Archon Fung

Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences*

Hochschild, Sanjeev Khagram, Jane Mansbridge, Nancy Rosenblum, Charles Sabel, Lars Torres, participants in the Democracy Collaborative’s “State of Democratic Practice” conference, and two anonymous reviewers for generous comments on previous drafts of this article. Habermas 1989. Putnam 1993, 2000; Skocpol 1999. Cohen and Rogers 1992; Hirst 1994. Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences*

Democratic Theory and Political Science: A Pragmatic Method of Constructive Engagement

This article develops two conceptual tools to synthesize democratic theory and the empirical study of institutions. The first is a standard to assess conceptions of democracy called pragmatic equilibrium. A conception of democracy is in pragmatic equilibrium just in case the consequences of its institutional prescriptions realize its values well and better than any other feasible institutional arrangements across a wide range of problems and contexts. Pragmatic equilibrium is a kind of Rawlsian reflective equilibrium. The second is a method of practical reasoning about the consequences of alternative institutional choices that brings conceptions of democracy closer to pragmatic equilibrium. These two ideas are then applied to four conceptions of democracy—minimal, aggregative, deliberative, and participatory—and to two governance problems—deciding rules of political structure and minority tyranny—to show how each conception can improve through reflection on the empirical consequences of various institutional arrangements.

Accountable Autonomy: Toward Empowered Deliberation in Chicago Schools and Policing

In 1988 and 1995, the Chicago Public Schools and Police Department implemented governance reforms that dramatically increase opportunities for citizen engagement in neighborhoods, devolve operational authority to those in individual police beats and school councils, and create deliberative local planning processes. This article conceptualizes these arrangements as an accountable autonomy. Local groups of public officials and citizens are autonomous by virtue of their authority to set public goals, develop strategies to reach those, and then implement those strategies. This autonomy, however, is not license. Local groups should be held accountable by central administrators and the general public for both the democratic quality of their decision processes and their operational effectiveness. The paper explores the degree to which the two reformed Chicago institutions approximate accountable autonomy and potentials for enhancing civic participation and public problem solving. Surprisingly, residents of poor neighborhoods participate at rates equal to or greater than those from wealthy ones. Participation rates across neighborhoods are generally high enough to sustain deliberative problem-solving activity. In some neighborhoods, deliberation between citizens and local officials has yielded innovative strategies that neither group would likely have developed on its own.

Infotopia Unleashing the Democratic Power of Transparency

In Infotopia, citizens enjoy a wide range of information about the organizations upon which they rely for the satisfaction of their vital interests. The provision of that information is governed by...In Infotopia, citizens enjoy a wide range of information about the organizations upon which they rely for the satisfaction of their vital interests. The provision of that information is governed by principles of democratic transparency. Democratic transparency both extends and critiques current enthusiasms about transparency. It urges us to conceptualize information politically, as a resource to turn the behavior of large organizations in socially beneficial ways. Transparency efforts have targets, and we should think of those targets as large organizations: public and civic, but especially private and corporate. Democratic transparency consists of four principles. First, information about the operations and actions of large organizations that affect citizens’ interests should be rich, deep, and readily available to the public. Second, the amount of available information should be proportionate to the extent to which those organizations jeopardize citizens’ interests. Third, information should be organized and provided in ways that are accessible to individuals and groups that use that information. Finally, the social, political, and economic structures of society should be organized in ways that allow individuals and groups to take action based on Infotopia’s public disclosures.

After Backyard Environmentalism: Toward a Performance-Based Regime of Environmental Regulation

This article develops a model of environmental regulation that promises to be at once more flexible, democratic, and effective than the familiar methods of central command or market-based control. Local units—such as firms, factories, or regional ecosystem management authorities—enjoy the autonomy to determine their environmental protection goals and methods to reach them. In exchange for this latitude, they report their plans and progress to central authorities that monitor local planning efforts and pool the information generated by them to formulate minimum performance standards and identify effective practices. This arrangement produces contextually tailored regulation, rich information feedback, and continuous adjustment of ends and means in light of new learning. Elements of this model have been adopted in large-scale reforms in areas as diverse as toxics use reduction, endangered species protection, and ecosystem management. Writ large, this model entails a fundamental reorientation of government institutions that the authors call neo-Madisonian.

Reinventing Democracy in Latin America

From time to time, a region of the world captures the attention of social scientists because people there achieve some important human value to an extent greater than the rest of us have managed to do. In the 1970s, the Scandinavian and Northern European social democracies earned the worlds envy for their remarkable accomplishments in equality, solidarity, and welfare. Accordingly, many social scientists sought to understand the political and economic keys to their success.

Continuous Institutional Innovation and the Pragmatic Conception of Democracy

In every society in many arenas, the reality of collective decision ;making falls far short of the democratic ideal in countless ways. These shortfalls include disenfranchisement, unequal influence operating through formal and informal mechanisms, political apathy and alienation, misinformation, and misperception. Part of the solutions to these challenges lies in a sound democratic constitution. But there is no once-and-for-all solution. Instead, approaching the democratic ideal requires political practices of continuous democratic innovation. The need for continuous innovation stems from a fundamental dynamics of democratic sclerosis in which advantaged individuals and factions in society will seek to entrench their authority and so disempower others. That innovation, in turn, requires a certain civic infrastructure and political practices. Elements of that infrastructure include citizens who look forward restlessly to democratic improvements rather than reverentially backward to an imagined golden democratic age, political leaders and advocates who press not just for their policy preferences but for improvements in the processes of democratic governance, and an intellectual class that offers not just explanations of political phenomena, but solutions to democracys problems.

