Common Dreams | How Progressive Cities Can Reshape the World And Democracy Common Dreams How Progressive Cities Can Reshape the World And Democracy. Published on. Saturday, March 11, 2017. by. OpenDemocracy.net. How Progressive Cities Can Reshape the World And Democracy. As national governments lurch to the right, a radical ... |
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How Progressive Cities Can Reshape the World And Democracy - Common Dreams
Paul Mitchell 12:16 p.m. ET March 11, 2017
U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, speaks at a town hall meeting about controversial Republican proposals in Congress and actions by President Donald Trump on health care, immigration and the environment, on February 21, 2017, in Mariposa, Calif.(Photo: Mark Z. Barabak/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Substantive dialogue brings real solutions that achieve success.
Having an open dialogue between people of all beliefs is important but to truly make an impact it must also be a meaningful and respectful dialogue.
Sadly, this is not the reality we have seen time and time again as recent town hall events around the country, meant for any and all constituents, have devolved into rowdy media events.
Those whose aim is to disrupt, or to be the loudest, drown out those who want to participate in their government constructively through peaceful dialogue.
There is a difference between those who share their earnest concerns in a civil manner and those aiming to disrupt the free exchange of ideas by shouting down those with whom they disagree. Sharing ideas in a respectful manner is what democracy looks like.
Before taking office as the member of Congress for Michigans 10th Congressional District, I had spent a career in private business creating jobs. I was not a politician and I learned in business that shouting matches and meaningless theater achieve nothing. Calm, sober, substantive conversations and hard work are the only ways to find real solutions to challenges. I will work no differently in Congress than I did in private business. Focus on effectiveness and listen closely to anyone wishing to work with you to find solutions.
During my campaign, I participated in more than 700 community events. I answered questions about my position on issues such as Obamacare, tax reform and immigration.
By providing voters with clear statements of policy and by connecting with them in person, my campaign achieved convincing victories in both a hard-fought primary and the general election.
My congressional website and Facebook page reflect the same approach: Share with voters how I am keeping the policy promises I made during the election.
I am committed to having real and ongoing dialogue with constituents throughout my time in Congress. I urge all of my constituents to keep informing me of their views and positions, as they have been, and I will do my best to fight for better policies and better legislative outcomes.
U.S. Rep. Paul Mitchell
10th Congressional District
Dryden
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Respect, democracy go hand in hand - Detroit Free Press
Among the many different forms of government, democracies are unique in the extent to which their stability depends on legitimacy - a belief on the part of the public that the system of government in the country has what the late Seymour Martin Lipset called "a moral title to rule".
Moral assessments of political authority are always to some extent relative. People may not love their system of government, but it is important that they at least see it as better than any alternative they can imagine. Social scientists thus have increasingly been inclined to measure political legitimacy with Winston Churchill's famous declaration in mind: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
With the defeat of fascism in World War II, and then of communism in the Cold War, and with the general decline of various other forms of military, one-party, and personal (strongman) dictatorships since the mid-1970s, democracy came to be seen globally as the one truly legitimate form of government. But there is a difference between popular acceptance of a regime in the absence of any immediate alternative and a deep popular commitment to its moral worth.
Dr Lipset, a leading theorist of American democracy, and other social scientists have also distinguished between what we call "performance legitimacy" and "intrinsic legitimacy". The former is more superficial: People support a political system because it works for the moment to maintain order, generate economic growth and produce other public goods. But the danger with legitimacy that is based purely on performance is that it can evaporate when the performance goes bad. A democracy is thus only truly "consolidated" when most of its citizens come to believe that the constitutional system is the most right and appropriate for the country, irrespective of how well it performs in any given period of time.
Dr Lipset argued that once democracies had functioned well over an extended period of time, they would build up a reservoir of intrinsic legitimacy that they could draw on in difficult times.
But what happens if "difficult times" last a very long time?
