies the control of resources to serve particular interests (of capitalists, shareholders, managers and/or employees) rather than the general interest, irrespective of whether it is combined with a market system or not. The latter implies a ―social ownership‖ of the means of production, which can exist either within the market (e.g. nationalized enterprises) or the planning system. Historically, this form of ownership has taken two main forms, i.e. nationalized enterprises and collectivized self-managed enterprises, the former usually functioning according to the usual efficiency criteria of private enterprises and the latter tending to satisfy the particular interests of their employees, as against the general interest of citizens in the demos, and tending to compete with each other for productive resources (natural, labour, etc.) in a way very similar to the competition seen among capitalist firms. Finally, such forms of selfmanagement cannot secure the autonomy of the worker as citizen. Thus, although some forms of it, supported by syndicalists and parts of the green movement, may promote democratic procedures within the enterprise, they do nothing to promote democracy in general, for the community as a whole. So, these forms of selfmanagement, as was aptly pointed out, usually represent ―exploitative production

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with the complicity of the workers‖62, since they cannot guarantee freedom from the tyranny of the factory and rationalized labour. On the other hand, demotic ownership leads to the politicization of the economy ―the real synthesis of economy and polity. Furthermore, this framework, by definition, excludes any divorce of ownership from control and secures the pursuit of the general interest. This is so because economic decision-making is carried out by the entire demos, through the demotic assemblies where people take the fundamental macro-economic decisions which affect the whole demos, as citizens, rather than as vocationally-oriented groups (workers, technicians, engineers, farmers etc.). At the same time, people in the workplace, apart from participating in the demotic decisions as citizens determining the overall planning targets, would also participate as workers (in the above broad sense of vocationally-oriented groups) in their respective workplace assemblies, in a process of modifying/implementing the Democratic Plan and in running their own workplace. Therefore, the democratic planning process would involve a continuous feedback of information from demotic assemblies to workplace assemblies and back again. e) Confederal allocation of resources, which refers to the problem of the mechanism that would secure a fair and efficient allocation of resources both within the demos and between demoi, so that the citizens‘ needs are met. The general criterion for the allocation of resources is not efficiency, as is currently defined by orthodox economics in terms of the Paretian optimality conditions. In accordance with the autonomy-democracy tradition, I would argue instead that our starting point should be human needs, which should govern production, and not the other way round. Therefore, efficiency should be redefined to mean effectiveness in satisfying human needs and not just money-backed wants, as today, or meeting some technocratic criteria in terms of social opportunity costs, like the optimality conditions mentioned above, which may be in conflict with considerations of autonomy or selfmanagement, ecological considerations and so on. The dominant characteristic of the proposed confederal planning which differentiates it from similar models of centralized or decentralized Planning is that, although it does not depend on the prior abolition of scarcity, it does secure the satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens, as well as freedom of choice. The former requires the basic macro-economic decisions to be taken democratically by the citizen body, while the latter requires the citizens individually to take important decisions affecting their own lives (what work to do, what to consume etc). f) The aim of production is not growth per se but the satisfaction of the basic needs of the demos and those non-basic needs for which members of the demos express a desire, and for the satisfaction of which they are willing to work extra. g) All production in an Inclusive Democracy takes place in demotic enterprises, i.e. enterprises which are owned by the demos and leased to citizens on a contract basis. The overall running of demotic enterprises is carried out by workplace assemblies, which function both as institutions of ―democracy in the social realm‖ and as fundamental components of economic democracy, given their role in the process of democratic planning. The day-to day running of demotic enterprises could be carried 62

Murray Bookchin, ―Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy,‖ Green Perspectives (Feb. 1986).

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out by a supervisory board appointed by the workplace assembly, which could include personnel with specialist knowledge, and with its members being constantly recallable by the workplace assembly, apart from being indirectly controlled by the citizens' assemblies. So, the type of economic democracy proposed here explicitly assumes the diversity of individuals (which, in turn, implies that consensus is very much the exception rather than the rule) and institutionalizes this diversity through the adoption of a combination of democratic planning procedures on the one hand and voucher schemes or credit cards within an artificial ―market‖ on the other. The aim is to secure an allocation of resources that ensures both freedom of individual choice (as regards the satisfiers, i.e. the means of satisfying needs), and the satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens on the basis of the principle ―from each according to ability to each according to need‖. Furthermore, the proposed economic democracy assumes away the mythical stage of free communism and addresses the issue of how, within the context of a scarcity society, (i.e. a society where resources are still scarce with respect to needs), a method of resource allocation might be found which ensures that the above aim is achievable. This is why the allocation of economic resources is envisaged as being implemented through a combination of: 

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

a democratic planning mechanism, which aims to meet the basic needs of all citizens and is based on the citizens‘ collective decisions, as expressed through the demotic and confederal plans that involve the creation of a feedback process between workplace assemblies, demotic assemblies and the confederal assembly, and, An artificial “market,” which aims to secure freedom of choice and is based on the citizens‘ individual choices, as expressed through a voucher (or a demotic credit card) system that secures a genuine freedom of choice, without incurring the adverse effects associated with real markets.

As is clear from the above, a fundamental distinction is introduced in this proposal, as far as the meaning of needs is concerned, between basic and non-basic needs, and a similar one is introduced between needs and ―satisfiers‖ (the form or the means by which these needs are satisfied). What constitutes a basic need, as well as the level of basic need-satisfaction, is determined collectively and implemented through a democratic planning mechanism. On the other hand, citizens individually determine the satisfiers for both basic and non-basic needs, as well as what non-basic needs (if any) they wish to satisfy. The differentiation between basic and non-basic needs is crucial, as it implies a corresponding division of the economy between a basic needs sector and a non-basic needs sector. This distinction is necessary because each sector is assumed to function on a different principle. The ―basic needs‖ sector functions on the basis of the principle ―from each according to ability to each according to need,‖ whereas the ―non-basic needs‖ sector is assumed to function on the basis of an artificial ―market‖ that balances demand and supply, in a way that secures the sovereignty of both consumers and producers and establishes remuneration according to effort. However, drawing a line between basic and non-basic goods and services is important not only because it makes clear the fact that the meeting of basic needs is a fundamental human right that cannot be denied to anybody, as long as one offers the minimal amount of work required for this, but also because it minimizes the number of hours each citizen needs to work to cover

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his/her basic needs which, considering the state of technology today, should only be a few hours per week. Briefly, the model works as follows in the two sectors of the economy. Basic Needs Sector. Every member of the confederation, who is able to work, will have to work a ―basic‖ (or minimum) number of hours per week, in a line of activity of his/her choice, to produce the resources needed for the satisfaction of the basic needs of the confederation ― as they have been estimated by the confederal assembly and formulated in the confederal plan. Each citizen is then issued with a number of Basic Vouchers (BVs) or is credited with a corresponding number of points on his/her Basic Credit Card (BCC points) according to the special ―category of need‖ to which s/he belongs. Thus, the confederal assembly will determine a list of categories of basic needs for each section of the population using multiple criteria, including sex, age, special needs etc. The BVs/BCCs are personal and issued by the confederal assembly rather than by the demotic assemblies to ensure consistency as regards basic needs satisfaction throughout the confederation. So, in case a demos‘ resources are inadequate in covering the basic needs of all citizens, the extra resources needed should be provided by the confederal assembly. A significant by-product of this arrangement is that a redistribution of income will be effected between demoi rich and poor in resources. As regards caring for the needs of the elderly, children and the disabled, those unable to work are entitled to BVs (or BCC points), in exactly the same way as every other citizen in the confederation. In fact, one could say that the BVs/BCCs scheme represents the most comprehensive ―social security‖ system that has ever existed, as it will cover all the basic needs of those unable to work, according to the definition of basic needs given by the confederal assembly. It is also up to the same assembly to decide whether, on top of these BVs/BCCs points, Non-Basic Vouchers (NBVs) or Non-Basic Credit Card (NBCC) points will also be allocated. As far as the supply of care services is concerned, If care is classified as a basic need, as, of course, it should be, then every member of the demos should be involved in the provision of such services (and would be entitled to BVs/BCCs points) ―a significant step in the direction of establishing democracy in the household. The basic needs sector allocates resources mainly on the basis of the democratic planning process, although there is a significant element of individual freedom of choice involved as well, concerning the satisfiers. Thus, BVs/BCC points entitle each citizen to a given level of satisfaction for each particular type of need, (which has been characterized democratically as ―basic‖), but do not specify the particular type of satisfier. Therefore, an artificial ―market‖ for basic goods and services is needed, which would meet the demand for basic goods and services according to satisfier. As citizens can spend their BVs or BCC points on any demotic enterprise of their choice (food, clothing enterprises etc) and these enterprises are free to produce the relevant goods and services the way they see fit ―as long as they meet the production and environmental standards adopted by the confederal plan, of course ― citizens are offered a significant amount of choice in deciding how best to meet their basic needs within their overall entitlement. The ―specific‖ preferences of citizens are verified through their revealed preferences, as expressed through the use of BVs/BCC points with respect to specific demotic enterprises. At the same time, as the workers in such enterprises could, if they so wished, work additional hours, on top of the basic hours, in the same (or another) line of activity, they would have every incentive to attract as many BVs or BCC points to their own enterprise. This would imply that demotic enterprises, through this artificial market,

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would be involved in a process of meeting, as best as possible and in a spirit of emulation, the citizens‘ desires ― something that would have nothing to do with the present cut-throat competition of the real market. Non-Basic Needs Sector. It is perfectly possible that some citizens may wish to offer additional work, on top of the minimum basic hours, in any kind of work activity of their choice, including the basic work activity they have chosen. In fact, with technical progress, one could expect that the satisfaction of non-essential needs will become increasingly important in the future ―a fact confirmed by statistical studies on consumption patterns in the West that show a verifiable trend of basic-needs saturation.63 It should, therefore, be fair that citizens willing to offer additional work should also be entitled to Non-basic vouchers (NBVs) (or to Non-Basic Credit Card-NBCC points) which can be used for the satisfaction of needs that are not classified as ―basic‖ by the confederal assembly (non-essential consumption). NBVs/NBCC points are also personal, but are issued on behalf of each demos, rather than on behalf of the confederation. However, the system should be organized in such a way that differences among demoi as regards non-essential consumption should reflect only differences in the amount of work involved and not differences in natural endowments. Therefore, although demotic covering of non-basic needs is just an extension of the individual citizen‘s freedom of choice, provision should be made to ensure that the benefits from the natural endowments of the confederation as a whole, irrespective of their geographical location, are distributed equally among all demoi and regions. This principle applies to both basic and non-basic needs satisfaction, so that no regional inequities may be created, other than those due to the amount of work involved. Correspondingly, remuneration will increasingly take the form of NBVs/NBCCs. There is a double economic problem with respect to NBVs. First, we need a fair measure to remunerate non-basic (NB) work and, second, we need a measure of valuing non-basic goods/services (―prices‖) that will secure a balance between their supply and demand at the level of the demos. Obviously, the way both the rate of remuneration (i.e. the rate which determines the number of non-basic vouchers a citizen receives for NB work) and the ―prices‖ of NB goods and services is determined depends on the way resources are allocated in the non-basic sector. I would propose that, in contrast to the basic needs sector, the allocation of resources in this sector should take place neither through a real market where work is allocated on the basis of profit considerations, nor, alternatively, on the basis of the instructions of planners, founded on the decisions of party bureaucrats ―as in central planning― (or, alternatively, founded on democratic decisions, as in the various forms of socialist planning). Instead, I would propose that the allocation of resources, particularly labour, would take place mainly through an artificial ―market,‖ on the basis of the preferences of citizens as producers and as consumers. As regards their preferences as producers, it is obvious that, given the inequality of the various types of work, equality of remuneration will in fact mean unequal work satisfaction which might then create serious imbalances between supply and demand for types of work that are either undesirable to most people or too desirable. In other, similar proposals, the suggested solutions for such imbalances are, usually, various forms of job rotation, or, recently, rotation of work tasks which are organised in such a way ―that every individual 63

Ernest. Mandel, ―In Defence of Socialist Planning,‖ New Left Review (Sept./Oct. 1986), pp. 5-39.