How Much Disagreement is Good for Democratic Deliberation

The ideal of deliberation requires that citizens engage in reasonable discussion despite disagreements. In practice, if their experience is to match this normative ideal, participants in an actual deliberation should prefer moderate disagreement to conflict-free discussion within homogeneous groups, and to conflict-driven discussion where differences are intractable. This article proposes a research design and methods for assessing the quality of a deliberative event based on the perceptions of the participants themselves. In a structured deliberative event, over 2,000 individuals were assigned to small groups composed of about 10 persons of varying levels of ideological difference to discuss health care reform in California. We find that participants experience higher satisfaction with deliberation under moderate ideological difference than when they are in homogeneous or in highly disparate groups. That moderate disagreement induces optimal deliberation is consistent with normative expectations and empirically demonstrates the deliberative quality of this event.

Making Rights Real: Roe's Impact on Abortion Access

In recent years various pro-choice theorists have asserted that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision undermined access to abortion by removing the possibility for a social consensus established through ordinary legislative processes and by de-mobilizing abortion rights activists and galvanizing the right-to-life movement. These claims can be refuted through a counterfactual analysis of the alternative political scenarios. It is argued that abortion access is determined primarily by the permissiveness of the laws distance to abortion facilities and the availability of public funding and to a lesser extent by mandatory spousal or parental consent counseling requirements and waiting periods. Although Roe vs. Wade allowed states to ban abortions in the 3rd trimester and regulate them in the 2nd a womans claim dominates state interests in the 1st trimester. Abortion access had remained stable since 1973 but pro-choice forces have been unable to counter a trend toward state restrictions on abortion rights especially in terms of public funding. If instead of ruling on Roe vs. Wade in 1973 the Supreme court had given state legislatures the right to resolve the abortion issue pro-choice activists would have been forced to strengthen the abortion rights movement and to fight for legislation compelling public and private hospitals to offer abortion services. However weak support in the 1970s for the concept of abortion on demand makes this an unlikely scenario. Also politically infeasible is a scenario in which state legislatures determine abortion laws. Without the Roe decision a pattern of regional disparity in abortion access would have continued. At least 14 states would probably enact laws permitting abortion only to save a mothers life another 15 would adopt permissive laws and the outcomes in the remaining states would be uncertain. Common to all alternate scenarios would be overall reduced access to abortion and a political process based on sharp polarization rather than social consensus.

Can Democracy Be Saved?: Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements

Even as the ideal of democracy is nearly universally endorsed, democracy’s appropriate institutional forms and social practices seem ever more contested. Whereas representative government with multi-party elections has been largely taken for granted as democracy’s canonical institutional form, this is now no longer true. Chinese leaders and scholars speak of democracy ‘‘with Chinese characteristics,’’ which means only one party for the foreseeable future. In Latin American countries, especially Brazil, there has been a rebirth and reinvention of democracy in participatory configurations. In the mature North Atlantic industrialized democracies of the United States and Europe, the canonical form of democracy faces challenges of losses of trust, confidence, and affiliation from below and transnational governance institutions from above. In her new book, Can Democracy Be Saved? Donatella della Porta brings her expansive command of contemporary social movements and democratic institutions to bear on the question of the future of democracy. Hers is a potent combination—more of us should be attentive to the intersection between these two arenas, and work at that cross roads. The world resists division into these facile intellectual categories, and these categories inhibit our ability to understand the crucial moment that lies before us. This moment presents opportunities, motives, and means for fundamentally reconstructing democracy in less liberal-representative and more directly participatory ways. Della Porta begins by explaining that liberal democracy has never been the only institutional game in town. Instead, she conceives of democratic institutions along two dimensions: whether public decision-making is delegated to representatives or participatory; and whether decisions are made through (aggregative) majority rule or deliberation (Table 1.1, p. 8). These conceptual alternatives to liberal democracy have always existed and even been practiced and advocated from time to time, especially by worker’s movements. There is a second, macro-empirical dimension of the opportunity for institutional transformation. Della Porta argues that the three conditions which made liberal democracy possible and desirable in the twentieth century no longer hold in the twenty-first century. Specifically, liberal democracy depended upon (1) functioning and empowered political parties; (2) the territorial nation-state as the area in which majoritarian decisions govern; and (3) the efficacy of political means, and political equality, to constrain economic and social inequality. Each of these conditions has given way to different realities: the power of national executives, regional and global dynamics, and market forces against state regulation. Della Porta’s relatively brief treatment of these large macro-empirical claims will not settle questions of whether her three conditions have eroded to the point of threatening the stability of liberal democracy itself. But there are many other empirical trends that indicate deep challenges to liberal 1 See He, Boagang and Ethan Leib, eds. The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 2 See, for example, Wampler, Brian. Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2007; and Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. 3 Elster, Jon. ‘‘The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory.’’ Ed. Jon Elster and Aanund Hylland. Foundations of Social Choice Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. 103–33. 50 Reviews