Political legitimacy has many possible sources. As German sociologist Max Weber wrote, legitimacy may be based on tradition - people see authority as morally right because it has a long and deeply rooted historical vintage. It may be forged by the personal charisma of a transformative leader; whether democratic, such as George Washington or Nelson Mandela; or autocratic, such as Lenin, Fidel Castro, or Ayatollah Khomeini. But charismatic authority is fleeting as it depends on a personality.
So to be sustained, legitimacy must be institutionalised through rules and procedures, what Weber called "rational-legal" bases of authority. People will obey rules when the rules are perceived to work fairly and well over the long run - or in the absence of any alternative. But in the face of an extended crisis of performance - for example, a protracted increase in economic inequality; two or more decades of stagnant or declining incomes for a large swathe of the population; or a broader sense of unaddressed threat to group identity and national sovereignty - much of the population may lose faith in the political system. And when that happens, a systemic alternative is bound to present itself. This can be the military, an authoritarian movement or party, or simply an authoritarian individual leader who denounces the system as weak and corrupt and who claims "I alone can fix it".
The ultimate guarantor of any democracy is that its citizens are committed to it unconditionally - again, independent of what it produces for them at any moment in time and of whether the party they favour is in power or not. A reasonable minimum threshold for democratic consolidation is that no less than 70 per cent of the public express commitment to democracy as the best form of government, and no more than 15 per cent of the public express support for an authoritarian regime option. This is a tough standard that is met by only a few democracies outside the West.
We have generally presumed that popular support for democracy remains extremely high in the established Western democracies. However, recent analysis by researchers Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, published in the Journal Of Democracy, shows that support for democracy in the US and Europe has declined over the last 20 years in almost every age group, and that the young are the most sceptical (with more than 20 per cent of those below age 35 saying that "having a democratic political system" is a "bad" or "very bad" way to "run this country"). Moreover, the percentage of Americans saying it would be good or very good for the "army to rule" rose from about 6 per cent to 16 per cent between 1995 and 2011.
More disturbing still, the percentage of Americans who answer that having "a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections" increased in this same period from about 20 per cent to 34 per cent. Most of the countries surveyed by the World Values Survey between 2010 and 2014 showed similar increases. In fact, in all of the advanced industrial democracies surveyed in this period, support for a "strong leader" is at or above 20 per cent (for example, 21 per cent in Germany, slightly above 25 per cent in Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands, and 40 per cent in Spain).
Surely not all of the above surveyed citizens imagined that they were expressing support for non-democratic rule. But the real danger that the established democracies face is not an army takeover, or a blatant suspension of the Constitution by a would-be civilian dictator. The peril is rather the creeping path to autocracy in which a "strong" elected leader would seek to sideline or undermine established institutions and constraints - the Congress, the courts, the media and the political opposition. Then such a leader would not need to "bother" with constitutional constraints and could simply "get things done".
This is a playbook that has been utilised in the last two decades by a number of "strong leaders" who came to power in competitive elections and then proceeded to dismantle checks on their executive power - and eventually the ability of opposition parties to challenge them on anything like a level playing field. The early practitioners of this incremental assault on democratic constraints were Russia's Vladimir Putin and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In the early 2000s, Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra pursued a similar path, but the military overthrew him before he could consolidate power. More recently, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Mr Viktor Orban in Hungary have gradually strangled democratic pluralism in their countries. The Law and Justice Party led by Mr Jaroslaw Kaczynski is attempting to do the same in Poland, but it lacks the parliamentary strength to amend the Constitution to rig the system in favour of the ruling party, the way Mr Orban did in Hungary.
It is important to note that all the instances of "creeping autocracy" have been accomplished in political systems that lacked the long duration, deep historical roots and strong countervailing institutions that characterise the democracies of North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It would be a much greater shock if any of these democracies were to succumb to the wave of (largely right-wing, nativist) populist authoritarianism sweeping through Central and Eastern Europe and several developing countries, most recently the Philippines since the election of Mr Rodrigo Duterte last year. In the long-established democracies, the institutional underpinnings of democracy are much stronger.