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would be regularly involved in both conception and execution tasks, with comparable empowerment and quality of life circumstances for all‖.64 However, such proposals do not solve the problem of desirability, (let alone the problem of empowerment, as I tried to show elsewhere65) but simply attempt to by-pass it by bundling together tasks of unequal desirability. Yet, apart from the practical issues involved, which cast serious doubt on the very possibility of job complexes being implemented widely beyond the confines of certain tasks easily amenable to bundling, the crucial question arises about the range of task bundling which is feasible in cases of very diverse tasks, associated with highly different degrees of desirability (e.g. those associated with the mining sector and those associated with surgery or dancing, painting, composing, writing etc). Obviously, very few, if any, artists, dancers, surgeons etc would be willing and able to undertake job complexes involving mining, building, road construction etc ― quite apart from the social waste involved -- even if this were possible. On the other hand, if the bundling of tasks is only feasible with respect to similar activities, then how would the job complexes involving ―heavy‖ or boring work (mining, building, road construction etc) attract the number of people needed, particularly as the rate of remuneration is the same for everybody offering the average amount of work? This is why the ID project proposes, instead, that a complex ‗index of desirability‘ should be constructed involving the use of multiple rankings of the various types of work, based on the ―revealed‖ preferences of citizens in choosing the various types of activity. The remuneration for each type of work could then be determined as an inverse function of its index of desirability, i.e. the higher the index (that is, the more desirable a type of work is) the lower its rate of remuneration, so that miners, for example, get the highest rate of remuneration, whereas artists, writers, planners etc the lowest However, the index of desirability cannot be the sole determinant of the rate of remuneration. The wishes of citizens as consumers, as expressed by the ―prices‖ of non-basic goods and services, should also be taken into account. This would also have the important effect of linking the set of ―prices‖ for goods and services with that of remuneration for the various types of work, so that the allocation of work in the non-basic sector may be effected in a way that secures balance between demand and supply. We could, therefore, imagine that half the rate of remuneration in the production of non-basic goods and services is determined by the index of desirability and the other half is determined by the ―prices‖ of goods and services. Now, as regards the measure of valuation of non-basic goods/services that will secure a balance between their supply and demand at the demotic level, clearly, we need a system of ―prices‖ for non basic goods and services that will aim to achieve a balance between demand and supply, which satisfies the criteria of fairness. As our overall criterion is not growth or efficiency, but needs satisfaction, we may introduce a kind of ―rationing values‖ for the evaluation of non-basic goods/services. Thus, in contrast to the market mechanism which, as is well known, represents rationing by price, (something that, as we have seen, represents the most unfair way of rationing scarce resources, as, in effect, it means rationing by the wallet) we may introduce pricing by rationing. Prices, instead of being the cause of rationing ―as in the market system― become the effect of it. Therefore, whereas in the market system prices 64 65

See e.g the ‗job complexes‘ proposed by Michael Albert in Parecon, p.111 T. Fotopoulos, ―Inclusive Democracy and Participatory Economics‖, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 9, No. 3 (November 2003) pp. 401-425

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basically reflect scarcities relative to a skewed income and wealth pattern and they function as rationing devices to match the former with the latter, in the proposed system prices reflect scarcities relative to citizens‘ desires and they function as guides for a democratic allocation of resources. This way, production reflects real demand, and citizens do not have to suffer all the irrationalities of the market economy or of the socialist central planning system I mentioned above. Therefore, the artificial ―market‖ proposed here offers the framework needed for planning to start from actual demand and supply conditions (reflecting the real preferences of consumers and producers) and not from abstract notions formed by bureaucrats and technocrats about what the society's needs are. Furthermore, this system offers the opportunity to avoid both the despotism of the market that ―rationing by the wallet‖ implies, as well as the despotism of planning that imposes a specific rationing (even if this is done through a majority vote within a democratic planning process). Finally, although it is true that the effect of the proposed system on the distribution of income will be that a certain amount of inequality will inevitably follow the division between basic and non-basic work, this inequality will be quantitatively and qualitatively very different from today's inequality. Quantitatively, because it will be minimal in scale, in comparison to today's huge inequities and, qualitatively, because it will be related to voluntary work alone and not to accumulated or inherited wealth, as is the case today. Furthermore, it will not be institutionalized, either directly or indirectly, since extra income and wealth ―due to extra work― will not be linked to additional economic or political power and will not be passed to inheritors, but to the demos. Anyway, the introduction of a minimal degree of inequality, as described above, does not, in any way, negate economic democracy, which has a broader meaning that refers to the equal sharing of economic power and not just to the equal sharing of income. In conclusion, the ID economic model, which is characterized by the double aim of meeting basic needs and securing freedom of choice, through a system of collective and individual decision-making that combines democratic planning and an artificial ―market,‖ in contrast to alternative models like Parecon, can reintegrate society with economy. This is for the following basic reasons: 





The ID model can secure real self-management and freedom of choice for citizens as producers and consumers ―something that the bureaucratic nature of alternative models, which rely exclusively on planning for the allocation of scarce resources, does not allow. The ID model can secure the satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens ―the basic criterion of success for a rational economy― as the basic needs sector functions according to the principle ―from each according to ability to each according to need,‖ in contrast to alternative models which, failing to make the crucial distinction between basic and non-basic needs, can only cover some basic needs like health, or other needs purely out of compassion. Finally, the ID model stresses the important point that, even if we ever were to reach the mythical stage where resources are not scarce, questions of choice would continue to arise with respect to satisfiers, ecological compatibility etc. This is an additional reason why the system proposed here offers a realistic model for entering the realm of freedom now rather than in a mythical post-scarcity society.

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Democracy in the Social Realm as an ID Component The satisfaction of the above conditions for political and economic democracy would represent the re-conquering of the political and economic realms by the public realm ―that is, the re-conquering of a true social individuality, the creation of the conditions for freedom and self-determination, both at the political and the economic levels. However, political and economic power are not the only forms of power and, therefore, political and economic democracy do not, by themselves, secure an inclusive democracy. In other words, an inclusive democracy is inconceivable unless it extends to the broader social realm to embrace the workplace, the household, the educational institution and indeed any economic or cultural institution which constitutes an element of this realm. Historically, various forms of democracy in the social realm have been introduced, particularly during this century, usually in periods of revolutionary activity. However, these forms of democracy were not only short-lived but they seldom extended beyond the workplace (e.g. the Hungarian workers' councils of 1956) and the educational institution (e.g. the Paris student assemblies of 1968). As we have seen above, workplace assemblies play a crucial role in the economic process of an Inclusive Democracy and, furthermore, they are the basic expressions of selfmanagement at work, where workers take all-important decisions on the everyday running of each demotic enterprise, under the general control of the demotic assemblies (of which they are also members), so as to meet the basic and non-basic needs of consumers, on demand. A similar role will be played by farm assemblies in rural demotic enterprises, by hospital assemblies where doctors, nurses, cleaners etc will run the demotic hospitals, by school and university assemblies where teachers and students will run the demotic places of education and so on. Given that all these demotic enterprises will function on demand (i.e. according to the demand for their services as expressed by the vouchers and credit card points used for their ―purchase‖), phenomena of bureaucratization or of indifference to the wishes of citizens as consumers will be avoided, without creating the side effects of the market mechanism, which is capable of covering only the needs of those citizens who can afford to pay for the corresponding services. A crucial issue that arises with respect to democracy in the social realm refers to relations in the household. The social and economic status of women was enhanced in the last century, as a result of the expanding labour needs of the growth economy on the one hand and the activity of women‘s movements on the other. However, gender relations at the household level are still mostly hierarchical, especially in the South where most of the world‘s population lives. Yet, although the household shares with the public realm a fundamental common characteristic, namely, inequality and power relations, the household has always been classified as belonging to the private realm. Therefore, the problem that arises here is how the ―democratization‖ of the household may be achieved. One possible solution is the dissolution of the household/public realm divide. Thus, some feminist writers, particularly of the eco-feminist variety, glorify the oikos and its values as a substitute for the polis and its politics, something that, as Janet Biehl observes, ―can easily be read as an attempt to dissolve the political into the domestic, the civil into the familial, the public into the private.66 On the other hand, some Marxist feminists67 attempt to remove the 66

Janet Biehl, Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1991), p. 140

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public/private dualism by dissolving all private space into a singular public, socialized or fraternal state sphere. However, as Val Plumwood points out, the feminists who argue for the elimination of household privacy are today a minority, even though most feminists emphasize the way in which the concept of household privacy has been misused so as to place the subordination of women beyond challenge.68 Another possible solution, taking for granted that the household belongs to the private realm, is to ―democratise‖ it in the sense that household relationships should take on the characteristics of democratic relationships, and the household should take a form which is consistent with the freedom of all its members.69 To my mind, the issue is not the dissolution of the private/public realm divide. The real issue is how, in maintaining and enhancing the autonomy of the two realms, such institutional arrangements that introduce democracy to the household and to the social realm in general (the workplace, the educational establishment etc.) may be adopted, while the institutional arrangements of political and economic democracy are enhanced. In fact, an effective democracy is inconceivable unless free time is equally distributed among all citizens, and this condition can never be satisfied as long as the present hierarchical conditions in the household, the workplace and elsewhere continue. Furthermore, democracy in the social realm, particularly in the household, is impossible, unless such institutional arrangements are introduced which recognise the character of the household as a needs-satisfier and integrate the care and services provided within its framework into the general scheme of needs satisfaction.

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Ecological Democracy as an ID Component The final question that arises with respect to the conception of an inclusive democracy refers to the issue of how we may envisage an environmentally-friendly institutional framework that would not serve as the basis for a Nature-dominating ideology. Clearly, if we see democracy as a process of social self-institution in which there is no divinely or ―objectively‖ defined code of human conduct, there are no guarantees that an inclusive democracy would secure an ecological democracy in the sense defined above. In other words, a democratic ecological problematique cannot go beyond the institutional preconditions that offer the best hope for a better human relationship with Nature. Therefore, the replacement of the market economy by a new institutional framework of inclusive democracy constitutes only the necessary condition for a harmonious relationship between the natural and social worlds. The sufficient condition refers to the citizens‘ level of ecological consciousness. Still, the radical change in the dominant social paradigm which will follow the institution of an inclusive democracy, combined with the decisive role that paedeia will play in an environmentally-friendly institutional framework, could reasonably be expected to lead to a radical change in the human attitude towards Nature. In other words, there are strong grounds for believing that the relationship between an Inclusive Democracy and Nature would be much more harmonious than could ever be achieved in a market economy, or one based on 67

Pat Brewer, Feminism and Socialism: Putting the Pieces Together (Sydney: New Course, 1992) Val Plumwood, ―Feminism, Privacy and Radical Democracy‖, Anarchist Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Autumn 1995), p. 107. 69 Ibid., p. 111. 68

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state socialism. The factors supporting this view refer to all three elements of an Inclusive Democracy: political, economic and social. At the political level, there are grounds for believing that the creation of a public space will, in itself, have a very significant effect on reducing the appeal of materialism. This is because the public space will provide a new meaning of life to fill the existential void that the present consumer society creates. The realization of what it means to be human could reasonably be expected to throw us back towards Nature. Thus, as Kerry H. Whiteside points out:

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Political participation is not just …a potentially fulfilling activity that would remain available in a world less given to material consumption. A community that takes pride in collective deliberation fosters a way of life that limits the appeal of labour and work (...) a world in which labour is seen as only one part of a meaningful life will find consumption less 70 tempting.

Also, at the economic level, it is not accidental that, historically, the process of destroying the environment en masse has coincided with the process of marketization of the economy. In other words, the emergence of the market economy and of the consequent growth economy had crucial repercussions on the society-Nature relationship and led to the rise of the ideology of growth as the dominant social paradigm. Thus, an ―instrumentalist‖ view of Nature became dominant, in which Nature was seen as an instrument for economic growth, within a process of endless concentration of power. If we assume that only a confederal society could secure an inclusive democracy today, it would be reasonable to assume further that, once the market economy is replaced by a democratically-run confederal economy, the grow-or-die dynamics of the former will be replaced by the new social dynamic of the latter: a dynamic aiming to satisfy the community needs and not growth per se. If the satisfaction of community needs does not depend, as at present, on the continuous expansion of production to cover the ―needs‖ which the market creates, and if the link between economy and society is restored, then there is no reason why the present instrumentalist view of Nature should continue to condition human behaviour. Furthermore, democracy in the broader social realm could also be reasonably expected to be environmentally-friendly. The phasing out of patriarchal relations in the household and hierarchical relations in general should create a new ethos of non-domination which would embrace both Nature and Society. In other words, the creation of democratic conditions in the social realm should be a decisive step in the creation of the sufficient condition for a harmonious nature-society relationship. Finally, the fact that the basic unit of social, economic and political life in a confederal democracy would be the demos might also be expected to enhance its environmentallyfriendly character. It is reasonable to assume ―and the evidence of the remarkable success of local communities in safeguarding their environments is overwhelming71― that when people rely directly on their natural surroundings for their livelihood, they will develop an intimate knowledge of those surroundings, which will necessarily affect positively their behaviour 70

Kerry H. Whiteside, ―Hannah Arendt and Ecological Politics,‖ Environmental Ethics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 1994), p. 355. 71 See, for instance, the evidence on the matter presented in a special issue of The Ecologist, Vol. 22, No. 4 (JulyAug. 1992). Democracy in Theory and Action, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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towards them. However, the precondition for local control of the environment to be successful is that the community must depend on its natural surroundings for its long-term livelihood and that it, therefore, must have a direct interest in protecting it—another reason why an ecological society is impossible without economic democracy.

