The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance -- and Why Politics Will Never Be the Same

Notes

 Notes Notes to Introduction 1. An earlier version of this introduction appeared as “The Recent Evolution of Democracy ,” National Civic Review, Spring 2005. For more on the state of democracy, see Benjamin Barber, A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Stephen Coleman, Direct Representation : Towards a Conversational Democracy (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 2005); Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1996); Archon Fung, Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); John Gastil, By Popular Demand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998); John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Stealth Democracy (Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994); David Mathews, Politics for People (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); James Morone, The Democratic Wish (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); and Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). I think it is safe to say that all of these books were influenced by three earlier works: Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Harry Boyte, CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989); and Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 2. I worked as an employee of the Study Circles Resource Center (SCRC) from 1994– 2001, providing free technical assistance to local citizen involvement projects, and since then as a consultant to SCRC, the National League of Cities, the League of Women Voters, the Centers for Disease Control, and other groups. SCRC is the primary project of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization; it “helps communities develop their own ability to solve problems by bringing lots of people together in dialogue across divides of race, income, age, and political viewpoints” (www.studycircles.org).  The Next Form of Democracy 3. Steve Burkholder, “Is Representative Democracy Obsolete?” Listening to Lakewood , December 2004. 4. See Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland, Civic Innovation in America: Community Empowerment, Public Policy, and the Movement for Civic Renewal (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001); John Gastil and Todd Kelshaw, Public Meetings: A Sampler of Deliberative Forums That Bring Officeholders and Citizens Together (report drafted for the Kettering Foundation, May 2000); Gwen Wright, Lena Delchad, and Matt Leighninger, The Rise of Democratic Governance (Washington , DC: National League of Cities, 2004); Martha L. McCoy and Patrick L. Scully, “Deliberative Dialogue to Expand Civic Engagement: What Kind of Talk Does Democracy Need?” National Civic Review, Summer 2002; “Speak Up! Engaging Policymakers with Educators and Communities in Deliberative Dialogue,” Insights on Education Policy, Practice, and Research, October 1999; Edward C. Weeks, “The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: Results from Four Large-Scale Trials,” Public Administration Review 60:360–72; Katherine Cramer Walsh, Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Walsh, Listening to Difference: Race, Community , and the Place of Dialogue in Civic Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); and Simone Chambers, “Deliberative Democratic Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003): 316. 5. For more on the earlier examples, see Jeffrey Berry, Kent Portney, and Ken Thomson , The Rebirth of Urban Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993), 47–53. On the more recent examples, see Terry L. Cooper and Pradeep Chandra Kathi, “Neighborhood Councils and City Agencies: A Model of Collaborative Coproduction,” National Civic Review 93 (2004): 43–53; and Ken Thomson, Neighborhood to Nation (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001). 6. See Harlon L. Dalton, Racial Healing (New York: Doubleday, 1995), and Maggie Potapchuk, Steps Toward an Inclusive Community (Washington, DC: Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies, 2001). 7. See Walsh, “The Democratic Potential of Civic Dialogue” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 3–6, 2003); Ilana Shapiro, Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion: A Guide to Selected Programs (Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 2002); President’s Initiative on Race, Pathways to One America in the 21st Century: Promising Practices for Racial Reconciliation (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1999); Paul DuBois and Jonathan Hutson, Bridging the Racial Divide: A Report on Interracial Dialogue in America (Brattleboro, VT: Center for Living Democracy, 1997); and Patricia...