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Arendt and Follett both accepted the practical need for representation in the sense that the meeting room cannot hold everybody once you get beyond the neighborhood level. But imagine the difference between a representative system grounded in discussions and publicspirited work among neighbors, and the one we know so well, where each isolated individual goes into a voting booth, closes the curtain, and in privacy exercises the only public responsibility and duty open to him or her. Follett insists that she is advocating not group government but a system in which the individual can reach his or her fullest expression. Individuals are not a product of separateness but of relating.33 The neighborhood group makes that possible. If government needs to connect to the people, as democracy does, we have to make the connection real. Individuals express only a small part of themselves in the voting booth. Genuine discussion and argument around common issues call on a part of the human being that otherwise atrophies. It is worth noting the difference between this vision of governance and what is known as communitarianism. This term is used to connote bonds among members of a society that have deep historical and cultural roots, but the bonds are largely tacit and not maintained on the basis of interactions. Also, in contrast to communitarianism, the political community at the core of the Arendt–Follett model of governance is made up of people who see things differently from one another. What they have in common is a commitment to dialogue and not a set of shared values they wish to enshrine in public space. Politics is talking and arguing about common concerns, exchanging the considered opinions formed in thinking and judging issues and in listening to one another. The vision of politics and governance is only plausible if one is willing at least to call into question the notions that human beings are primordially separate from one another and that the state of nature is a war of all against all. From these assumptions, the only stable state is one where order is imposed from above, and freedom consists of private unconstrained striving for preferred goodies. But the stable state looks different when the stability is woven from the ground up; it is plausible if you envision humans as always already connected to the world and each other. 116 two models of governance We can come away, if we choose, from considering their ideas with at least a sense that the taken-for-granted realistic understanding of politics is not a foregone conclusion, the only possible way of imagining our common life. And if we can see this vision as chosen rather than a necessity, the door is open to what we might call governance of the common ground.34 Governance of the Common Ground Moving forward with governance of the common ground implies giving some thought to how to do it.This form of governance may attract us for its democratic features, but how can it work? Democracy is not just a set of ideals but requires practices to support it. Making it happen requires shifting from what March and Olsen call a “logic of exchange” to a “logic of appropriateness,” and then taking up the question of basic structures that reflect and nurture that logic.35 The logic of exchange should be familiar by now. It works by means of bargaining , negotiation, and deal making. It is primarily an economic logic premised on self-interested individuals and a government that is neutral about their preferences—government as referee. There is no common will possible, only conflicts of interest that are dealt with by crafting coalitions that reach an agreement that gets the best possible results for each member. The new governance follows this logic to a great extent, fostering networks of self-interested organizational actors who come together to maximize their individual utility functions. In contrast, the logic of appropriateness takes the idea of democratic institutions seriously. It concerns itself with governmental and other public-spirited entities in which members share democratic ideals and understand the importance of rules and practices in promoting democracy . In this institutional perspective, the relationships among actors are not just deals and coalitions that resolve conflicts among individual preferences ; nor are institutions objectified, frozen entities. Rather they are patterns of practices over time, in which shared understandings develop among members about their collaborative activities.They are a form of constructed...

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