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The Inclusive Democracy Strategy for Transition The final issue arising with any anti-systemic political project in general and the ID project in particular is the crucial question of how we move from ―here‖ to ―there‖. The Inclusive Democracy project offers not only a meaningful and realistic way out of the present multidimensional crisis, but also a way of building a new globalization, which is based on genuinely democratic structures. The creation of a new world order based on an Inclusive Democracy involves the building of confederations of local, regional and national inclusive democracies. This will lead to a globalization which will not be based on the unequal distribution of power and the domination of human being over human being and Nature, as under the present globalization but, instead, on the equal distribution of all forms of power between autonomous human beings and the elimination of all forms of domination. It will also be founded on a sustainable economic system, which meets the basic needs of the planet‘s population, through a mechanism of allocation of resources between the confederations, within a planetary confederal plan of allocation of resources. Finally, the meeting of non-basic needs would be determined at the local level, in a way that secures freedom of choice, while exchanges of surpluses between confederations would be arranged through multilateral agreements. Today, as I attempted to show elsewhere,72 we face the end of ―traditional‖ anti-systemic movements, which were basically questioning one form of power or another as the basis for power relations/structures. What we need, instead, is a new anti-systemic movement which will question power itself, in the sense of its unequal distribution ― the essence of heteronomy. In other words, what is needed today is a new type of anti-systemic movement which should challenge heteronomy itself rather than, simply, various forms of heteronomy, as used to be the case with the ―traditional‖ anti-systemic movements which considered the unequal distribution of one particular form of power as the basis for all other forms of power: economic power (statist socialist movements); political power (libertarian movements); or finally, social power (feminist movements etc.). Therefore, the issue is to challenge inequality in the distribution of every form of power, in other words, power relations and structures themselves. The starting point for the ID transitional approach which I will briefly describe here73 is that, today, we need to redefine both class divisions and the liberatory subject, as I tried to do in section 2. The next step is to examine the rationale behind the transitional strategy proposed here, which is based on the lessons that History has taught us. To my mind, if there is one lesson that History has taught us, it is that the basic cause of failure of previous, 72 73

See Fotopoulos, ―The End of Traditional Anti-systemic Movements‖. For a full treatment of this topic see Takis Fotopoulos‘ talk in Barcelona under the title , The Transition to an Inclusive Democracy‖, in The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2010) http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol6/vol6_no2_takis_ID_meeting_ Barcelona_2010.htm#_ftn37 ; see also Takis Fotopoulos, ―Transitional strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project‖, Democracy & Nature, vol.8, no.1, (March 2002), pp. 17-62.

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revolutionary or reformist, attempts aiming to bring about systemic change was, precisely, the significant unevenness in the level of consciousness, in other words, the fact that all past revolutions took place in an environment where only a minority of the population had broken with the dominant social paradigm. This gave the golden opportunity to various elites to turn one section of the people against another (e.g. Chile), or it led to the development of authoritarian structures for the protection of the revolution (e.g. the French or Russian Revolutions), frustrating any attempt to create structures of equal distribution of power. However, for a revolution to be truly successful, a rupture with the past is presupposed, both at the subjective level of consciousness and at the institutional level. Still, whenever a revolution in the past was ―from above,‖ it had a good chance of achieving its first aim, to abolish state power and establish its own power, but, precisely because it was a revolution from above, with its own hierarchical structures etc., it had no chance of changing the dominant social paradigm except formally, i.e. at the level of the official (compulsory) ideology. On the other hand, although the revolution from below has always been the correct approach in converting people democratically to the new social paradigm, it suffered in the past from the fact that the uneven development of consciousness among the population did not allow revolutionaries to achieve even their very first aim of abolishing state power. Therefore, the major problem with systemic change has always been how it could be brought about, from below, but by a majority of the population, so that a democratic abolition of power structures could become feasible. The ID strategy does offer a solution to this crucial problem. Thus, the ID strategy involves the building of a mass programmatic libertarian political movement, like the old socialist movement, with an unashamedly universalist goal to change society along genuinely democratic lines, beginning here and now. Therefore, such a movement should explicitly aim at a systemic change, as well as at a parallel change in our value systems. This strategy would entail the gradual involvement of increasing numbers of people in a new kind of politics and the parallel shifting of economic resources (labour, capital, land) away from the market economy. The aim of such a strategy should be to create changes in the institutional framework, as well as to value systems which, after a period of tension between the new institutions and the state, would, at some stage, replace the market economy, representative ‗democracy‘ and the social paradigm ―justifying‖ them, with an Inclusive Democracy and a new democratic paradigm respectively. This is because, since systemic change requires a rupture with the past, which extends to both the institutional and the cultural level, such a rupture is only possible through the development of a new political organization and a new comprehensive political program for systemic change that will create a clear anti-systemic consciousness on a massive scale. This is in contrast to the statist socialist strategy, which ends up with the creation of a clear antisystemic consciousness only with respect to an avant-garde, or to life-style activities which create an anti-systemic consciousness restricted to the few members of various libertarian ―groupuscules‖, if at all. However, the creation of a new culture, which has to become hegemonic before the transition to an Inclusive Democracy can be effected, is only possible through the parallel building of new political and economic institutions on a significant social scale. In other words, it is only through action in building the new institutions that a mass political movement with a democratic consciousness can be formed.

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Such a strategy would also create the conditions for the transition: both the ―subjective‖ ones, in terms of developing a new democratic consciousness, and the ―objective‖ ones, in terms of creating the new institutions which would form the basis for an Inclusive Democracy. At the same time, the establishment of these new institutions would crucially assist, here and now, the victims of the concentration of power and, particularly, the victims of neoliberal globalization, in solving the problems of inequality created by it. Thus, people who are alienated from all forms of power today, particularly political and economic power, would have every incentive to be involved in such a movement and vote in local elections for the establishment of ―democracy in action‖ in their area. They would be fully aware of the fact that problems like unemployment and poverty could only be solved within the ID institutions (demotic enterprises, demotic welfare, etc.). They would also know that problems like air/water/food pollution could only be sorted out effectively, and on a massive social scale, if citizens started taking control of local power within the ID institutions rather than in the context of communes outside the main political and social arena. Finally, they would know that unless they were to get hold of political power at the local level and then, through confederations of local IDs, at the regional level, they would never be able to control their lives. In other words, people would be involved in a struggle for the establishment of the ID institutions not out of hunger for an abstract notion of self-management or democracy but because, through their own action, they would be able to see that the cause of all their problems (economic, social, ecological) has been the fact that power has been concentrated in the hands of the few. The aim, therefore, of an ID strategy is the creation, from below, of ―popular bases of political and economic power,‖ that is, the establishment of local inclusive democracies which, at a later stage, will confederate in order to create the conditions for the establishment of a new confederal Inclusive Democracy. So, a crucial element of the ID strategy is that the political and economic institutions of Inclusive Democracy begin to be established immediately after a significant number of people in a particular area have formed a base for ―democracy in action‖ ―something that, most probably, could only be achieved on the massive social scale required through victory in local elections under an ID program. But what sort of means can ensure the transition toward an Inclusive Democracy? A general guiding principle in selecting an appropriate transitional strategy is that of consistency between means and ends. Obviously, a strategy aiming at an Inclusive Democracy cannot be achieved through the use of non-democratic political practices, or individualistic activities. Furthermore, as we have seen above, it should not be restricted to the fight against the present system, but it should also ―prefigure‖ the future one. Thus, as regards first the fight against the present system, I think that there should be no hesitation in supporting all those struggles which can assist in making clear the repressive nature of statist democracy and the market economy, i.e. all types of collective action in the form of class conflicts between the victims of the internationalized market economy and the ruling local elites, or the transnational elite which ‗manages‘ the internationalized market economy. However, the systemic nature of the causes of such conflicts should be stressed at each step and this task obviously cannot be left to the bureaucratic leaderships of trade unions and other traditional organisations. This is the task of workplace assemblies that would form an integral part of a movement towards an Inclusive Democracy, which could confederate and take part in such struggles, as part of a broader democratic movement which is based on demoi and their confederal structures. Also, activists participating in the ID movement should obviously take part in direct action

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activities against neoliberal globalization, or against the serious undermining of political freedoms that has been institutionalized under the pretext of the ―war against terrorism,‖ in alliance with other radical anti-systemic groups ―provided of course that, in doing so, they express the ID problematique and raise the demands which are consistent with it. Similarly, as regards ―prefiguring‖ the future system, activities like Community Economic Development projects, self-managed factories, housing associations, LETS schemes, communes, self-managed farms and so on should also be supported ―provided, again, that they form part of a programmatic political movement with clear goals, means and strategies for systemic change, like the ID movement. If this condition is not met we are simply talking about reforms and life-style activities! The two main forms of activity suggested by the ID project are the participation in local elections and direct action. The objective of both is not just the conquest of power, but the rupture of the socialization process and, therefore, the creation of a democratic majority ―from below,‖ which will legitimize the new structures of Inclusive Democracy. Given this aim, it is obvious that participation in national elections is a singularly inappropriate means to this end, since, even if the movement for an Inclusive Democracy does win a national election, this will inevitably set in motion a process of ‗revolution from above‘. This is because the rupture in the socialization process can only be gradual and in continuous interaction with the phased implementation of the program for Inclusive Democracy, which, for the reasons mentioned above, should always start at the local level. On the other hand, an attempt to implement the new project through the conquest of power at the national level does not offer any opportunity for such an interaction between theory and practice and for the required homogenization of consciousness with respect to the need for systemic change. Contesting local elections provides, perhaps, the most effective means to publicize a programme for an Inclusive Democracy on a massive scale, as well as the opportunity to initiate its immediate implementation on a significant social scale. In other words, contesting local elections is not just an educational exercise, but also an expression of the belief that it is only at the local level that direct and economic democracy can be founded today, although of course local Inclusive Democracies have to be confederated to ensure the transition to a confederal democracy. It is exactly because the demos is the fundamental social and economic unit of a future democratic society that we need to start from the local level to change society. Therefore, participation in local elections is an important part of the strategy to gain power, in order to dismantle it immediately afterwards, by substituting the decisiontaking role of the assemblies for that of the local authorities, the day after the election has been won. Furthermore, contesting local elections provides the chance to start changing society from below, something that is the only democratic strategy, as against the statist approaches that aim to change society from above through the conquest of state power, and the ‗civil society‘ approaches that do not aim to bring about systemic change at all. Thus, once the institutions of Inclusive Democracy begin to be installed and people, for the first time in their lives, start obtaining real power to determine their own fate, the gradual erosion of the dominant social paradigm and of the present institutional framework will be set in motion. A new popular power base will be created. Town by town, city by city, region by region will be taken away from the effective control of the market economy and statist forms of organization (national or international), their political and economic structures being replaced by the confederations of democratically-run communities. An alternative social paradigm will become hegemonic and the break in the socialization process ― the

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precondition for a change in the institution of society ― will follow. A dual power system will develop in which the statist form of organization will be in tension with the new democratic institutions, which ultimately may or may not lead to confrontation with the ruling elites, depending on the balance of power that would have developed by then. Clearly, the greater the appeal of the new institutions to citizens, the smaller the chance that the ruling elites will resort to violence to restore the power of the state and the market economy institutions on which their own power rests.

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Chapter 2

E-DEMOCRACY: CONCEPTS, EXPERIENCES AND CHALLENGES Cristiano Maciel*1, Licínio Roque≠2 and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia¥3 1

Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Instituto de Computação, Cuiabá, MT, Brazil Universidade de Coimbra, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Coimbra, Portugal 3 Universidade Federal Fluminense, Instituto de Computação, Niterói, RJ, Brazil

2

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ABSTRACT Through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, citizens can access information and services and engage in government issues. Citizen participation is one of the surest ways to bring democracy to life: it generates an ongoing flow of information between citizens and the government that supports the decision making of both. However, for participatory democracy to actually occur, citizens must articulate their views, design proposals, defend them and indicate their choices through public means of communication. Electronic democracy (e-democracy) can make these possible by promoting discussion on issues and problems or by supporting decision making. The main objective of this study is to discuss this advanced stage of e-democracy, participatory democracy. Normally the prerequisite for this is public consultation, which allows those affected by the outcome to debate the issue(s). Then decisions can be made through a deliberative vote, where everyone has the right to cast their vote. These different steps constitute consultative and deliberative processes. The capabilities that ICTs afford have generated growing expectations for electronic democracy. This study discusses different interaction and communication strategies and resources governments have used to build bridges toward their citizens. The paper also discusses integration of these resources with the support of modern social networking concepts.

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Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia This chapter presents background information on e-democracy experiences, problems and challenges, as well as important related concepts.

