Sociological history of New England Town Meetings: The question of their deliberative culture

ABSTRACT

Historical New England Town Meetings have long had an important role in the collective imaginary as exemplary models of democratic participation. However, scholarly investigation has pointed to important limitations with respect to the democratic credentials of these assemblies. In this paper, we engage with recent theorising from deliberative democracy to provide an updated historical examination of the deliberative and democratic qualities of Town Meetings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. We show that Town Meetings provided a space to engage in meaningful deliberation in the context of settlers’ communities. Nonetheless, through analyses using the notions of deliberative culture and group style, we show that these communities featured deep anti-democratic norms that curtailed the democratic potential of these assemblies.

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• deliberative democracy
• deliberative cultures
• Town Meeting
• New England
• democracy

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Jane Mansbridge for her very encouraging and extremely helpful comments on an early draft of this paper. We also would like to thank all those who participated in the ‘Beyond the mandate’ section of the 2015 French Political Science Association Meeting, for their very useful feed-back on our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In discussing matters of inclusiveness, we shall also be particularly attentive to the discussion practices and the discursive norms that govern speech. As Manin (2012) points out,

 … collective deliberation practices of the past are relatively unfamiliar. Until recently, historians have been more interested in the powers or composition of deliberative institutions … than in the organization and procedures of their debates. There is a field of research that has not yet been explored.

For an extensive discussion on the importance of looking directly at procedural aspects and practices during Town Meetings, see Cossart and Felicetti (2016).

2 See for instance: By-Laws of the Town of Quincy, 1876; Rules and Orders Adopted for the Government of Town Meetings, Bedford, November 10, 1845. From the late nineteenth century, many towns explicitly rely for details on rules for holding Town Meetings on Cushing's Manual of Parliamentary Practice. Luther Stearns Cushing was the author of one of the earliest works on parliamentary practice commonly known as Cushing's Manual. First published in 1845, it was revised periodically. In the By-Laws of the Town of Bedford we read: ‘The conduct of all Town Meetings not especially provided for by law or these by-laws, shall be determined by the rules of practice contained in Cushing's Manual of Parliamentary Practice.’

3 Although deliberative and participatory models certainly provide distinct approaches to democracy, the purported opposition between the two usually overlooks their substantial overlaps in history (e.g. Pateman, 2012).

4 We leave aside here, even if it is a particularly exciting line of research, the issue of Iroquois influence. This would require an article in itself.

5 ‘The history of New England Puritanism represents one of the most extensive, though not always so sophisticated, historiographies in U.S. colonial history,’ writes Westerkamp, (1997, p. 106).

6 A City upon a Hill is a phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. He tells his listeners: ‘You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden’ (Matthew 5:14).

7 Nelson (2005, p. 183) states: ‘Puritanism was both a theology and a political theory.’

8 ‘Discussions of the relationships between the clerical and civil polities that existed in early Massachusetts have tended to foster concepts of inextricability,’ writes Seidman (1945, p. 211).