Deepening Democracy Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance

by Fung, Archon; Wright, Erik Olin; Abers, Rebecca Neaera; Baiocchi, Gianpaolo; Cohen, Joshua

• ISBN13: 9781859844663
• ISBN10: 1859844669
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

The institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteenth century seem increasingly ill-suited to the problems we face in the twenty-first. This dilemma has given rise in some places to a new, deliberative democracy, and this volume explores four contemporary empirical cases in which the principles of such a democracy have been at least partially instituted: the participatory budget in Porto Alegre; the school decentralization councils and community policing councils in Chicago; stakeholder councils in environmental protection and habitat management; and new decentralised governance structures in Kerala. In keeping with the other Real Utopias Project volumes, these case studies are framed by an editors' introduction, a set of commentaries, and concluding notes.

Author Biography

Archon Fung is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.

Erik Olin Wright is Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of many books, including Classes, Interrogating Inequality, Class Counts, Deepening Democracy (with Archon Fung), and Envisioning Real Utopias. For more information on Envisioning Real Utopias and the Real Utopias project, and to access book content, please visit <a href="http://realutopias.org/">realutopias.org</a> (site in progress).

Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He is the author of five books, including the novels Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, A Heaven of Others, and Witz. Cohen’s essays have appeared in The Forward, Nextbook, The Believer, and Harper’s. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Joel Rogers is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Director of COWS. His many books include On Democracy, Right Turn, The Forgotten Majority, and What Workers Want. A longtime activist, Rogers was identified by Newsweek as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Real Utopias Project	vii
Erik Olin Wright
Acknowledgements	ix
Part I Introduction
Thinking about Empowered Participatory Governance	3	(42)
Archon Fung
Erik Olin Wright
Part II Case Studies
Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment	45	(32)
Gianpaolo Baiocchi
Democracy and Development: Decentralized Planning in Kerala	77	(34)
T.M. Thomas Isaac
Patrick Heller
Deliberative Democracy, Chicago Style: Grass-roots Governance in Policing and Public Education	111	(33)
Archon Fung
Habitat Conservation Planning	144	(31)
Craig W. Thomas
Part III Commentaries
Practice--Thought--Practice	175	(25)
Jane Mansbridge
Reflections on What Makes Empowered Participatory Governance Happen	200	(8)
Rebecca Neaera Abers
Toward Ecologically Sustainable Democracy?	208	(17)
Bradley C. Karkkainen
Cycles of Reform in Porto Alegre and Madison	225	(12)
Rebecca S. Krantz
Power and Reason	237	(22)
Joshua Cohen
Joel Rogers
Part IV Epilogue
Countervailing Power in Empowered Participatory Governance	259	(32)
Archon Fung
Erik Olin Wright
References	291	(14)
Index	305