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1. INTRODUCTION Through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, citizens can access information and services and engage in government issues. Citizen participation is one of the surest ways to bring democracy to life: it generates an ongoing flow of information between citizens and the government that supports the decision making of both. However, for participatory democracy to actually occur, citizens must articulate their views, design proposals, defend them and indicate their choices through public means of communication. Electronic democracy (e-democracy) can make these possible by promoting discussion on issues and problems or by supporting decision making. The main objective of this study is to discuss this advanced stage of e-democracy, participatory democracy. Normally the prerequisite for this is public consultation, which allows those affected by the outcome to debate the issue(s). Then decisions can be made through a deliberative vote, where everyone has the right to cast their vote. These different steps constitute consultative and deliberative processes. The capabilities that ICTs afford have generated growing expectations for electronic democracy. This study discusses different interaction and communication strategies and resources governments have used to build bridges toward their citizens. The paper also discusses integration of these resources with the support of modern social networking concepts. Countries have adopted different tactics to promote citizen engagement in decision making, using referenda, public hearings, public opinion surveys, negotiated rule making, consensus conferences, citizens‘ juries or panels, public advisory committees and focus groups (ROWE; FREWER, 2000). Under Brazil‘s federal constitution, its citizens‘ may exercise their sovereignty directly through referenda, plebiscites or popular initiatives. Yet can the democratic process go digital just by changing the way the government provides its services? The traditional e-democracy model has followed a relatively predictable approach: First the organizations provide information, add services and then attempt to add interactive tools. Strategies and/or systems for online voting are then layered onto these services. Implementing a true e-democracy requires a comprehensive, thorough methodology to build an infrastructure that moves it to more advanced stages like citizen participation in decision making. Many governments have made important moves to promote digital inclusion by supplying physical infrastructure (e.g., telecenters), but this still does not guarantee that citizens will engage in decision making. Online government applications have a range of interaction tools with different functions. In general, advisory processes have been carried out by e-mail, chat or discussion forums, even though these formats pose problems with regards to structuring discussion and information retrieval. Final determination, in turn, occurs only through inquiries, often on general subjects and without prior deliberation. Internationally there are online tools that address these issues, but although they integrate resources, many do not treat citizens as individuals responsible for collective decisions. This study does not aim to compare them, as they do have different purposes, but rather to identify them and make this information

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available to those who could gain from it. We acknowledge there are many experiences beyond those published in communication vehicles and scientific journals, and report some of them herein. Overall, applications for consultative and deliberative government purposes present problems, as described below: a) they do not offer social opportunities for citizens to engage as individuals responsible for community decisions; b) they should remain open during a certain time period and effectively be used; c) they lack discussion structuring mechanisms; d) they do not provide opportunity for deliberation to support joint government-citizen decision making; and f) they have no way to verify individual‘s engagement maturity on the themes being discussed to ensure conscious deliberation. In light of these problems, it is important to address the principles applicable to edemocracy systems design. This involves examining today‘s social Web, such as the formation of virtual communities and other Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies (Maciel et al., 2009). Furthermore, the challenges posed by implementing e-democracy systems, many of them arising from the actual forms that democratic government takes, need to be reviewed and researched to produce efficient design of these systems. Just as historical attempts to establish democratic governments have proven imperfect, so modern democracies have their own flaws (Dahl, 2009). In an effort to demonstrate possible solutions to the foregoing problems, this study also presents the Government-Citizen Interaction Model, which reflects the different phases of a consultative and deliberative process. This model proposes creation of a virtual community to cultivate the social element of the citizens. It provides the format for integrating the model‘s components, such as debate, voting, the social room, the information library and the user help feature. Based on this model, a method to measure the quality of e-democratic participation was created and tested in a real application, the Citizens Democratic Community. In the name of reader background information, these studies are briefly described at the end of this Chapter, along with bibliographical references indicating where they were published in their entirety. To begin, we will discuss the concepts of electronic government and popular participation.

2. ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT AND POPULAR PARTICIPATION This Chapter is divided into large sections according to themes. The first addresses concepts concerning electronic government, democracy and popular participation, edemocracy, the limitations of using ICTs for this theory of government and the challenges to implementing e-democracy. Secondly, the Chapter presents experiences and applications, including several Brazilian experiences, in e-democracy processes. The third section considers concepts of social communities as a basis for subsequent presentation of design principles for using these in e-democracy applications. In closing, brief consideration is given to a model, a method and an application both with e-participation purposes, as an example of how different strategies for modern democracy can be developed.

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2.1. Electronic Government Electronic Government essentially means strategies the government uses to employ Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for the purposes of modernizing the administrative machine and serving its citizens. A review of these strategies reveals two distinct aims in terms of government use of ICTs. Distinction is drawn under the terms egovernance and e-government (SORJ, 2003): 

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

E-governance: Refers to use of the Internet to increase efficiency, effectiveness, quality, transparency and monitoring of actions and services of the government and public institutions. Examples would include applications to control budget, public spending, internal administration, online services, electronic auctions and public bids, among others. In general, it refers to electronic government administration. E-government: Includes the set of new instruments that make it possible to increase and modify citizen participation in government management and decision-making, as well as to influence them. Examples include electronic voting, interacting with public institutions and Internet regulation.

Electronic government provides an electronic connection between the government itself, its citizens and organizations; it has three types: a) Government-to-Citizen (G2C): information, services directed at citizens and direct interaction between users and government, designed for e-inclusion and consisting of both virtual and physical means; b) Government-to-Government (G2G): initiatives targeting the quality of integration among different government services, involving restructuring and modernization of procedures and processes; c) Government-to-Business (G2B): projects for providing information and services to ventures and businesses, as well as strengthening business interest and development in a specific region. Figure 1 below illustrates these types.

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Internet use can be divided into three categories according to the means of citizen participation in government issues: information, services or participation (Garcia; Maciel; Pinto, 2005). Participation, required at the G2C level in particular, can be divided into (UNPAN, 2005): 



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

E-information: Government websites provide information on policies and programs, budgets, laws and regulations, as well as other briefs on matters of public interest. Communication with the government and dissemination of public information can also be performed with formats like forums, e-mail lists, news groups and chat rooms. E-consultation: The sites provide tools and mechanisms for online consulting. These include, among others, electronic tax forms and other online services offered by public agencies. E-decision-making: The government encourages citizens to engage in public deliberation and make joint decisions, as occurs with online participatory budgets. The government must also offer feedback on the resulting outcomes.

In an e-democracy system, these classifications are important for determining the level of citizen endorsement, the profile of participants and resource utilization in a very complex environment. In terms of participation, the UNPAN report (2005) evaluates countries as to the prevalence of the Internet in them, defining five stages: emergence, enhancement, interaction, transaction or seamless. The last stage is the most sophisticated in online government initiatives, as the government encourages citizens to engage in deliberative decision-making and is willing to involve society in an open, two-way dialogue. Through interactive resources, like comments posted on Web forms and innovative online consulting mechanisms, the government solicits people‘s opinions on public policies and laws, promoting democratic participation in decision making. This initiative may (or may not) integrate G2C, G2G and G2B interactions. This phase warrants special attention, and application of ICTs can offer new mechanisms for stimulating participation, with online consulting and deliberation by citizens. Federal, state and local governments have high expectations of their citizens, and therefore must put effort into easy, quick and safe interactions by offering functional applications in integrated information environments. The ways that ICTs are designed, executed and employed are closely related to their context of use (Button; Harper, 1993) (Orlikowski, 1992) (Kyng; Mathiassen, 1997) (Kling, 2000). According to Dearden and Walker (2003), many studies on information technology and systems are being conducted in the context of individual users, of organizations, or in rare cases, of the government (or public). Oostveen and van den Besselaar (2004) underscore that immense technological evolution has advanced design and construction of models, systems and infrastructure for information, communication and rendering of services that will gradually substitute traditional devices. Some studies on e-government have focused on standards for evaluating online services (Wood et al., 2003) (Garcia; Maciel; Pinto, 2005). It is emphasized that careful research on the needs of citizens/clients (including through systematic studies and focus groups), strategic communication and marketing help create a critical mass of users (Chalin et al., 2004) to effectively implement e-democracy.

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Shorr and Stolfo (1998) encourage groups of investigators from different areas (computing, statistics and social sciences), who are committed to government information systems, to conduct applied research and foster the education of students with this vision so as to set courses of excellence toward government applications. E-government can address numerous problems, among them:   





special features in application design, given the need to include entire populations, whether or not they are literate, digitally included or connected to the Internet; the need to provide an automated environment to provide a wide range of egovernment services and applications; the lack of integration of Web resources; integration would allow services, data and applications to intercommunicate and merge through programs, with online databases and interfaces for wireless devices; the absence of online participatory access and ongoing engagement of citizens for democratic purposes, whether attributable to the lack of skill on the part of leaders and citizens in using this communication resource, or to the lack of environments conducive to this expression of citizenship; and the lack of methods for measuring decision-making maturity for the purposes of edemocracy, which would involve evaluation criteria and indicators. Maciel (2008) explores this latter problem in particular.

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The next chapter considers democracy, especially electronic democracy.

2.1.1. Democracy: Politics and the Internet Governance is a system that manages the balance of power among everyone involved in an institution – managers, employees, citizens – so that the common good prevails over the interests of groups or individuals. In a democracy, power can be exercised by many people, an expression of the popular will, which predominates in all political decisions. According to Dewey (1956 in CATLIN, 1964, p. 213), ―Democracy is much broader than a special political form, a method of conducting government... It is a means...for realizing ends that lie in the wide domain of human relationships and the development of human personality. It is... a way of life, social and individual... Democratic political forms... rest back upon the idea that no man or limited set of men is wise enough or good enough to rule others without their consent (pp. 57-8)‖. There are many conflicting interpretations of what constitutes a democracy, the meaning of political participation, representation, deliberation and to what degree citizens can choose freely (HELD, 1996). More generally speaking, according to the Dictionary of Social Sciences (1987), democracy designates a way of life in a society that believes each individual has the right to contribute freely to the values of this society. In a more narrow sense, democracy is the opportunity of a society‘s members to participate freely in decision making in any area, individually or collectively. In its most restricted sense, the term designates the opportunity that a State‘s citizens have to contribute freely to the most specific political decisions that affect the individual and collective life.

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This dictionary also says that in its broadest and most recent application, the term democracy has become increasingly used to mean the leveling of society. General consensus holds that political democracy means more than a mere form of government, especially since there are growing outward demonstrations praising democratic forms, but without practicing political democracy‘s core values. There is a widespread idea that for the different forms of democracy to function in practice, there must be a certain level of basic education, and if not economic stability, at least an absence of poverty overall (cf. LIPSET, S. M. Political Man, Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, 1960). Despite the shortcomings of democratic governments, we must not lose sight of the strengths that make democracy more desirable than any of its viable alternatives (Dahl, 2009):     

 

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  

Democracy helps impede cruel and unbalanced autocratic governments. Democracy guarantees citizens a series of fundamental rights that non-democratic systems do not (and cannot) extend. Democracy ensures citizens broader personal freedom than any of its viable alternatives. Democracy helps protect people‘s basic interests. Only a democratic government can provide maximum opportunities for individuals to exercise freedom of self–determination – which is to say: to live under laws of their own choosing. Only a democratic government can provide maximum opportunity for exercising moral responsibility. Democracy promotes human development more fully than any other viable alternative. Only a democratic government can promote a relatively high degree of political equality. Modern representative democracies do not fight with one another. Countries with democratic governments tend to be more prosperous than countries with non-democratic governments.

With all these advantages, most people consider democracy the best of all viable alternatives. Democracy confers numerous advantages on its citizens. Citizens are tightly protected against authoritarian regimes, and also have basic rights and far-reaching liberties. As citizens they acquire the means to protect and act upon their most important personal interests. They can also contribute to decisions on laws they will be subject to, they are granted extensive moral autonomy and they have extraordinary opportunities for personal development (Dahl, 2009). Concluding that democracy brings many advantages over non-democratic systems of government, Dahl (2009) asks: Why should democracy‘s advantages apply to some people and not to others? Why should not all adults reap them? If the government should give equal weight to the well-being of each person, would not all adults have the right to help decide which laws and policies best achieve their objectives, whether these are their own or for the good of all? If no one is really prepared to govern and accept complete authority for running a state, who will be more prepared to engage than all adults subject to the laws?

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From the conclusions implicit in these questions, Dahl (2009) affirms: Except in extreme cases, in rare circumstances and protected by legislation, all adults subject to the laws of the state should be considered adequately prepared to participate in democratic process of a state‘s government. There are numerous ways that democracy can be classified. This paper considers the three democracy models proposed by Astrom (2001): quick, strong and thin. These models are rooted in traditional democracy and used to bridge deep democratic theory and its electronic manifestations. Table 1 shows the guidelines these models apply. Table 1. Models of Democracy (ASTROM, 2001)

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Democracy Characteristic Legitimacy role of citizens term of elected officials emphasizes ICT use

Quick power to the people majority decision maker

Strong consensus public debate opinion shaper

Thin choice efficiency responsibility of government consumer

limited decision

interactive discussion

open Information

As with quick democracy, strong democracy requires active citizens, but instead of accelerating the decision process, strong democracy favors slow and comprehensive involvement of the people in discussion and deliberation, which can be achieved in many different electronic forums. While quick democracy supposes that the majority of citizens apply critical sense to society's most diverse and complex issues, and that decisions can be made by the majority, strong democracy prefers to invest in the education of individuals through information, deliberation and debate. The strong model does not mean just give power to the people, but educate them to understand society. When people discuss social problems, a platform of respect, trust, tolerance and openness is created based on these essential ingredients of a strong democracy. Different than the other two models, thin democracy does not prioritize citizen participation, holding that common citizens do not care about politics and are not qualified to participate. Thus, the idea is that the elite compete for the people‘s votes. For Barber (2004), a strong democracy rests upon an autonomous community of citizens united less by homogenous interests than civic education, who find common goals and base their reciprocal actions on civic spirit and participatory institutions rather than altruism or good will. The strong democracy is compatible with, or more accurately depends on, the politics of conflict, the sociology of pluralism and the separation of the public and private spheres of action. Freedom of expression in democracy does not simply mean choosing from among predefined choices. To be effective, people must be able to articulate ideas, elaborate suggestions and defend and debate them with others through public means of expression. Formulating opinions that can impact public decisions requires several things, among them being duly informed and availed of pluralistic, independent and socially responsible means of communication. This alone attributes great importance to means of communication as instruments for building democratic consciousness, and consequently for exercising citizenship.

