Can participatory democracy become "inclusive"? Class, mobilization and voice in participatory institutions (original) (raw)
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Class inequalities and participatory democracy: assessing the impact of social inclusion tools
Political studies review, 2024
Recent research has examined the effectiveness of inclusion tools aimed at encouraging greater involvement of disadvantaged social groups in local deliberative institutions. Most research, quantitative and qualitative, tends to examine positive outcomes, although results are frequently ambivalent. This study begins by arguing that analytical frameworks should consider the limitations of inclusion tools and that greater attention should be given to alternative approaches to inclusion (material/symbolic, formal/informal, focused/general). Based on these theoretical points, the study focuses on the views and experiences of working-class people and smallholder farmers in relation to their participation in open rural assemblies (concejos abiertos) in the Basque Country (Spain). The research employed an ethnographic methodology involving 20 observations of assemblies/events and 55 in-depth interviews conducted between 2012 and 2015. Three inclusion tools were identified as key to the functioning of the assemblies: “administrative and technical support” for engaging with the bureaucratic processes, a legal “right to paid work leave” for board members, and the use of “multi-disciplinary boards.” The study examines the effectiveness of these tools in motivating and facilitating the involvement of participants from disadvantaged social class positions, presenting novel findings in the case of paid work leave and multi-disciplinary boards. The importance of informal practices and procedures for reducing material constraints are emphasized as well as the identification of some limitations of inclusion tools in a context of predominant elitist paradigms.
Inequality and Participative Democracy. A Self-Reinforcing Mechanism
Review of Income and Wealth
During the last three decades a notable increase in economic inequality is observed, accompanied by a decline in people's engagement in politics and electoral participation. This is an unsatisfactory phenomenon as it undermines the legitimacy of democratic representation. This negative association is produced by a complex salient mechanism. This study aims at investigating this issue. Using data from a panel of 28 OECD and European countries, this paper identifies the two-way causal relationship between inequality and political participation. The results show that greater income inequality alienates and discourages people from engaging with common affairs, thus leading to lower political participation. Yet, lower electoral participation leads towards a less equitable distribution of income. Hence, this study reveals a self-reinforcing mechanism where unequal distribution of income leads to political exclusion, which in turn leads to more inequality.
2011
During the last decade, a major debate was raised among political science scholars about people's willingness to deliberate and to participate, mainly based on quantitative approaches using opinion surveys. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse argue that people do not want to participate in more direct forms of democracy despite better opportunities provided by political authorities, which only concern well-integrated citizens. By opposition, an Harvard research argue that younger people, racial minorities, and lower income people tend to participate only when public authorities offer a concrete proposition of deliberation. This argument is based on an experimental survey which compares hypothetical and concrete opportunities to deliberate. Our paper confronts this statement to real politics: could a pre-existent and real public offer of participatory deliberation concern excluded people and oppose the tendency toward social oligarchisation of local democracy? Based on a survey address to 1...
Equal participation is a sine qua non of democracy. Yet, today equal voting rights are insufficient for embodying this principle. On one hand, the use of voting rights is not equal among the population. On the other, elections have increasingly become a post-democratic facade, because decision-making has shifted to unelected bodies or non-transparent network meetings. Are more direct democratic procedures the solution to this predicament? This chapter argues that they are not. For once, deliberative citizen assemblies bring inequalities in from the backdoor, as they permit knowledge, skills and other resources more available to advantaged citizens to weigh in positively. Likewise, introducing random selection as a way of distributing public office may allow advantaged citizens to dominate, if the pool of candidates is voluntary and thus self-selected. We argue that reforms should generally focus not on introducing more direct participation, but on reducing the inequalities of participation in representative systems.
Class Inequalities in Political Participation and the ‘Death of Class’ Debate.
The aim of this article is to offer an empirical contribution to the debate on the political significance of class, and especially the relationship between class position and political participation. The ‘death of class’ debate has primarily addressed only one aspect of politics – voting. The perspective offered here widens the scope of analysis to include the main forms of political action available to citizens in modern democracies. In this article, a comparative cross-national approach is adopted, using data on 20 European countries that are included in the first wave of the European Social Survey. Using log-linear models as a descriptive device, the article identifies a basic pattern of association between class and participation, points out the main national deviations from that pattern and makes a comparative assessment of the relative magnitude of overall levels of class inequalities in participation in different forms of political activity. The results bear out the continuing relevance of class as a source of differentiation of political behaviour and tend to confirm previous research regarding the validity of empirical generalizations on class patterns of political participation.