But institutions in the end are rules and patterns of behaviour that are perpetuated by people and must be defended by people. If people abandon the unconditional commitment to democracy as the best form of government, if they come to put short-term programmatic or partisan advantage above the most fundamental rules of the democratic game, then democracy will be endangered. Political polarisation, which has been steadily increasing in the United States, facilitates this slide toward the autocratic abyss, because it makes politics a zero-sum game in which there is no common ground uniting opposing camps. Therefore anything can be justified in the pursuit of victory. Over the last century, this dynamic of polarisation eroding the rules of the democratic game, paralysing the democratic process, and paving the way for a strongman has been a common scenario for the failure of democracy.
If there is a lesson that stretches across the history and the public opinion data, it is that nothing should be taken for granted. The laziest and most fatal form of intellectual arrogance is to assume that what has been will continue to be, simply because it has a long history. Legitimacy is nothing more than a set of individual beliefs and values. If we do not work to renew those beliefs and values with each generation, even long-established democracies could be at risk.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
This essay is part of an Inquiry, produced by the Berggruen Institute and Zocalo Public Square, on what makes a government legitimate.
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Are Americans fully committed to democracy? - The Straits Times
As a full-service store, the Co-op will be in a position to fill this need. While community-supported agriculture and farmers markets have greatly increased interest in local products, the Co-op, as a professionally run store dedicated to contracting with local growers and offering the same hours and accessibility as conventional grocery stores, will vastly expand access of local products to shoppers.
Cooperative grocery stores are well suited to working with small- and medium-sized farms because their respective operations are similar in size. According to national averages, a cooperative grocery store works with 157 local farmers and producers, compared with 65 at a conventional store.
The effort to start a co-op in the Salt Lake area began in 2009, with a conversation between three colleagues who moved to Utah and were member-owners of grocery cooperatives where they lived previously. Because Salt Lake is such a vibrant community, they were surprised to discover that Salt Lake City didn't claim one of the 300-plus member-owned cooperative markets already operating in the U.S.
After numerous meetings with like-minded residents, ideas coalesced around improving access to excellent food by broadening the customer base of local farmers and creating community around food. Why not create a year-round, seven-daysa-week venue for local farmers and artisans to sell their products and be a place for people to gather?
Even before opening the store, the Co-op is in partnership with local farmers through "farm mobs" (volunteers help farmers with such critical projects as winterizing barns, clearing fields, building structures), promoting their farms through social media and sponsoring the Winter Market at the Rio Grande.
The greatest challenge the Co-op faces is at hand growing our member-owner base to 750 in order to enter into negotiations on a store site with strong financial backing. As we face this challenge, we find inspiration in the idea that supporting local co-ops is one of the strongest actions we as citizens can take to guard our food system, ensure humane treatment of animals and protect our Earth. The benefits to our farmers, the community and the environment allow us to use our money not only to meet our shopping needs but to enrich our entire community.
According to Bill Gessner, of CDS Consulting Co-op and a 30-year veteran of consulting services for more than 300 startup and existing co-ops, "For a food co-op to be competitively successful today, they need to be well-capitalized, well-managed, and anchored in a solid foundation of member ownership and governance."
In addition to the 300 operational co-ops, 150 co-op grocery stores are in various stages of development across the country. The Co-op is entering the planning portion of the second stage of its development: feasibility and planning. The closest co-ops to Salt Lake are in Moab and Pocatello, Idaho. Boise's co-op, with more than 29,000 active member-owners and two stores, shows what is possible when the community supports it.
Following one of the seven principles that all cooperatives uphold voluntary and open membership all Utahns can be member-owners of the Co-op by making a one-time equity investment of $300. Current member-owners live in nine Utah counties stretching from Cache to Iron and from Salt Lake to Uintah.
Visit http://www.wasatch.coop.com or the Co-op's Facebook page for more information and get involved.
Thom Benedict, Beth Blattenberger, Stephanie Buranek, Candace Cady, Jodie Grant, Benjamin Jordan, Barbara Pioli, Allen Stutz and Erin Whitelock are members of the board of directors of Wasatch Cooperative Market.