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In order to understand public participation, we must first be clear about what participation is. The act of participating can be defined as taking part in something, for instance a discussion (Webster, 2009). According to Wilcox (1994), underpinned by the ideas of Arnstein (1969), participation can occur on different levels, like exchanging information (often using only one channel), or discussing a subject of common interest to a group of people for the purpose of making or deliberating a decision. Wilcox (1994) describes these levels by creating a theoretical model of participation. Rowe and Frewer (2000) define public participation as a practice of consulting and involving the public in decision making through political activities held by organizations or institutions responsible for policy making. A recent example, with substantial participation, is the legislation in countries like the United States, France and the United Kingdom under which public opinion must be heard before decisions are made in areas of uncertainty (Rowe; Frewer, 2000). For the Dictionary of Social Sciences (1987), participation is a generic concept used in sociology, sometimes as a synonym for integration, to indicate the nature and degree of an individual‘s incorporation into the group. Other times, it is a norm or value used to evaluate types of social organization, whether social, economic, political or other. In developing countries, the concept of participation has assumed many forms – political, social and economic. Their social movements sought political participation in the form of full citizenship and voting rights for all levels and groups of the society, the last ripples of a wave of history dating in the West back to the French Revolution and culminating in the elimination of class or caste privileges and the extinction of colonialism and structural and international dependencies (Dictionary of Social Sciences, 1987). Economic participation in turn manifests through union and labor movements aimed at giving employees a greater share in their company‘s profit and management, especially industrial companies. There are many ways of profit sharing, even involving company boards and co-management. There is no clear division between these movements and demands for social engagement. It seems that concerns about participation and its expansion as a goal in and of itself, albeit a conscious one, create serious problems with exclusion from decision-making, which as a means of social organization correspond to a growing feeling of alienation among common man and an overall uneasiness that many say is the root of the so-called social problems. On the other hand, the advantage of public involvement is increased public trust in the decision processes and in information sharing. According to McGregor (2003), significant public involvement can help democratic governments to do the following: a.

build relationships based on trust, transparency, accountability, openness and integrity; b. integrate the public‘s wide range of needs, interests and concerns; c. solve problems more efficiently through collaborative strategies; d. ensure that decisions and solutions incorporate successful techniques, knowledge and viewpoints; e. identify issues and projects in a broader technical, social, cultural and ethical context; and f. raise the level of acceptance of local decisions through institutionalization by legislation, departmental policies or daily bureaucratic procedures.

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Rowe and Frewer (2000) cite different ways to promote citizen participation in decision making, as shown in Table 2 below: Table 2. Methods of Public Participation (ROWE; FREWER, 2000)

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Participation Method Referenda

Nature of Participants

Time Characteristics/Mechanism Examples/References Scale/Duration Potentially all members Vote cast at single Vote is usually choice of one Biotechnology in of national or local point in time. of two options. All Switzerland (Buchmann population; realistically, a participants have equal 1995); waste repository in significant proportion of influence. Final outcome is Sweden (af Wåhlberg these. binding. 1997). Public Interested citizens, May last many Entails presentations by Frequent mechanism in, for hearings/inquires limited in number by size weeks/months, agencies regarding plans in example, United States of venue. True even years. Usually open forum. Public may voice (Fiorino 1990), Australia participants are experts held during week- opinions but have no direct (Davison, Barnes, and and politicians making days/working impact on recommendation. Schibeci 1997); review by presentations. hours. Middendorf and Busch (1997). Public opinion Large sample (e.g., 100s Single event, Often enacted through written Radioactive sites in United surveys or 1,000s), usually usually lasting no questionnaire or telephone States (Feldman and representative of the more than several survey. May involve variety Hanahan 1996); genetically population segments of minutes. of questions. Used for modified food in the United interest. information gathering. Kingdom (Vidal 1998); biotech surveys (Davison, Barnes, and Schibeci 1997). Negotiated rule Small number of Uncertain: strict Working committee of Used by U.S. making representatives of deadline usually stakeholder representatives Environmental Protection stakeholder groups (may set: days/ weeks/ (and from sponsor). Agency (Hanson 1984); include public months. Consensus required on method discussed by representatives). specific question (usually, a Susskind and McMahon regulation). (1985) and Fiorino (1990). Consensus Generally, ten to sixteen Preparatory Lay panel with independent Used in Denmark and conference members of public (with demonstrations and facilitator questions expert Netherlands on topics from no knowledge on topic) lectures (etc.) to witnesses chosen by food irradiation to air selected by steering inform panelists stakeholder panel. Meetings pollution (Joss and Durant committee as about topic, then open to wider public. 1994; Grundahl 1995); also ―representative‖ of the three-day Conclusions on key questions used in United Kingdom on general public. conference. made via report plant biotechnology (Ellahi or press conference. 1995). Citizens‘ Generally, twelve to Not precise but Lay panel with independent Examples in Germany, jury/panel twenty members of public generally involve facilitator questions expert United States, and United selected by stakeholder meetings over a witnesses chosen by stake Kingdom (e.g., Crosby, panel to be roughly few days (e.g., four holder panel. Meetings not Kelly, and Schaefer 1986; representative of the local to ten). generally open. Conclusions Coote, Kendall, and population. on key questions made via Stewart 1994; Lenaghan, report or press conference. New, and Mitchell 1996). Citizen/public Small group selected by Takes place over Group convened by sponsor Particularly evident in advisory sponsor to represent na extended period to examine some significant United States, for example, committee views of various groups of time. issue. Interaction with in cleanup of waste sites or communities (may not industry representatives. (Lynn and Busenberg 1995; comprise members of true Perhac 1998); see public). Creighton (1993) for guidelines. Focus groups Small group of five to Single meeting, Free discussion on general Guidelines from Morgan twelve selected to be usually up to two topic with video/tape (1993); U.K. example to representative of public; hours. recording and little assess food risk (Fifeseveral groups may be input/direction from Schaw and Rowe 1995). used for one project facilitator. Used to assess (comprising members of opinions/attitudes. subgroups).

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Using ICTs and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) to fortify active citizen participation and support collaboration among different actors, including citizens, the government, civil society and others, for the purpose of defining public policy, is called electronic democracy (e-democracy). The capabilities that ICTs provide have spawned growing expectations for electronic democracy. For Rondini, Senger and Farias (2006), active citizen participation presupposes greater involvement by the population and has greater potential to influence political decisions. Tools of support for this type of interaction include not only e-mails, that often lack information use and management, but also online discussion forums for public consultations and use of electronic forms for submitting requests to executive and legislative authorities. However, the use of ICTs on the Internet is still far from being fully realized. Gronlund (2003) says that ―e-democratic IT tools are so far mainly quite simple mainstream systems…‖ and that ―…more advanced IT tools have to be employed to support the participation.‖. For Watson et al. (1999), the objective of e-democracy is to provide information technology to make democracy more effective and efficient. E-emocracy is at first, the implementation of political processes with the support of ICTs (von Lucke, Reinermann, 2004). According Kripp (2009), this electronic extension of democracy is changing opportunities to participate and deliberate in the public discourse. Democracy is becoming more direct, and E-Democracy could lead to a more participative democratic culture. E-democracy is generally viewed as a tool for transitioning from a representative democracy (thin) to a direct democracy (quick) by allowing citizens greater participation. Modern Democracy magazine (2009) presents an interesting distribution of e-democracy activity and actions, illustrated in ―The map of modern democracy.‖ It divides activities and actions into four main stages, namely: early stages, later stage, advanced stage and schedule independent. Although the actions and activities occur in a certain stage, some are seen indirectly in other stages, with variations probably due to the way they are implemented, to their target population or to their purpose. In this system of classification, providing citizens with information is part of the early stage. The tables below show the actions and activities proposed in this distribution. Many of the issues this chapter discusses fall in the advanced stage, as they address matters incurring from people's participation in government issues. Nevertheless, key issues like e-discussion and e-consultation are considered as well. ICT supported direct democracy seeks solutions for the lack of direct citizen participation in decision making. The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD, 2006) identified five challenges for e-democracy: the problem of scale (providing access for everyone); capacity and building citizenship; ensuring coherence of information; evaluating the effectiveness of the process; and ensuring the process continues. The organization also reiterates that key factors for developing e-democracy tools and subsequently for citizens to adopt them include accessibility, usability and security.

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Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia Table 3. The map of modern democracy – Early Stage (Modern Democracy magazine, 2009)

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Early Stage* Action/ Activity e-consulate/e-Embassy

Description E-Consulate or E-Embassy is the use of electronic means and ICT to provide services for citizens living abroad, such as passport applications and participation or consultation projects. e-Discussion Using ICTs to discuss topics and issues of concern amongst citizens, governments and other societal stakeholders. e-Initiative Using electronic and Internet tools to establish initiatives that allow citizens to participate in, or influence political decision-making and agenda setting. e-Journalism Information and news, reports from party or political events, and event blogging published by citizens and officials to provide unfiltered information to increase transparency and accountability of the democracy. e-Justice/e-Law The use of ICT by all stakeholders of the judiciary in the conduct of justice and to improve public service, particularly for citizens and businesses. e-Legislation Using ICT for drafting, commenting upon, consulting, structuring, formatting, submitting, amending, voting and publishing of acts of elected assemblies. e-Parliament The use of ICT by representative assemblies, their members and staff in the conduct of their tasks and actively involving its electorate and citizens. e-Party (external) Parties are using ICTs to provide members with information regarding party activities, conventions and online campaigning. e-Politician Politicians provide an insight into their work, and information regarding their use of ICTs. Politicians provide an insight into their work, and information regarding their use of ICTs. Grassroots C2C, C2G Citizen-initiated E-Democracy projects among citizens or between citizens and government. Information Management Tools Innovative tools to collect and aggregate available information or news concerning situations and events initiated by any participant of political life. Vote Navigator Mainly web-based, with simple overviews of parties, politicians and election programmes. Regulating e-Democracy Provision of electronic or analogue regulations and guidelines for the organization and administration of E-Democracy initiatives. * Use of ICT‘s in political campaigns, planning of campaigns; consisting of E-Electioneering and EAdvocacy

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Table 4. The map of modern democracy – Later Stage (Modern Democracy magazine, 2009) Later Stage Action/ Activity E-CiRM E-Voting

Internal E-Democracy

Description Public authorities personalize citizens‘ information to provide customized information. An electronic election or referendum established mainly by governments that involves the use of electronic means in at least the casting of the vote. Parties and associations using E-Democracy tools for internal purposes like selection of candidates, decision-making and internal party voting.

Table 5. The map of modern democracy – Advanced Stage (Modern Democracy magazine, 2009)

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Advanced Stage Action/ Activity Overcoming E-Obstacles

Description Activities designed to remove the barriers to E-Democracy, including the issues of digital divide and digital illiteracy. Government Interactivity Public authorities interact with electronic grass roots initiatives by with Citizens G2C, and C2C integrating them into the legislative process or providing such initiatives with administrative or financial support. E-Inclusion Connecting the unconnected through initiatives to promote inclusion, especially of the elderly, minorities and marginalised socio-economic groups in E-Democracy. Combating Digital Actions and activities by public authorities and NGOs to combat Illiteracy digital illiteracy and digital divide issues. Social Networking Using electronic social networks for democratic initiatives, Democracy participation and deliberation of citizens, with politicians or government and vice versa. Single Government Portal Supporting citizens in dealing with public authorities by using electronic means, e.g. web-based platforms. Participatory Budgeting Using ICT to include citizens in the budgeting process through participatory tools and procedures. E-Spatial Planning Neighbourhood initiatives or public authority and NGO-established initiatives to discuss projects with a neighbourhood context such as urban planning. E-Petition Electronic delivery of a protest or recommendation to a democratic institution. E-Consultation Using ICTs to collect the opinions of official groups or public individuals in matters of specific policy issues. E-Complaints In a step towards citizen relationship management, public authorities are using ICTs to provide citizens with an electronic means of filing complaints.

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Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia Table 6. The map of modern democracy – Schedule Independent (Modern Democracy magazine, 2009)

Schedule Independent Action/ Activity E-Training

E-Incentives E-Ombudsman and Audit Institutions E-Democracy Webcasts

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E-Democracy Games

Description Initiatives by public authorities for training civil servants, politicians and elected representatives in the use of electronic democracy systems. Incentives used by public authorities or NGOs to reward citizens or public organizations participating in E-Democracy initiatives. Ombudsmen and audit institutions‗ websites where complaints can be filed both electronically and anonymously. Some of the initiatives used by public authorities to cover live web casts of legislative government judiciary meetings. Games and simulations designed to promote knowledge of electronic democracy and introduce citizens to its processes and tools.

Pratchett (2007) cites challenges to democracy saying that although there are now more democratic countries, representative democracy has never been more contested and participatory democracy has problems of citizen engagement and maturity. The Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) also identified five challenges facing Brazilian computing research in the coming decade (SBC, 2006), among them participatory and universal access to knowledge on the part of Brazilian citizens and computational modeling of complex artificial, natural and socio-economic systems and nature-human interaction. These challenges are driving forces, as deliberative systems in the computer environment are complex, even more so when applied to democracy, and citizen participation in government issues is extremely important for society. According to Schorr and Stolfo (1998), theoretical and applied research financed in research labs and institutions must push harder to develop government information systems. The real world problems in this field pose serious challenges. For Dearden and Walker (2003), experts in the areas of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Systems (IS) have offered little help in developing more effective applications using ICTs. Anttiroiko (2003) says the following factors must weigh in when employing ICTs for the democratic process: 



Challenges for democracy: Citizen participation leads to a change in social structures, institutions and mentality, which must be identified and taken into account when evaluating the processes and results of the democratic system. The challenge posed by the complexity of the process must rest on electronic voting and the installation of online deliberation environments. Mechanisms for institutional mediation of democratic systems: This determines how and to what degree citizens influence and control collective decisions. These mechanisms have a decisive role in the operating capability of the different democracy models.

