Democratic strategies for reducing inequality

ing from these issues for a moment, the spe cific question I have been asked to address is what can be done in the design of the po litical system itself to promote greater equality, which I take to be, first, a ques tion about increasing the participation of disadvantaged groups and, secondly, about counte ring the oppressive tendencies of majority rule. Here are six headings that are worth exploring. 1. Supporting the self-organisation of marginalized groups If there is one activity that is worth prioritizing above all the rest, in my view it would be supporting the self-organization of marginalized groups. I emphasize the idea of ‘self-organization’: if we want real change for Tra vellers, disabled people, working class people, women, gays and lesbians, immigrants, young people, etc., it is not enough to rely on members of other groups, speaking on their behalf. They need to be resourced to participate themselves, through their own organizations. There are at least two aspects of the kind of suppo rt that is necessary here. First of all, there is straightforward material support. To organ ize effectively for change, people need meeting rooms, offices, computers, telephones, photocopiers, libraries, travel expenses, office staff, paid organizers and lobbyis ts. Well-resourced groups like IBEC can pay for all this out of their membership fees, but where is this material support to come from for poorly-resourced groups? In a small n umber of cases, the collective support of large numbers of individuals can succeed in supporting self-organization. The best example of this is the trade union movemen t. But for most organizations, it is hard even to survive, much less to thrive, on fu nding from one’s own members. There is no need to labour the point that there are ve y limited sources of support from funding institutions in Ireland, which in any case ar vulnerable to changes in funders’ priorities. So the main prospect for serious, longterm, core funding for the selforganization of marginalized groups is state fundin g. This funding should be secure, core funding with very few strings attached. It is appropriate enough for it to be conditional on proper auditing of accounts and on m aintaining certain basic standards of democratic procedure in relation to membership, election to office and decisionmaking mechanisms. But it has to be protected again st being withdrawn for essentially political reasons, as occurred with the Citizen Traveller campaign and the Community Workers’ Co-op. The whole point of this k nd of funding is to enable marginal groups to develop their own perspectives a nd political strategies, however critical they might be of the state. The second kind of support is training and capacity -building. People do not develop the competence to participate in democratic organiz ations by instinct: they need to learn how to do it through practice, reflection on that practice, and acquiring relevant knowledge. One part of this training is education f r citizenship in the formal educational system. Another, to which I return belo w, is the experience of democratic participation in a wide variety of settings. But a third must be explicit training and capacity-building programmes for members of organiz tions themselves. A good example of this in the US is Midwest Academy, which has been training activists for 30 years (see Bobo, Kendall, and Max 2001). Here in Ireland, I think an excellent resource is the Combat Poverty Agency publication Working for Change: A Guide to Influencing Policy in Ireland (Harvey 1998). In the examples of participatory governance in India and Brazil that I will mention in a minute, part of the process has been intensive training of the participants. More g enerally, any of the other initiatives I am about to mention need to be supplemented by ap propriate training. Is it legitimate for a liberal democratic state to finance the explicitly political activities of marginalized groups in these ways? I would argue that it is, because the object of the exercise is to level the playing field in the p olitical sphere between these groups and their privileged counterparts. The relevant pol itica principle is simply the aim of giving every citizen an equal opportunity to influe nc collective decisions. It is not about the state favouring one set of political obje ctiv s over others, but about helping all its citizens to pursue their own political obje ctives with roughly similar effectiveness. 2. Strengthened local participatory structures A second type of strategy for promoting democratic equality is to develop strengthened local structures for participating in decision-making. People living in socially disadvantaged areas face a range of policy problems, some of which are similar to those in advantaged areas and some of wh ich are distinctive in quality or scale. In addition, they are much less well resourc ed than people in advantaged areas for dealing directly with the formal political syst em through lobbying, direct contact with public representatives, the use of informal so cial networks and so on. Developing means by which they can become more directly involv ed in policy-making and prioritizing is therefore another way of helping to level the playing field. One of the most widely cited examples of local demo cratic empowerment is the Participatory Budgeting process developed in Porto Alegre in Brazil and currently being extended to more than 100 other Brazilian cit ies with Workers’ Party governments. In this case, which I know of only thr ough published accounts (Abers 1998; Baiochhi 2003; De Sousa Santos 1998), there i s a h ghly developed system through which local communities participate in deci sion-making relating to the allocation of the municipal budget for services inc luding road improvements, water, drainage and other public services. The process is thoroughly described in a number of sources so I will only mention a few of its prom inent features. It takes place in parallel with the formal political system: the adop ti n of the Participatory Budget, which covers only that part of the municipal budget directly concerned with certain public services, is formally within the power of th e city council, but this does not seem to lead to serious conflict. The process is su pported by skilled facilitators and by intensive training for participants so that ordinar y citizens are empowered to understand, challenge and reconstruct budgetary pro posals. Among the most promising aspects of the process is the fact that, in contrast to most other contexts, there is very little evidence of unequal participat ion by class or gender. The Participatory Budget shows that such democratic inv olvement is perfectly feasible even in a relatively poor country. Another very interesting example I have read about is the Campaign for Decentralized Planning in the Indian state of Kerala (Thomas Isaa c and Heller 2003). In this case, as well, the process involves providing structures thr ough which ordinary citizens can have a serious influence on planning the delivery a nd priorities of local services. As in Porto Alegre, it involves the use of skilled facili tators and an intensive training programme for participants. Another similarity is t hat participation by women and members of disadvantaged groups (in this case, Sche duled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) has been disproportionately high. Although I have read up some of the written reports n these cases, I cannot claim to have detailed knowledge of them or to be in a posit ion to compare them to some of the attempts to engage local communities here in Ir eland in processes of local planning. I think that would be an interesting area for the Commission to look into. 3. Separate representation for marginalized groups A third strategy for using democracy to support equ ality is to construct and develop ways for directly representing the interests and pe rspectives of marginalized groups. There has been some attention to this strategy at n ational and local electoral level in some countries. The clearest example I have come ac ross is the system in New Zealand / Aotearea for the representation of Maoris th ough a separate electoral roll that Maoris can opt onto and that has its own const ituency boundaries (Electoral Commission [New Zealand] 2003). The electors on thi s roll currently elect seven of the 120 members of the New Zealand Parliament. It i s not clear to me that there are any feasible applications of this model to Ireland t the level of electoral politics although it could be interesting to hear whether th Travelling community would consider it a positive proposal to have their own T D elected from a national roll of Travellers (assuming that such a roll would have ap proximately 1/166th of the country’s adult population). Where the idea of separate representation really co mes into its own in an Irish context is in connection to partnership bodies at both loca l and national level. We already have something like this in national partnerships t hrough the role of the Community and Voluntary Sector in the NESF, the NESC and nati o l partnership agreements. What is different there, and deserves more attentio n, is the difference between the genuine representation of marginalized groups throu gh representatives of their own choosing and the more attenuated sense in which the se groups are represented by organizations that aim to act on their behalf but h ave no lines of accountability to the groups themselves. I know that there is work being done at the level of local partnership, in particular, to try to ensure that t e representatives of local communities, of disabled people, of Travellers, of gays and lesbians, of older people, and so on, are chosen by and accountable to organiz ations composed of members of these groups rather than simply being people chosen from the top as likely advocates of their views. But I cannot speak with any au