When a country’s physical infrastructure is crumbling, it tends to get overlooked until it reaches crisis point. At that moment, you either get a bold response as seen with US President Biden’s bringing forward the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment Act, or a confused shrug as witnessed in the UK’s Conservative government’s dithering over what to do after underfunding Britain’s rails, utilities, school buildings, sewerage systems, hospitals, broadband networks etc. for 13 years.
But if the dilapidated state of a country’s physical infrastructure is a major cause for concern, it is even worse when its democratic infrastructure is falling to pieces. Our democratic infrastructure comprises the cultures, rules, systems and practices that facilitate collective deliberations and cooperative problem solving across society. It involves far more than electoral arrangements, and covers learning, communications, opportunities to engage, adjudication, support and enforcement that can impact on people’s ability and disposition to engage with others on an informed basis to shape outcomes that affect their wellbeing. While a robust democratic infrastructure will help people develop a shared and well-grounded understanding of the problems they face and what public policy solutions should be prioritised, a damaged one is likely to enable deception, corruption and manipulation to thrive in aid of leaders who put their personal ambitions above the public interest.
Republican state legislatures in the US and the Tory government in the UK have increasingly assailed their respective democratic infrastructure. Tactics have included raising barriers to voting by the poor and disadvantaged (e.g. via the unnecessary photo ID requirement), cynical redrawing of constituency boundaries, ensuring the wealthy can dominate elections with their campaign donations, partisan rules on what should and should not be taught in schools about political issues, cutting support for inclusive community action, protection for the propagation of lies and misinformation, stopping charities from expressing views about public policies, clamping down on protests against government positions.
Consequently, they have undermined the development and expression of democratic influence, and helped to block many policies which are needed to deal with numerous pressing social, environmental and economic problems. If these tactics are to be overcome, reformists should recognise that our democratic infrastructure must be renewed and sufficiently strengthened so that people can engage effectively in formulating the collective actions needed for their wellbeing, and pressing for their implementation.
What would such renewal entail? For the theorists and practitioners who contributed to Tomorrow’s Communities and Policy Press’s other books on communitarian democracy, the elements that are integral to any robust democratic infrastructure – participatory decision making, collaborative learning, openness, power sharing, safeguards against deception and intimidation, mutual support, processes for transparency and objectivity, state-citizen partnership – constitute a holistic set that should be advanced together. These elements should not be treated in silos as subsidiary issues, but developed as interconnected components of a top-priority reform programme.
The effectiveness of any democratic infrastructure is to be judged on how well it supports informed, sustained, cooperative interactions. Such interactions have been found to be most conducive to mutual improvement in human communities – as confirmed by anthropological studies, game theory experiments, examinations of cultural convergence on the golden rule of reciprocal behaviour, findings from developmental psychology, and projections of evolutionary adaptations. We have also learned from outcomes in diverse fields that success is generally dependent on three conditions:
- Mutual responsibility – whereby people appreciate that they need to show respect and support for others just as they want respect and support in return, and recognise that pursuit of their common wellbeing can help avoid divisive dispositions.
- Cooperative enquiry – whereby people can rely on objective exploration of claims through transparent processes of collaborative exchange and learning, structured adjudication with built-in capacity for re-examination, and protection from manipulative distortion and malicious rumours.
- Citizen participation – whereby people can give informed and meaningful input into shaping decisions that affect them, and are assured that their influence is safeguarded by arrangements that uphold accountability, counter corruption and curtail power inequalities.
In order to bring about these conditions for robust democratic infrastructure, we need to engage in a programme of continuous improvement that gives ongoing support to and removes barriers from their development in education, media management, science and research, state institutions, law and order, public service provision and community action. In each case, the challenge is to promote better understanding and relationships, facilitate objective and critical learning, and ensure that everyone – especially the marginalised and vulnerable – can influence how decisions affecting them are made.
For too long, community initiatives, collaborative learning, participatory decision making, defence of electoral integrity and other related practices have been seen as adjuncts to the ‘key’ political commitments, when in fact the democratic infrastructure they connect together is the indispensable foundation of all societal problem solving. Had President Biden been able to push through the For the People Act as he did with the Infrastructure Act, would he have done for the US democratic infrastructure what he achieved for its physical infrastructure? As it was, Senate Republicans blocked the For the People Act, and the situation is now likely to keep getting worse. As for the UK, it is not clear at present if a change of government in 2024 would bring about a far-reaching renewal of our democratic infrastructure. But the evidence is mounting that such a renewal is desperately needed, while the ideas for what should be done have been well researched and collated for adoption. There really is no excuse for inaction.
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Henry Tam is a writer, educator and former Head for Civil Renewal under the last Labour government. He was previously a lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
Special offer
Henry Tam’s books are available at 50% discount using the code TAM50 until 31 October 2023:
- Time to Save Democracy– why we need to reinvigorate democratic culture and practices, and what changes should be implemented in nine key areas of socio-political development.
- Whose Government is it?– why and how cooperative relationships between citizens and state organisations are to be renewed to improve our common wellbeing.
- Tomorrow’s Communities– what lessons should be learnt from democratic collaboration that has brought about effective community-based transformation.
- Who’s Afraid of Political Education?– what kind of learning is needed to raise civic competences and the level of democratic participation.
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