Rethinking Civic Participation in Democratic Theory and Practice 1st Edition Rod Dacombe (Auth.) Full Chapter Instant Download
Rethinking Civic Participation in Democratic Theory and Practice 1st Edition Rod Dacombe (Auth.) Full Chapter Instant Download
Rethinking Civic Participation in Democratic Theory and Practice 1st Edition Rod Dacombe (Auth.) Full Chapter Instant Download
https://ebookmass.com/product/karl-marx-on-socialist-theory-and-
practice-rethinking-marxs-theory-of-human-emancipation-wei-
xiaoping/
https://ebookmass.com/product/public-opinion-democratic-ideals-
democratic-practice-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/
https://ebookmass.com/product/popular-political-participation-
and-the-democratic-imagination-in-spain-from-crowd-to-
people-1766-1868-pablo-sanchez-leon/
https://ebookmass.com/product/access-and-widening-participation-
in-arts-higher-education-practice-and-research-samantha-
broadhead/
Neoliberal Education and the Redefinition of Democratic
Practice in Chicago 1st ed. Edition Kendall A. Taylor
https://ebookmass.com/product/neoliberal-education-and-the-
redefinition-of-democratic-practice-in-chicago-1st-ed-edition-
kendall-a-taylor/
https://ebookmass.com/product/trauma-contemporary-directions-in-
theory-practice-and-research-1st-edition-ebook-pdf/
https://ebookmass.com/product/care-in-healthcare-reflections-on-
theory-and-practice-1st-edition-franziska-krause/
https://ebookmass.com/product/bayesian-optimization-theory-and-
practice-using-python-1st-edition-peng-liu/
https://ebookmass.com/product/canadian-defence-policy-in-theory-
and-practice-1st-ed-2020-edition-thomas-juneau/
THE THEORIES, CONCEPTS AND
PRACTICES OF DEMOCRACY
Series Editors: J. Gagnon & M. Chou
RETHINKING CIVIC
PARTICIPATION IN
DEMOCRATIC THEORY
AND PRACTICE
Rod Dacombe
The Theories, Concepts and Practices
of Democracy
Series Editors
Jean-Paul Gagnon
University of Canberra
Canberra, VIC, Australia
Mark Chou
Australian Catholic University
Fitzroy, VIC, Australia
“Supporters of more intensive forms of civic participation have always faced one big
challenge: their desired reforms could result in larger political inequality through
giving more voice to the most resource rich members of the community.
Dacombe’s book makes an important contribution to this debate. Through a
rich case study of a deprived community, he illuminates many of the existing
tensions between poverty and participation. The analysis provides an interesting
answer to the criticisms raised by minimalist democrats to participatory democracy,
without making an uncritical appraisal of the limits and problems that participation
in deprived settings has in real life.
The richness of the book theoretical dialogues and of the empirical materials
make it useful for several areas of research, from democratic innovations, to third
sector research and from local politics to research trying to understand the
structural explanations of participation”.
Rethinking Civic
Participation
in Democratic Theory
and Practice
Rod Dacombe
King’s College London
London, UK
vii
viii PREFACE
1
In fact, it is one of the Rotten Boroughs defended by George Canning in the
speech I discuss in the next chapter.
PREFACE ix
This book would not have been written without the support of a great
many people. The intellectual impetus for this book has been generated by
my time working in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College,
London. The argument I pursue here was shaped through numerous
discussions with both colleagues and students, and I am particularly
grateful for the challenging and searching questions asked by the under-
graduates taking my final year module, ‘Democracy and its Critics’.
Additionally, a number of colleagues in KCL and elsewhere have been kind
enough to read and comment on parts of the book in draft form, and I owe
a great debt to Adam Tebble, Adrian Blau, Mark Pennington and David
Skarbek, as well as Maria Mancilla Garcia, Jonathan Davies, Colin Crouch
and Sonia Exley. Everyone at Stn. 22 provided distraction in the right
amounts and particular thanks need to go to Kelly Talbot, who over coffee
and biscuits became instrumental in guiding the direction of my analysis
and who told me the correct way to spell ‘Top Shop’.
Jean-Paul Gagnon and Mark Chou, the editors of this book series, have
been hugely helpful, as have Palgrave Macmillan, and in particular my
editor, Imogen Gordon Clark, who was a source of calm guidance
throughout the final stages. Patient reading, editorial discipline and moral
support were also provided by my wife, Emma, and my two boys, Saul and
Nate (who both remain unconvinced that democracy is a suitable topic for
a book).
The original period of research underpinning this book was supported
by an Early Career Fellowship, provided by the Leverhulme Trust (award
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bibliography 201
Index 209
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
xv
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about democracy, and the arguments which go on over its
meaning and efficacy. An idea often invoked but little understood,
democracy has passed into the everyday vocabulary of modern life,
reaching beyond the sphere of formal politics into areas as diverse as
education, work and family life.1 Fundamentally, most discussion of
democracy holds it as a ‘good thing’, which is to be pursued with vigour.
