Western Politics Kemmis then focuses on the West, what he calls the last of what is best in America. He says it is critical to decide how America treats the last of its relatively open country, but that our political processes as they are working today, given the federalist bureaucratic patterns defined above, are dysfunctional for at least two reasons. One, there is little incentive, in fact there is a disincentive, to citizen participation in the public process. Our political system leads to alienation of more and more people from the public process. And two, there is no incentive or mandate for local people to work together to solve local problems.
Cooperation is a third, largely ignored, alternative.
In all his examples, the community ends up with a less satisfactory solution than any of the residents would have chosen because everyone is fighting the initiatives of everyone else. As residents learn by experience that any major initiative will create negative results, the willingness to try anything new is steadily diminished. Take the public hearing as an example, he says. It provides an opportunity to be heard. Their role, in our system, is to make the strongest possible case for their particular interests.