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E-Democracy: Concepts, Experiences and Challenges 



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

65

Tools for technological mediation: Contemporary societies have strong faith in mediation tools and channels of influence, such as TV, network linked computers and mobile phones. Variety and levels of government issues: Politics and action plans address nearly everything with that reflects on the social collective. Therefore, political matters vary considerably and must be classified by subject. Different phases of a democratic process: This dimension is based on a vision of the democratic process with decision making as a cornerstone. However, other elements of this process also exercise important roles. Ideally models have all phases: planning and preparation, decision making, implementation (including providing service) and control and evaluation of collective actions.

These very important factors are considered in the participation model proposed in this chapter‘s section 2.4, especially with regards to discussion support and electronic voting, classification by subject, identifying how and to what degree citizens influence and control collective decisions, the key role of trust in the means of communication and the vision of democratic process, with different phases. According to Tavares et al. (2009), there are three great obstacles to democratic citizen participation in deliberative government processes: the difficulties that citizens have to submit their requests to the government, that the governments have to understand individual requests –potentially thousands or millions – to propose measures that meet the needs of the majority and that citizens have to know whether their requests were even heard. For Shneiderman (2006), reaching national consensus that reflects the opinions of millions of citizens through a mix of representation and direct participation will require ambitious development. Even basic issues, like scheduling, moderating discussions, organizing groups and summarizing deliberations demand innovative, well-tested design. Monnoyer-Smith (2004) reinforces the idea that, with the exception of councils and deliberative inquiries, which are highly codified, the anarchic and creative use of ICTs in the decision making process is problematic for political science. Most opinion surveys today have both online and offline dimensions: technical, sociological and political limitations grow considerably in the wake of rising open participation with the new formats not yet been modeled by the deliberation theory and changes in possibilities for public dissent, which can now be expressed electronically. Therefore, implementing opinion survey tools does not guarantee that users will effectively participate; strategies must be developed for the deliberative process. Arguments against e-democracy are similar to those against quick democracy, such as: the risk of populism, inferior political discourse, loss of deliberation, creation of confusing political roles, unstable democratic institutions, and others. Specific arguments against electronic formats include points and challenges like security, privacy, investment, training, accessibility, viewing and initiative. The key points concern infrastructure, while the challenges are technical factors that define the infrastructure and impact e-democracy‘s success once implemented. Key points include the following: investment in designing systems for e-democracy; initiative, that is to say governments having the vision and commitment to democratic processes using ICTs; and training of political representatives, public workers and citizens.

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Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia Challenges would include the following:

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    

inclusive access to the Internet and other communication channels; security and protection of privacy; government responsiveness that reflects active government-citizen interaction; effective public moderation and deliberation; and online citizen access to official information on file.

A large number of applications, softwares and tools are available to help implement edemocracy processes (Garcia; Maciel; Pinto, 2005) (Tambouris; Liotas; Tarabanis, 2007). According to Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis (2007), these tools can be categorized as follows: ―Weblogs, Web Portals, Search Engines, Webcasting / Podcasting, Mailing Lists / Newsgroups, Chat Rooms, Wikis, Online Survey Tools, Deliberative Survey Tools, Content Analysis Tools, Content Management Tools, Collaborative Management Tools, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Collaborative Environments, Consultation Platforms, Argument Visualization Tools e Natural Language Interfaces.‖. In their classification, these authors cite tools ranging from the simplest, like Mailing Lists, to more complex collaborative environments, such as the CSCW. Below are some considerations with regards to these tools employed for online deliberative e-democracy. E-mails or discussion lists facilitate information sharing among different users, and email is a widely used tool. On the other hand, it is hard to structure information shared by email because text responses are connected to others in sequence. Since this involves text communication, there can also be different interpretations of the context, what is known as ―interpretive flexibility‖ (Latour, 1999) (Roque, 2004). Chat rooms allow participants to communicate in real time, but pose information structuring problems similar to those of e-mail. Visual resources, like emotions, facilitate communication. Another alternative is online questionnaires containing structured questions about the issue being discussed. Such deliberative questionnaires can be used to conduct opinion surveys. Sharing questionnaire information is considered difficult also; if participant interest is sparked, they may generate parallel discussions mediated by other communication resources. Note that literature does not contain experiments using questionnaires in a deliberative process as a whole, including registration, survey and voting. Through polls or inquiries, users can vote for one choice among any number of predefined options. Results are obtained simply and easily, but predefining options limits leaves no room for debate about those options. Another strategy for making e-democracy feasible is an online application specific for this purpose, which integrates different communication resources and makes it possible to implement levels of information structuring; social networks or virtual communities are examples of this. Such an online application requires direct user access to a specific Web address, which could be stimulated through e-mail notifications. Virtual communities, or social networks, establish a negotiating space for the society‘s different individuals and cultivate a reflective and collaborative audience (Bezerra, 2006). A preliminary assessment of the 47 national and international virtual communities currently

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available on the Web (for example Facebook and Orkut) helped identify their main characteristics and reinforced the idea that they are largely used for entertainment. On the other hand, recent studies on the use of ICTs in Brazil (CGI, 2006) show Brazilian users are interested in VCs (use of 46.57%), a phenomenon that is now worldwide. Another important fact about VCs is that many different science events have published work about them. In the academic world, Stanford University included disciplines dedicated to this type of Web application, such as ―Facebook Applications‖ and ―Learning from YouTube‖ (Arrington, 2008). This is due to the fact that many scholars are employed in companies in these areas, in some cases before they even graduate. Independent of the tool used, data must be analyzed and opinions summarized for results to be determined. Studies on natural language processing have been conducted in this regard. Many tools use human moderators, but as with automatic processing, this task is not neutral but requires external or preprogrammed intervention. Content environments are also needed, containing laws, formal documents or reports about the debate issues, so that citizens can be informed and prepared to deliberate the issues. Specific tools for managing content improve the structuring and standardization of such content. With regards to voting, in democratic systems voting is generally organized and conducted so that free and confidential choices between real alternatives can be made. Many studies on e-voting have been conducted and discussed by the community (Kofler; Krimmer;Prosser,2003) (Grove, 2004) (Deustsch, 2005) (Benson, 1998) (Costa;Leitao;Verde, 2005) (Xenakis; Macintosh, 2005) with effort dedicated to holding elections online in a secure, usable way supported by technological infrastructure. However, there are still no studies on the integration of e-participation, e-consultation and e-voting. Some countries have designed and employed hardware and software specifically for e-voting. Botz (2009) presents an overview of solutions providers. Brazil‘s democracy is basically representative, that is to say the citizens elect representatives to make and enforce the laws. Normally the only institutionalized channels for people to talk to the government are political, through parties and elections, or administrative, consisting of citizens dealing with the official bureaucracy inherent in government services. In fact, it is established that through the sovereignty of the people– the supreme authority of the population as a whole, through a process of choice in which all citizens have voting rights from the time they are sixteen – and by direct and secret vote, everyone has equal rights to political engagement. Under the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the people may manifest their will directly through referenda, plebiscites and citizens‘ initiatives. Another common practice is the Participatory Budget. While government projects are being carried out, a Participatory Budget (PB) unfolds through the effective participation of the people to define and control the public municipal budget. This process is essentially deliberative, but it has been employed many times for consulting purposes only. In general, the PB is composed of citizen representatives, and decision making takes place in Municipal Assemblies, often accompanied by a people‘s vote on the issues previously determined by the Assemblies. The bibliographical studies conducted reinforce the need to specialize virtual environments to allow greater government-citizen interaction for the decision making process. To this end, studies and e-democracy applications were examined, from forums to integrated participation tools.

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2.2. Citizen Participation on the Web

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This section first discusses data from a study on citizens‘ interest in political issues and reality shows, as well as some deliberation applications, at the global level.

2.2.1. Experiments and Applications The YouGov study (Coleman, 2003) explores how to attract citizens to politics and take responsibility for it. This issue is a matter of concern in light of the decline of politics, the lack of democratic engagement and the lack of interest in political matters on the part of voting citizens of a given nation. Coleman (2003) reinforces the idea that democracy requires a high level of engagement. The study compares opinion of viewers of London‘s Big Brother television programs (BBs) and those of Politically Predisposed people (PPs), two environments that generate popular debate. When asked about a local political issue that would impact their lives, 99% of the PP people and 97% of the BB televiewers said they would participate in a public consultation. The BB viewers see the value of politics but think it could be improved and suggest secret ballot by members of parliament and the introduction of regular electronic plebiscites. When questioned about plebiscites, popular initiatives and referenda, in which citizens could ―reverse‖ parliamentary decisions, the large majority of both groups thought such processes would improve government. These environments function well when voters are sufficiently involved, as they value it more when they feel their contribution affects the outcome (Coleman, 2003). Generally speaking, it is reasonable to conclude that both the PPs and BB televiewers are interested in political matters, albeit with differences. In his conclusion, Coleman (2003) says that parliament must somehow increase their responsibility to give the electorate more control through interaction, thereby earning more respect from the next generation of voters. He reiterates: ―We should now be debating how to re-invent our politics.‖ According to data from the ―DUCSAI‖ debate1 (Monnoyer-Smith, 2004), citizens are capable of fully participating in the processes that directly impact highly strategic and political decisions. In the experiment by France‘s National Commission for Public Debate, public meetings were scheduled in the form of online forums, which were open to comments and questioning for six months, about the issue of the location of Paris‘ third airport. This experiment involved consultation and deliberation. Debate participants made extensive use of online documents, analyses and comments. Kavanaugh et al. (2005b) describes an online model for citizen participation in the project by the National Science Foundation, in Virginia (USA). Employing quantitative and qualitative techniques, including random samples, the authors used home questionnaires and interviews with focus groups to design a deliberation model. This project was especially interested in the differences between citizens actively using ICTs and those that do not, particularly those with low income or in an ethnic minority. One of the model‘s main goals was to use networks for deliberation, a local government effort. From a technical standpoint it sought to modify deliberation support tools like blogs, wikis and online forums. According to Henderson (2010), the EC funded E-Participation Preparatory Action is a flagship European initiative on harnessing technology to strengthen citizenship and narrow the democratic deficit. In a support action, Momentum (2010) has revealed a number of 1

Débat d‘Utilité Concertée pour un Site Aéroportuaire International

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interesting observations and opportunities in a recent white paper. The overall analysis is positive, indicates that projects are innovative and uses modern approaches like game-based learning and debate visualization. The report presents examples of mass citizen participation, and with 40% of projects wholly open- source (65% use open-source components), barriers to adoption are low. The Pan European E-Participation Network (PEP-NET), launched in 2008, so as to link stakeholders and experts in E-Democracy throughout Europe. It offers room for the exchange of experiences and advancement of ideas, and facilitates networking for its members from the fields of academia, administration, consulting and the general public. This network uses tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to increase the availability of ICT-based solutions for public participation. The weblog pep-net.eu works as a forum for its members and the interested public. Researchers Tambouris, Liotas and Tarabanis (2007) acknowledge that although electronic participation and support tools have been multiplying rapidly, they each have specific purposes, benefits and limitations. In addition, the proliferation of this technology makes it difficult for the government, citizens and others to determine effectively which tools are appropriate for a given context. The study proposes a comparison chart of nineteen different e-participation projects, all co-financed by the European Commission. These are (Tambouris; Liotas; Tarabanis, 2007): Agora2000, Avanti, Centuri21, Cybervote, Demos, ECourt, Eden, E-Participate, E-Poll, Euro-Citi, E-Power, E-Vote, Infocitizen, Intelcities, Qualeg, True-Vote, Visual Admin, Vsiis E Webocracy. Having a set of previously catalogued participation tools and technologies, a questionnaire was written to evaluate European Community e-participation projects. This clearly illustrates the differences in the projects, how they are interrelate and specific attributes of e-participation, as well as the need for information, opinion surveys and the use of mobile technologies. Three of these tools specifically for e-democracy are briefly noted below: Webocracy, Demos and Euro-Citi. The Webocracy project (Mach et al., 2003) created a tool called Webocrat to ensure efficient support for information exchange between citizens and the government. To this end it offers modules like discussion forum manager, inquires, Web content management and citizen support, accessible online. The Webocracy implements the Knowledge Model (KM), responsible for managing ontologies and supporting all of the application‘s other modules. The KM module implements knowledge modeling technology based on information organization, using a specific model (Domain Specific Knowledge Model) that makes it possible to retrieve information. See Figure 2, which shows the environment‘s interface. The Demos project (Delphi Online Mediation System) is a system offered on the Wornex WorldDirector platform (Wornex, 2002), which provides an environment for online discussion management and decision making, with tools like chats, discussion forums and surveys in English, Italian and German. The project was tested in Hamburg (Germany) and Bologna (Italy). The system is accessed through Application Service Providers (ASP), which makes it possible to rent the application rather than purchase it. Since it is a commercial application, it was not possible to obtain information on its true performance.

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Figure 2. Webocracy Interface.