Democracy is held as an essential element of the good life, of modernity,
which developed societies can display as proof of their success, even as
justification for war against those who do not share these ideals. And so it
seems remarkable that there are those who would argue against its value as
an idea, and as a means of organising society, yet an extensive body of
literature has developed which raises a number of serious objections to
many of the established features of democratic thought. It is the critics of
democracy who provide the starting point for this book, and to whom this
account of the civic lives of the residents of Blackbird Leys is addressed.
The analysis of democracy provides a perennial occupation for political
scientists of all flavours—the questions it raises strike at the very heart of the
kind of scholarship preferred by academics and researchers since Harold
Lasswell (1958) famously declared that political scholarship involved the
1
See Gagnon (2013) for an account of the complexities in understanding the term
and its meaning.
study of ‘who gets what, when, how’. And almost as soon as scholars
started to develop a coherent programme for the study of democracy, a
strong tradition began which took as its starting point the idea that a
society organised by democratic means would be ‘chaotic, arbitrary,
meaningless and impossible’ (Mackie 2003: 2). The problem with
democracy, it is claimed, comes from a number of basic flaws in the
democratic process, which tend to fall into two related themes. The first set
of problems stem from the claim that democratic decision-making is
ineffective and, in the most extreme cases, entirely undesirable due to the
inability of democratic systems to provide reasonable and accurate aggre-
gations of the desires of their citizens. The second series of critiques is
focused more specifically on participatory and deliberative understandings
of democracy, and suggests that both in theory and practice, these do not
provide the outcomes their proponents desire.
This kind of analysis often goes on quite unnoticed by the practitioners,
activists and citizens who are actively engaged in the democratic processes
that are studied. In fact, those actually involved in the business of
democracy tend to take a rather different view of its value (Klingemann
1999). And yet the questions that are raised by democracy’s critics are very
real and of high practical significance. In the UK, there can be little doubt
that democracy is in crisis, with the erosion of interest and confidence in its
institutions fast becoming a cause for serious concern. Voter turnout has
declined steadily, reaching disastrous levels at the turn of the century, and
amongst some of the most deprived social groups the picture is bleaker still.
Modern democratic life seems to reflect Carole Pateman’s insight, that ‘the
outstanding characteristic of most citizens, more especially those in the
lower socio-economic status (SES) groups, is a general lack of interest in
politics and political activity’ (Pateman 1970: 3).
It is small wonder, then, that the debates around the proper place of
democracy in political thought generate some of the most pressing ques-
tions addressed by scholars today. While some of the most interesting
insights developed over recent years have come from political scientists
whose areas of work might broadly be understood as ‘theoretical’, in this
book I will argue that democratic life, and in particular, the place of civic
participation2 within contemporary understandings of democracy, also
2
There are many ways in which civic and democratic participation are understood.
Many writers have found it analytically necessary to restrict participation in
1 THE PROBLEM WITH CIVIC PARTICIPATION 3
DEMOCRACY’S CRITICS
It seems remarkable to the casual observer that anyone would argue against
democracy. However, history is littered with those who have spoken out
against the introduction, and extension, of many of the democratic ideals
readers living in Western liberal democracies will take for granted. In 1820
the Tory MP George Canning, later to become Prime Minister, made a
famous speech arguing against the extension of the franchise and the
abolition of the Rotten Boroughs, which seems indefensible now but was
in its time an expression of the views of many in power. Stability was
Canning’s key concern, and he suggested that the ‘[democratic] impulse,
once given, may be too impetuous to be controlled; and, intending only to
change the guidance of the machine, […] may hurry it […] to irretrievable
destruction’ (Therry 1895). This clash between democracy and stability
forms a core element of much of the literature against participation.
These concerns have merit, and democracy can be a fragile thing. In
1942 there were only eleven functioning democracies left on the face of the
planet. From the late 1930s, the twin forces of fascism and communism
combined to strangle the life out of democracy as a legitimate form of
social and political organisation, almost eradicating the idea entirely (Keane
2009). As Gerry Mackie (2003) notes, these developments alerted political
scientists to the very real dangers presented by unstable democratic sys-
tems. Even with the defeat of fascism at the end of the Second World War,
the eventual democratisation of Spain and Portugal in the 1970s, and the
fall of Communism over a tumultuous three-year period starting at the end
of the 1980s, these concerns persist.
The collapse of democracy in the 1930s had been nothing short of
spectacular. Until the early part of the twentieth century the democratic
state was widely believed to be in a position of strength, with a sustained
demand for greater participation in the industrialised West accompanied by
a dramatic rate of industrial and social change. Importantly, these devel-
opments were largely divorced from violence (at least on the part of the
advocates of democracy) and their objective (in many cases seemingly
achieved) was a stable, democratic system of government, rather than
revolution and social upheaval. The cost, to nations and their citizens, of
the fall of democracy in the 1930s will never be truly established, but taken
in the context of what came before, the shock to contemporary writers
must have been astonishing.
1 THE PROBLEM WITH CIVIC PARTICIPATION 5
3
For a detailed critique of Schumpeter’s assumptions here, see Pateman (1970).
6 R. DACOMBE
4
See, for example, Sartori (1987).
5
In practice, of course, popular participation in Athenian democracy fluctuated
wildly during the period of Athenian dominance in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Plato’s ideas on democracy were by no means widely accepted or put into practice
by his contemporaries.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back
back