Re-enchanting democracy as a mode of governance

Abstract

In this article, I explore the contribution of governance micro-practices to the transformative co-production of policy processes and political cultures, drawing on experiences of ‘democracy-in-action’ in the finegrain practices of spatial planning and urban policy. Following an introduction, the first section introduces the tensions which the designs and practices of programs in these fields are called upon to negotiate, and the experimentation in both fields which reaches towards more participative and ‘people-centered’ ways of working. I illustrate the challenges and potentials for such transformations through two cases of energetic civil society governance activity, one (from north east England) where old social democratic practices have lived on, and another (from central Japan) where more participative practices centered on people's daily life concerns have evolved. I then outline a conception of a participative, pluralistic, richly-informed, people-centered polity, drawing on older contrasts between elite and participative forms of democracy. I argue that, in current times in countries such as the UK, the new forms of ‘network governance’ which are appearing within and around the long-established designs and practices of representative democracy hold a potential for more people-centered forms to emerge. How far such potentials are realized, however, depends on contingent particularities and struggles. I conclude by offering a range of hypotheses about qualities to encourage in the particularities of micro-practices for those seeking to promote more progressive governance cultures and resist regressive trajectories.

Keywords:

• spatial planning practices
• civil society
• governance cultures
• network governance

Acknowledgements

This article is adapted from a talk given at Roskilde University, Denmark, in December 2009, at the Conference Governance Networks: Democracy, Policy Innovations and Global Regulation, and from a paper given at the Interpreting Democratic Governance Conference organized by the Local Governance Research Unit of De Montfort University, UK, on 23–24 September 2010. My thanks to David Booher and John Forester for their very helpful comments on an early version of the paper, and to the CPS referees and Henk Wagenaar for their guidance. Thanks also to Jeff Corrighan for permission to make use of work undertaken for NCRN, Newcastle.

Notes

1.See, for example, the work of Briggs (2008), Sirianni (2009), Corburn (2010), Friedmann (2011) and Wagenaar (2011).

2.Examples range from studies of national government discourse formation (Hajer 2005), to those focused on environmental conservation and resource management issues (Goldstein 2010, Innes and Booher 2010), and on area development and neighborhood politics (Healey et al. 2003, Corburn 2005, Gonzalez and Healey 2005, Healey 2005, Hillier 2000, Moulaert et al. 2007, Wagenaar 2007, Sirianni 2007). See also Briggs (2008).

3.See the literatures on urban governance and environmental policy. For an analysis of competing discourses in the spatial planning field in the UK in the 1990s, see Vigar et al. (2000).

4.The concept of ‘culture’ has many different definitions, but is here taken to refer to the historical accumulation of modes of thought and practice in which members of a political community are embedded and help to shape. Bevir et al. (2003) refer to this phenomena as ‘tradition’.

5.See Healey and Underwood (1979), Forester (1999), Laws and Forester (2007), Durose (2009), Sager (2009).

6.See Rydin (1999) for a review of public participation in the planning field in the UK, and Burby (2003) for the United States.

7.There is an important contrast here between ‘partnership’ governance forms which have emerged endogenously, and situations where such arrangements have been ‘imposed’ by a higher tier of government. In the UK, the tendency has been for ‘impositions’, attached to funding incentives, which have often been counterproductive to the development of endogenous evolutions.

8.I use the term ‘governance’ to refer to the arrangements by which a polity is governed (see Le Galès 2002, Hoppe 2010). In using the term ‘network governance’, I refer to shifts towards more horizontal, networked forms in which the distinctions between formal departments and levels of government, and between state, society and economy become much more blurred (Sorensen and Torfing 2007, Hajer 2009, Innes and Booher 2010, Hoppe 2010).

9.My broad division of society as consisting of the overlapping spheres of state, economy and civil society draws on Urry (1981). I do not use these as distinct categories with clear boundaries, but as a heuristic lens through which to focus on areas of social dynamics. As many are commenting, what is interesting in the present evolution of new governance forms is the search for new ways to link between (intermediate, cross boundaries) the spheres (see Cornwall and Coelho 2007, Holston 2008, Jessop 2008, Hajer 2009).

10.Here I draw on conceptions of deliberative democracy and the public sphere as developed by Habermas (1996, Chap 8), Dryzek (2000), Fischer (2003), Fung (2005) and Connolly (2005).

11.Work in the interpretive policy analysis field is beginning to provide such accounts, to supplement the classic narratives of Meyerson and Banfield (1955), Altshuler (1965), and, more recently Flyvbjerg (1998) (see Throgmorton 1996, Corburn 2005, 2010, Healey 2007, Sirianni 2009, Phelps 2012).

12.See examples already cited in note 3.

13.See Madanipour and Bevan (1999), Madanipour and Merridew (2004), Healey (2005) and the report by Corrighan (2011).

14.See Corrighan (2011).

15.Some of the text for this case comes from Healey (2010, pp. 85–92). See also Sorensen and Funck (2007).

16.It is the women and children who, until recently in Japanese society, lived most of their daily lives in their home neighborhoods, men being much more socially involved in their workplace networks (Funck 2007).

17.This is partly due to generational change, and partly because many people left after the earthquake and did not return.

18.This ‘travelling’ metaphor is taken from actor–network theory, especially Callon et al. (2009).

19.Such ideas draw on discussions about the formation of ‘social capital’ (Lewis 2010), and on Luhmann's (1982) conception of self-regulating systems.

20.There is a substantial literature around concepts of deliberative democracy, and participative democracy. I have found the work of Connolly (1987, 2005) and Sen (2006, 2009) particularly useful in developing my own thinking in relation to the arguments in this literature. See also Wagenaar (2011).

21.The format for Table 1 was inspired by Fisher and Ury (1983). Sorensen and Torfing (2009) provide a somewhat similar exercise.

22.Here I draw on arguments about the value of ‘agonistic’ versus ‘antagonistic’ approaches to conflict, see Connolly (2005), Sorensen and Torfing (2007), Hillier (2007) who all comment on Chantal Mouffe's formulation.

23.Hajer's examples are: how to react to the murder of a film-maker known for his anti-Islamic views in a city renowned for its tolerance, how to decide what to build after the 9/11 bombing of the Twin Towers in the World Trade Center in New York, how to re-build confidence in British food standards after the ‘mad cow’ experience. See also, Innes and Booher (2010), for their collective experience of ‘collaborative’ governance forms.

24.See Laws and Forester (2007) for a discussion of the dimensions and forms of such interactions.

25.This is a key concern underlying Habermas’ work (Specter 2010).