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Op-ed: For us, democracy in action means starting a co-op market - Salt Lake Tribune
South Korea is in an uproar. Crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands have been surging through the streets of Seoul, the capital city. Some of the marchers are celebrating a ruling Friday by the Constitutional Court, which has upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Others who support the president have been angrily denouncing the court, leading to clashes with police that have resulted in the deaths of two protesters.
All of this turmoil is taking place against the backdrop of ominous gestures from North Korea, which fired off a salvo of four medium-range missiles in a test Monday. The distance traveled by the missiles would have enabled them to hit a U.S. military base in Japan a point explicitly mentioned by the North Koreans in a communique accompanying the launch.
What are we supposed to make of all of this? Is the Korean Peninsula descending into chaos?
Its important to keep two things separate here. First of all, the latest developments in South Korea follow revelations of corruption at the highest levels of political power. The allegations encompass not only the conservative President Park who is accused of using her close friend, Choi Soon-sil, to funnel bribes to businessmen but also the de facto head of Samsung, the vast business conglomerate that accounts for more than 10 percent of the countrys GDP. The companys vice chairman, Lee Jae-yong, was maneuvering to expand his power at the top of the Samsung hierarchy. His trial on corruption charges has just gotten underway.
Eight court justices voted unanimously to remove the president from office. Parks actions in office, said acting chief justice Lee Jung-mi, betrayed the trust of the people and were of the kind that cannot be tolerated for the sake of protecting the Constitution. Note: It was all about the people and the Constitution. The courts act of institutional defiance is especially remarkable when you consider that democracy in South Korea is a mere 30 years old
This is the first time in Korean history that a democratically elected head of state has been removed from office by nonviolent, legal means. But thats not all. The fact that Parks fate became intertwined with that of Lee, a scion of the immensely powerful clan that controls Samsung, has given her case even greater resonance. This is a major landmark in the young political history of the South Korean state, says Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Its significant because it really speaks to the deep problem of collusion between the government and big business. The scandal has fueled the outpouring of public anger by reminding the public that the people in the country who have money and power feel theyre above the law, says Lee. In this sense, this is a big blow against the old political culture. Its a victory for the rule of law.
Now the country faces fresh elections within the next 60 days. The current front-runner is the opposition leader Moon Jae-in, head of the Democratic Party. Among other policy proposals, he favors a return to the so-called sunshine policy, a program of rapprochement with North Korea that was favored by left-wing governments in the 1990s and early 2000s. Parks conservative administration, routinely vilified by North Korea, preferred sanctions to negotiations.
At the moment, North Korea doesnt appear to be particularly interested in compromise. The rhetoric coming from the regime of Kim Jong Un has been especially harsh lately, and this weeks missile launch (not to mention the bizarre assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the current rulers half-brother) doesnt exactly sound like an overture to reconciliation. Yet Sung-Yoon Lee, the Tufts scholar, notes that North Korea has little incentive to moderate its appalling behavior since thats the only way it can get regional powers to treat it like a player. (Plus, a revival of the sunshine policy would give the North a new lease on life by allowing it to squeeze financial and material benefits from the Southerners.)
For the time being, though, not even North Koreas military prowess or South Koreas current political instability can conceal the fundamental divide between the two. North Korea remains one of the worlds few examples of a fully totalitarian state, its leaders presiding over an impoverished and brutalized population. South Korea, which boasts one of the worlds most dynamic economies, continues to evolve and broaden its democratic institutions. Observers sometimes invoke the rivalry between the two states, but it isnt really much of a competition, and it hasnt been for years. Thats worth contemplating at a time when many around the world are bemoaning the authoritarian resurgence and the ills of democracy.
To be sure, South Korea still has many problems. But its people, buoyed up by an extraordinary wave of civic activism, are showing that they arent prepared to accept the established way of doing things. They have mounted a remarkable campaign for change, and today that campaign has borne fruit of the most dramatic sort. Their cousins to the north can only dream of similar acts of defiance which is why their country remains frozen in time, beholden to a leader whose only plan for the future is tied to the machinery of violence.
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South Korea shows the world how democracy is done - Washington Post