Participatory Democracy

ORIGINALLY FORMULATED BY the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, the concept of participatory democracy is a normative theory of political communication that expands the role of the individual in the processes of governing by creating more opportunities for substantive participation. In its purest form, participatory democracy enables individuals to govern themselves in all matters and contribute to every decision affecting their daily lives. By these standards, however, some would argue that a truly participatory democracy has yet to come into existence. However, [Page 482]democratic theorists have suggested that with the internet, dramatic transformations in democratic processes are both possible and logical. Updated treatments of the more participatory and deliberative variants of democratic theory use terms such as cyber-governance, open-source government, and e-democracy to shed light on the possibility of participatory democracy as a replacement for, or an addendum to, the institutionalized systems of voting. Recent innovations in “e-voting” in Switzerland, for example, may be the first of many technological innovations that will redefine democratic participation.

All democracy is participatory to some degree, but participatory democratic theory is different in that it requires that the entire populace play an active role at each stage of the rulemaking process. The etymological roots of participatory democracy draw from Latin partis (part) and capere (take), as well as from Greek demos (people) and kratein (to rule); together they suggest “taking part in rule by the people.” But the participatory democracy that Rousseau wrote of and which was revived by the New Left during the political and intellectual turmoil of the 1960s, is a theory of democracy that disperses authority and puts decision-making powers more directly in the hands of ordinary people; thus contributing to the legitimacy of the government. Participatory theory suggests that greater involvement in decision-making instills a deeper sense of belonging and responsibility because the group redefines self-interest in terms of collective benefits, as opposed to what benefits the loudest, the best organized, or the most articulate.

Furthermore, it is believed that direct participation in governance will stimulate participants to be more attentive to politics, and that this drive to acquire information will broaden individual horizons to include the political problems, viewpoints, and potential solutions they would never have been exposed to otherwise. By bringing together disparate segments of society, participatory democracies seek the common good by utilizing the collective wisdom of the whole.

Participatory theorists have challenged the assumed superiority of representative systems of democracy, because these systems do not recognize political participation as a fundamental value in itself. In representative democracies, citizens are usually relegated to a legitimizing function once per year, when they are asked to confirm or reject the work done by their current representatives. The electorate occasionally holds representatives accountable for their body of work, but in large part citizens in representative democracies are not governing themselves, rather, they are selecting people to govern for them. This division of labor in representative democracies has alienated most people from the decision-making processes that govern many aspects of their daily lives.

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