The Euro-Citi project (1999) explored the potential of electronic democracy through use of services like electronic voting by survey, electronic forms for submitting documents and consulting citizens by means of forums (Tambouris, 2002). The system was accessible online and also at kiosks in public locations. According to information on the project‘s website, the environment has not been used since 2002. Despite the differences in communication resources, these three tools do not integrate consultative and deliberative processes to ensure effective citizen participation throughout the process and evaluation of participation quality. Additionally, these are not spaces for socializing, dedicated to citizens as individuals and a collective. Another Web-based social system, the Smartcracy, generates data based on which collective decision-making can be examined (Rodriguez et al., 2007). Smartcracy uses a problem-solution model in which individuals post problems (e.g., questions) to the Smartcracy community and propose solutions (e.g., opinions). The proposed solutions are voted on and the combined individual choices determine the collective decision. A social network system based on trust is used, representing the relationship between users, to facilitate decision making based on votes, and in some cases to support automatic delegation of decision making power during the period of trust building. Collective decision making in this context involves generating individual problems, providing possible solutions, voting on solutions, compiling individual votes and finally determining the collective decision. One innovative dimension of this software is application of a variety of algorithms to convert the links of the choices made by each participant into collective decision making results. Using the data from the collective decisions, the document examines how different interpretations can lead to different scenarios for deciding.

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Figure 3 below shows this decision making model.

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Figure 3. Smartocracy‘s collective decision making stages (Rodriguez et al., 2007).

These international experiences are significant with regards to environments for citizen participation in e-democratic consultations and votes. However, these tools do not integrate consultative and deliberative processes to ensure effective citizen participation throughout the process and evaluation of participation quality. Additionally, these are not spaces for socializing, with a focus on citizens as individuals and a collective. As for electronic processes in Latin America, Padget (2005) reinforces the idea that they are enthusiastic and innovative, but population size, slow economies and digital exclusion impede their development when compared to Europe and North America. Padget also stresses that development of systems that really do allow citizens to participate should focus research in countries seeking economic development. In this regard, electronic processes, especially involving citizens using the Internet, pose a challenge for Brazil. One interesting study on e-government is the United Nations‘ annual Electronic Government – e-Gov – evaluation of 191 UN member countries (UNPAN, 2008). This study measures the importance and usefulness of government sites around the world for electronic participation and how they use them to promote participation in decision making. UNPAN (2005) considers it important not only to make participation possible, but also to encourage citizens to voice their opinions on public policy and show the importance of participation via electronic government. The document says one cornerstone of good government is using ICTs as a pillar of an inclusive society, by furnishing information and responses to the people‘s requests. Some important experiments with online consultative and deliberative processes in Brazil are discussed in the following section.

2.2.2. Brazilian Experiences Evaluation of the current conditions of Brazilian government websites (Garcia; Maciel; Pinto, 2005) revealed, among other things, that the federal, state and city governments reviewed do not have online tools for effective citizen participation. Each site was examined to see whether the following participation tools were available: e-mail, chat, discussion forum, voting/inquiries and work group. Nearly all the sites examined offered contact via email, but only 19% of the e-mails sent through government sites received replies within 48 hours, or two business days. Real time applications, which provide true interaction with citizens, are noticeably lacking on current government websites. There were no simple tools

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like chats and workgroups directly linked to the sites visited. Initiatives for using forums do exist, but are rare in this domain of application. One way that citizen opinions were collected was through inquiries with online voting on a variety of themes, most of them related to the site itself. Whether this information is used or not and how it benefits citizen participation are unanswered questions. There is a clear need for solutions that are efficient, accessible and innovative to boost the people's engagement. This is highly problematic as concerns decision quality and the decision making process, as well as the responsibilities of the citizens. Brazil is a world leader when it comes to electronic services like income tax filing (Chalin et al., 2004) and Internet buying (UNPAN, 2005). The government‘s information portal warrants mention (UNPAN, 2005), although evaluation criteria are not clear. The UNPAN report (2008) shows that the participation level needs attention, and new mechanisms for stimulating participation, with online consulting and deliberation, must be made feasible for citizens. Brazil is participating in the Local Observatory on Participatory Democracy (LOPD), a project funded by the European Community with counterparts in nine cities coordinated by the City of Barcelona, in Spain (LOPD, 2005). Brazil‘s São Paulo and Porto Alegre are participating, as well as three cities in Spain, one in Chile, one in Ecuador, one in Bolivia and one in France. Its aim is to evaluate participatory democracy based on the nine resulting studies on these cities. The São Paulo LOPD (PMSP, 2005) follows participatory experiences developed in the sphere of the city council, and as a pilot project it is monitoring and evaluating a management tool in one of the city‘s subprefeituras (districts), called the Capela em Ação (Capela in Action) project. In addition to these activities, it promotes meetings, debates and discussions on the theme of participation, using the Web only as an informative tool. Porto Alegre (RS) has the Popular Participation Process (PMPA, 2006) based on a Popular Consultation; this project has legislative support and is part of the Participatory Budget. Voters debate and propose new ways to develop their regions and conclude by voting on how to apply a portion of the state‘s budget, especially for Government services and investments. Each year the Internet and communication media publish the calendar of events, the city and district meetings and the day of the Popular Consultation, when ballot boxes are placed throughout the cities or on the website. Although the Internet may be used as an information vehicle and for voting, the other aspects of the process, for example meetings, are conducted in person. Below is the interface for identifying the citizen about to vote in the Popular Consultation. In 2006, the City of Belo Horizonte made the innovative move of promoting a consultation on its Participatory Budget to involve its residents in the City Council‘s decisions. The Digital Participatory Budget (de Souza; Maciel, 2008) allowed all voters in the Minas Gerais capital to access a network online and choose one project of four options for each of the nine districts in Belo Horizonte. The Digital PB is a Web platform with resources like videos, streaming, forums, chats, contact us, project outlooks, photos of the projects, flash animations, reports, weekly news and interviews with citizens, among other things. Below is the interface through which citizens participate in the debate through a discussion forum.

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Figure 4. Popular Consultation Interface (POA).

Figure 5. Discussion Forum Interface – BH.

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Another example is the complaints and suggestions department, where citizens can submit problems or comments about matters of interest. The City of Cuiabá (MT) (PMC, 2009) gives an example, providing the city‘s magistrate‘s office with an e-mail address and telephone number for submitting claims. The city council receives these suggestions, reviews them and makes its decisions accordingly. One problem with these departments is that other users never see these complaints, so there is no discussion about the issues. It is also difficult for citizens to follow up on the city government‘s review of their suggestions or complaint. The Federal Government, through its Câmera de Deputados (House of Representatives) website (CDGF, 2009), offers popular participation tools such as pre-scheduled and filed chats, thematic discussion forums, blogs and a space for talking with Representatives, including functions for sending messages to one or more representatives simultaneously. Figure 6 shows the interface for accessing this environment.

Figure 6. Popular Participation Interface – House of Representatives.

One of the participation options is the Discussion Forum, shown in Figure 7, which has proven to be an important space for the government to talk to citizens. However, it is semistructured and advisory and does not function for deliberation.

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Figure 7. Electronic Forum Interface – House of Representatives.

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Additionally, the Electronic Government website has Public Consultations (GOV, 2009), as seen in Figure 8. Although users can register and give opinions, the environment makes it difficult for users to interact and does not include voting, so does little to stimulate participation.

Figure 8. Public Consultations - e-Gov.

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In 2009, the Federal Government opened a public consultation on the proposed amendment for the Rouanet Law (MCGF, 2009). Participants could access online the proposed law under which the Culture Promotion and Incentive Program (Profic) replaced the Rouanet Law. Suggestions can be submitted by e-mail or postal service. Citizens can post their opinions about the consultation process on a blog. This type of consultation is important, but the current format does not allow participants to voice their suggestions in a common area. The Yahoo Respostas website (Yahoo, 2006) contains a debate environment, categorized by themes and divided into subjects. The figure below shows the discussion interface for the category ―Government and Politics,‖ where the question ―How can drug trafficking be combated intelligently?‖ is being discussed. See Figure 9.

Figure 9. Yahoo Respostas Interface – Debate about Government and Politics.

This type of forum has a very interesting proposal, both in terms of structuring and presenting important information relative to the discussions. However, there is no voting or interaction with government agencies. In a preliminary analysis of 47 virtual communities available on the Internet, some governmental and some non-governmental, both national and international, different areas of activity were identified (e.g., government, entertainment, relationships and business). These communities use resources to interact with and among users, including: profile, messages, email, wall, groups, forum/debate, events, questions, inquiries, voting, chat, communicator,

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contacts, photos, photolog, blog, video, new/information, media channels, revisions, videochat, download, cards, galleries, games, online store, classified, services, integrated media resources and FAQs. On the Web, the majority of the VCs are for entertainment, most of them for relationships. People connect with one another to make new friends or reencounter old acquaintances and/or family members. A large number of them are meant for dating and romantic relationships. Some VCs center on education, professions or government. Very few VCs related to the government in particular were identified. At a global level, there is an interesting case in Mexico, but it was not possible to access the e-MEXICO community (2008), which limited basic navigation in that environment. There is an interesting community in New York called ConnectedKids, which links children and teenagers to discuss the country‘s issues; however, as foreigners we could not access it (Harrison; Adali, 2005). In Brazil, no such government related virtual communities were found, but only social networks. Although these do utilize interaction and communication resources, individuals are not identifiable and are not bound by strong ties. The work of Tavares et al. (2009) explores the use of cellular phones and other mobile devices as a means to increase society‘s contribution to government decisions. Given their widespread use and familiar resources, mobile devices are a promising means for citizens to voice their requests and submit them to the government. The actual difficulty of writing long messages becomes an excellent incentive for submitting concise information. Techniques for text summarization and document classification allow information to be compacted, so that the government then receives the compiled citizen input. Finally, a device based voting system allows citizens to deliberate on the prioritized requests. The m-Participation model (Tavares et al., 2009) combines the use of mobile phones, categorization and a voting system to allow citizens to participate in government decision making. A prototype was designed and used in a federal university that has resources allocated for participatory spending. An experiment in anonymous participation was conducted with around 600 people, among them professors, employees and students, to collect suggestions about how the dining hall could be improved. The experiment showed mParticipation to be feasible, since 89% of those interviewed considered that their input was heard, even when vote results did not favor their request. Figure 10 below illustrates this application‘s mobile device interface. This study also seeks to make the government aware of the potential that mobile devices have as a means to expand citizen participation and to transcend traditional forms of democratic engagement. There are some fundamental issues to be addressed when comparing Brazil's experience with successful electronic government programs (Chalin et al., 2004). First, the role of leadership in transforming the vision of electronic government into a reality dedicated to citizens‘ needs, not only to technological solutions. Second, at the user level concrete results must be forthcoming, creating or redefining programs capable of advancing the efficiency of government-citizen interaction. In this context, the institutional information, principles, legislation and guidelines of Electronic Government in Brazil and broad Internet use for this purpose set the stage for reorganization of the country‘s economy and society as a whole. According to the Federal Government website, Electronic Government aims to be a democratic, strategic and socially just agent efficiently serving its citizens.

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Figure 10. Mobile Interface for E-participation.

Decision making also depends on citizens being informed on matters up for deliberation and voting, which requires support for digital content. According to Schorr and Stolfo (1998), federal government information services can, among other things, store and file information, perform searches, integrate information and knowledge sources, provide universal access to information and provide visualization of information, as well as security and privacy. Infrastructure for information pertaining to e-government will lead to new ways for people and government employees to interact, make decisions, share ideas and collaborate on common issues. Overall analysis of Brazil‘s experiences reveals interest and effort in making available interaction resources for citizen engagement. However, at the time of these studies, there was no e-democracy environment providing integrated, responsible deliberation. The following section discusses virtual communities in terms of government systems supporting citizens and improving government-citizen interaction related to participation in government decisions.

2.3. Virtual Communities As this study spotlights participation in e-government and its relationship to decision making with citizen input, it now turns to a review of group formation in virtual communities. Technological advances and the rising number of Internet accesses in recent years have favored the expansion of virtual communities, drawing the attention of the scientific community.

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The concept of community, initially studied by different authors in the social area (Tonnies, 1887 in Serra, 2004) is defined as a group of physically close individuals who live together and interrelate, sharing certain characteristics and a comprehensive set of interests concerning their lives. Many different areas examine communities, including anthropology, political science, social science, computer science, communication, economics and administration. In the Internet environment there are other nomenclatures for virtual communities, such as online communities, e-communities, Web communities and communities of practice. It is also worth noting that VCs are considered to be social networks (Recuero, 2005). On the Internet, virtual communities (VCs) are formed by a group of identifiable people, not necessarily in the same geographical location, with common interests and goals, and who relate to one another spontaneously using synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies to exchange information. In contrast to real-life communities, Web environments allow many-with-many communication, something that requires sophisticated structural organization. Abramson (1998 in Cardoso, 2003) defines community as an association of individuals that may or may not correspond to a geographical location, with the following characteristics: Having a common good or thread: a group may only be considered a community when its members share a certain way of life. 1. Equality: ideally the community treats all of its members equally. 2. Loyalty: communities inspire solidarity, support and defense of their ideals. 3. Autonomy or self-governing: communities must have the freedom to create and practice their way of life. 4. Space: traditionally, communities occupy physical or geographical locations. 5. Deliberation: deliberative communication is the essence of community. 6. Number: normally the strength of the ties between a community‘s members is inversely proportional to the size of the population and the sphere of government. This set of characteristics defines associations of individuals herein designated community. Some of these characteristics have not been contemplated in the virtual spaces that represent community. In particular, note the use of VCs with deliberative objectives, which the foregoing author considered the essence of community. Very few instances were found in VCs related to the government in particular. At a global level, there is an interesting case in Mexico, but it was not possible to access the eMexico community (2008), which limited basic navigation in that environment. There is an interesting community in New York called ConnectedKids, which links children and teenagers to discuss the country‘s issues; however, as foreigners we could not access it (Harrison; Adali, 2005). In Brazil, no such government related virtual communities were found, but only social networks. Although these do utilize interaction and communication resources, individuals are not identifiable and are not bound by strong ties. Virtual communities (VCs) add value to human interactions with regards to knowledge building. The presence of VCs has brought social changes, impacting people‘s lives as concerns socializing, technological innovation, communication opportunities and a format for sharing experiences. Today‘s VCs have many social components, but are not centered on democracy and do not stimulate citizen engagement in decision making. The challenge for

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virtual environments used for these communities is that they do not always have the same levels of collaboration, motivation, trust, respect and involvement as real communities to sustain the principle of sociability. Given these conditions, how can VC supported conscious participation for deliberative purposes be cultivated? Among the many different methodologies that proposed for studies on virtual communities, Maciel (2008) identified, classified and detailed research with the following approaches: in recommendation and reputation systems, in group dynamics and behavior, in the study of participation factors and measures focused on use and in evaluating different interaction resources employed in these environments. Based on the study of these methodologies, principles were identified for designing VCs for the sphere of government.

2.2.1. Virtual Communities for E-Democracy Some principles have been established for e-democracy VCs for their technical and content design, social behavior and interface design (Maciel et al. 2009). With regards to technical and content design, the VCs should provide:     

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   

classification, whether by location, geographical region and/or themes; a common objective for participating members; presentation of community debate content in a way that inspires citizen interest and facilitates information consulting; storage of information history so that other actions can be performed based on the information available; an area within the environment containing information to inform and prepare users for debate on public matters; a content search function within the environment; a way to test the reliability of the information and opinions posted in the environment; a place for asking and answering user questions; making a determination on the matters discussed, whether by secret or by open vote.

As to VC social behavior, the following elements s should be pursued:         

identification of the users in such a way that they are ―unique‖ in the environment; one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication; defined relationships between community members to generate trust based on past behavior; establishing cooperation among members through information sharing: rules of use of which users are aware; competition elements that stimulate engagement, for example a structure that incites users to take a stand on opinions and conflicting ideas; use of a recommendation system for comments in forums and documents and/or a user reputation system based on their behavior within the environment; a social area where users can get to know one another better; a moderator who stimulates debate and ensures compliance with the community‘s rules of use.

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As for interface design, the following recommendations apply:         

multiple forms of interaction; acting as an ―ecosystem,‖ with cycles of evolution associated with content; allowing users to customize according to their preferences; considering that users have a variety of skills, including some inherent to Digital Literacy; respect for the principles of usability, focusing on the government area; evaluation of user participation beyond the application‘s visible aspects; application of rules of Web accessibility; considering participants' history to review the VC‘s behavior; security and privacy for members‘ personal information.

Based on the foregoing, Maciel (2008) proposed a model for government-citizen interaction (Maciel; Garcia, 2007a), tested in a Web application, the DCC (Maciel; Roque; Garcia, 2009). These proposals are discussed below.

2.4. Proposed Model and Application for e-Participation

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This section briefly considers the Government-Citizen Interactive Model. This formed the basis for an application design, the Comunidade Democrática Cidadã (Citizen‘s Democratic Community).

2.4.1. Government-Citizen Interactive Model The Government-Citizen Interactive Model (Maciel; Garcia, 2007a) is presented to structure the phases of the consultation and deliberative process for e-democracy purposes, having the following phases: beginning the process, virtual community of citizens, submitting requests, consultative debate, clustering, voting and determining outcome. Each phase includes a number of activities. It should be noted that: a) neither the phases nor the activities are exclusive and may or may not be considered in Web development for these purposes; b) it is very important to consider the participation model (Rowe; Frewer, 2000) used for adapting this Model, as there are specific requirements for conducting referenda or focus group type popular consultations; c) the model should include non-functioning features of extreme importance for government applications, like those addressing usability, accessibility, security and privacy. This Model's main features allow for debate, voting on issues deliberated and forming of a virtual community for members‘ social use. This model is described briefly below. In general, citizen participation in the community in a given e-deliberative process is structured according to location and themes. Registered citizens can submit their requests, which will be discussed in the debate room at the scheduled time. The Debate is organized according to the Democratic Interaction Language – DemIL (Maciel; Garcia, 2006a), which structures opinions as ―in favor,‖ ―against‖ or ―neutral.‖ Opinions can be qualified by moderators. An Information Library is available, which the citizens themselves build to stay informed and better debate and vote on the issues. Voting begins at the pre-scheduled time.

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Members are encouraged to vote, each in their established turn. Once the scheduled voting has ended, the results are determined. A social space allows citizens to get to know one another better. Administration of the system has specific functions that are preferably performed by the government. Moderating will be the responsibility of the citizens who volunteered for it, through categories based on the Theory of Discourse (Maciel; Pereira; Roque; Garcia, 2009). Figure 11 depicts the proposed Model. The components of the virtual community model have clear functions (Maciel; Garcia, 2007a).

Figure 11. Virtual Community Model (MACIEL; GARCIA, 2007a).

Based on this model, a method is proposed that measures the degree of Decision Making Maturity (DMM) in both individual and group consultative and deliberative processes. This method consists of a set of indicators that help monitor use and consequent measure of citizen action, provided they show interest in participating in the deliberative process by registering, participating in discussions and votes, acting in the social environment and consulting an information library. It ultimately measures users‘ subjective satisfaction. With this it is possible not only to afford community engagement in a skillfully integrated democratic process, but also to establish criteria for evaluating this process. In summary, this study (Maciel, 2008) adopts a strategy supported by virtual communities that achieves and makes social government-citizen communication and that

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includes the possibility of deliberating important social issues and confirming the degree of Decision Making Maturity. The proposed method for measuring the degree of Decision Making Maturity does face significant challenges. Because it is an original proposal, there is not data for comparison. Formulating adaptations to the proposed model will pave the way for new experiments that in turn influence the method. It is believed that both the method and the proposed model can be adapted for other countries that wish to foster deliberative democratic processes. It is also believed that the proposed method and model can be adapted to different digital devices and media. It is particularly appropriate for digital television and mobile phones, two environments that lend themselves to research and adaption.

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2.4.2. Citizen’s Democratic Community Based on the Government-Citizen Interactive Model, the Citizen‘s Democratic Community – CDC - was implemented and tested (Maciel; Garcia, 2007b) (Maciel; Roque; Garcia, 2007; 2008; 2009). It was also used to test the DMM method. More details about the specific requirements for designing the application, modeling and interface prototypes are found in Maciel (2008). The following steps are suggested for using the CDC: 1) Participant registration; 2) Submission of participant requests; 3) Debate about the requests; 4) Vote; 5) Satisfaction of use; and 6) Determining the results. In general, the CDC has interaction and communication resources, organized in the interface and accessed by links on a main bar, with the following: profile of the citizens, debate (submitting requests and discussion), voting, information library, social space and user assistance. The system is accessed at the Web address http://www.comunidadecdc.com.br. The CDC administrator‘s view also shows ―Administration.‖ Figure 12 shows a CDC interface with the user profile view, and Figure 13 shows a debate.

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Figure 13. Debate – CDC.

The CDC was tested through a real e-deliberation process. For information on the methodology employed, analysis of the demographic profile of the CDC users, the level of interest in different aspects of the debate and vote, satisfaction of use reported by CDC users, see Maciel (2008). Analysis of the experiments is basis for discussing and especially proposing improvements to the communication and interaction resources employed. Maciel (2008) identifies key points for enhancing the CDC and addresses improvements to the proposed Model. This discussion shows the lessons learned and ideal practices for designing collaborative e-democracy environments.

CONCLUSIONS We live in a society immersed in technology: computers, telephones and the Internet are a few of the resources that citizens now employ in their day-to-day activities. On the other hand, in many countries democracy suffers from lack of transparency, maturity and citizen engagement in public issues. Many technological tools, especially the Internet‘s wealth of resources, can support models and methods that make democracy feasible and even enhance it. With this, modern democracy, known as e-democracy, can become a reality. E-democracy benefits both citizens and the government: Citizens can take more active roles in society, exercising their power of choice and even voting in an easy, streamlined way. Thus the digital revolution means more power to the people. For the government, which cannot turn its back on digital society, e-democracy brings gains in administration, transparency and greater command of society through centralized data via the Internet. In this Chapter we emphasize the fact that it is not enough for governments to provide citizens with physical infrastructure. It must also conceive, design, implement and test

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solutions for new democratic models, especially participatory democracy, classified as quick and/or strong. A lot of information has been published on government websites and other communication formats, like newspapers and television. Technology moves government services for its citizens beyond institutional counters to meet society‘s needs with more flexibility and efficiency. Popular participation in public matters has been facilitated by online resources like e-mail, discussion forums and inquiries. However, implementing more effective and complex models and methods, tested in e-democracy applications, poses challenges for both governments and societies. Many governments have endeavored to provide their citizens with technology mediated opportunities to participate. One example of this is using voting machines to conduct elections. This chapter briefly reported some of these experiences. Modern democracy must move through initial ―stages‖ to progress to more advanced stages. This requires qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experiences to improve and expand the use of technological resources, which should be considered a feedback step in projects in this area. The results of research presented in this chapter, designing e-democratic resources based on the characteristics of virtual communities and reviewing experiences and systems that support participatory democracy, may serve as inspiration for government and academic institutions. One format for e-democracy discussed in this study integrates consultative and deliberative environments for popular participation in democratic issues, supported by the forming of virtual communities to model decision making processes. This idea formed the basis of the Government-Citizen Interaction Model and a method for measuring e-democracy Decision Making Maturity, which we described briefly in this Chapter. These studies exemplify a model and a method developed to ensure the quality of e-democracy. Digital literacy is one of the issues concerning those dedicated to e-democracy. Inadequate computer skills do present a barrier to using technological systems. Scientific research groups have dedicated much effort to easing these barriers, for example with studies in human-computer interaction. Another factor to be considered with regards to digital literacy concerns the new generation of users – ―generation z‖ – which was born into a world where the Internet and other technology already existed. Many of these users are already old enough to vote and engage in local public life. Technological skills will not be an issue with these users. Here other considerations come to bear, like the facility with which these young people use social networks and how these can best serve e-democracy. It is worth noting that some countries have even used ―parties‖ to incite young people‘s interest in government issues or gather opinions on matters of public interest. There are other issues related to e-democracy systems that warrant investigation: misuse of the environments by advocacy groups or political activists, ill-intended hackers and invisible members (lurkers). The selection, conception and/or development of e-democracy models do not guarantee quality government-citizen interaction. Interface designers and analysts, as part of Information Technology teams, can enhance the quality by considering key aspects of Computer Mediated Communication, like those applied to virtual communities: the principles of usability, accessibility, communicability and sociability of members, among others. In addition, grounding in other social theories is needed, taking into account the exercising of power the systems promote, the right to access all information (transparency) and the

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Cristiano Maciel, Licínio Roque and Ana Cristina Bicharra Garcia

limitations imposed by digital literacy. This would entail establishing criteria, evaluation parameters and instruments to steer designers during application development in specific domains. Also, given the characteristics of these applications, the formation of interdisciplinary teams from areas like politics, social sciences, management and technology, is essential for achieving success. Citizen engagement also requires developing participation incentive models, for example based on posted comments or user reputations, and possibly formation of virtual communities. User participation can be measured quantitatively, for example counting a user‘s postings in the virtual community, as proposed in the Decision Making Maturity method. Another possibility would be using the actual history of the DMM method to assess user reputation. However, contributions should be measured qualitatively, through explicit feedback from other members on the usefulness of something published or a user‘s moderation, thereby building trust among the members. Another issue to be examined is whether user reputations could persuade their peers, community members with similar interests, to change their minds. In a discussion forum, members get to know each other and ―bond,‖ so a trusted person with a solid reputation could influence others‘ opinions. The opinion of a person with a good reputation could cause others to rethink their choices, a factor that should be thoroughly explored. On the other hand, if on-site methods of participation entail the difficult task of conducting and stimulating debate, in virtual environments groups must be motivated steadily at regular intervals, combining interpersonal communication skills supported by technical and management proficiency. In light of these considerations, the role of the moderator is very important, and certain models would be limited if individuals with the necessary skills for it were not identified. Based on this paper‘s studies, parallel research has been conducted to develop a method to help designers evaluate the participation potential of a given Web application. Using a checklist, the proposed method checks the quality of e-democracy participation with measures like usability, exercising of power, neutrality, transparency, social responsibility, tolerance for digital literacy, sociability, accessibility and communicability. It is important to point out that technologies must be faced in e-democracy as means, not ends. They should not be regarded as neutral, because they carry values, concepts, social views and conflictive, privileged and excluding aspects, among others. Technologies were created to solve concrete problems and thus have political and social content. By themselves they cannot guarantee active and critical citizen participation in matters of public interest. Success in consultation and voting processes is not directly related to the means employed, that is to say its technology, but to the citizens‘ and government‘s motivation and commitment to making it possible. In conclusion, we reiterate that to implement effective e-democracy strategies, more innovative models and methods are needed than seen in today´s government initiatives to promote citizen engagement through ICTs. Implementing them requires commitment on the part of the government agency involved: there will be no gains from having new devices if the institution‘s organizational culture is dated. Additionally, it must be remembered that these models and methods should be adapted according to the intentions of the institution employing it.

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E-Democracy: Concepts, Experiences and Challenges

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