Participatory Democracy - a Shrinking Space: guest article by Dr. Shabbir Cheema

This guest article is by my longtime colleague and friend, Shabbir Cheema, a well-known scholar and practitioner on democratic governance and urban management. Because 2024 is the biggest election year in world history, I asked Shabbir if he would share his current thoughts on how we can strengthen participatory democracy in the US and around the world. In his response, Shabbir brings his vast experience as director of UNDP’s division on Management Development and Governance, Harvard Kennedy School senior fellow on democratic governance, and East-West Center senior fellow and director on governance and democracy. He has published several books on these and related topics. We can help strengthen participatory democracy by supporting Shabbir’s recommendations, engaging in peaceful, truthful social discourse, voting, helping get out the vote, and in many other ways. This is the fourth Compassionate Conversation on democracy, politics, voting, and elections.

Participatory democracy entails engagement of individuals and groups from all segments of society in political and socio-economic processes that affect their lives. Core values of participatory democracy are participation, accountability, transparency, and access to economic opportunities. My experience in rural and urban areas of the developing world suggests two sets of actions to strengthen and sustain participatory democracy. Each of the suggested actions might not be equally important in different socio-economic settings.

The building blocks of participatory democracy begin with a set of local level actions.

The need is to organize local communities at village and city neighborhoods levels. Governments, the private sector, and communities need to make financial investments to provide basic services - water, sanitation, elementary education, primary health care, and environmental awareness.

We need to create a community-based process to identify, plan, monitor, and evaluate community level basic services projects. This could be a community development unit (CDU), a community association, or related mechanisms to facilitate participation of different segments of the community.

It is essential to create more awareness among the national level policymakers and development practitioners about the idea that increased financial investments through local participatory processes in communities produce better public policy outcomes for the society.

The most fundamental action at the local level is the establishment of elected local governments to (1) provide a framework for local development; and (2) coordinate "local-local" and "local-national" dialogues and coordination of local development actions.

Community and local level mechanisms and actions are necessary but not sufficient to strengthen and sustain participatory democracy.

National level structures, processes and capacities are needed to ensure free and fair elections, rule of law, decentralization of decision-making to sub-national and local governments, more space for the civil society, gender equity, and state capacity for legislation, program/project implementation, and safety and security of citizens.

The shrinking space of participatory democracy is evident in the developing countries and more recently in the advanced countries including the United States.

As an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, I am always optimistic about the United States’ ability to self-correct. Even in the highly contested 2020 elections, American institutions worked in accordance with constitutional provisions. Officials responsible for managing elections did their job with fairness, integrity and professionalism. The courts delivered their verdicts based on law and evidence. Voter turnout was high.

But currently. there are some structural issues and trends that need to be seriously examined to improve the quality of American democracy - the role of money in politics, overwhelming dominance of some interest groups that are constraining a progressive set of policies, the electoral college choosing the President, gerrymandering for seats in the House of Representatives, impediments on the right to votes by minorities. As Gus Speth, former UNDP Administrator, points out in a recent essay, "The American polity and economy are thoroughly skewed in favor of production, profit, and power at the expense of people, place, and planet" (Essays from the Edge No. 1). Today, the United States has unprecedented political polarization, growing inequality, and an increasingly bitter public discourse about social justice.

There are a great deal of innovations, initiatives, and new ideas to promote participatory democracy. Some of the innovations and good practices in the urban areas are highlighted in my Governance for Urban Services - Access, Participation, Accountability, and Transparency (Springer, 2020). Many insights are provided by recent case studies on participatory democracy by researchers at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School. International development organizations such as UNDP and the World Bank, in partnership with country level stakeholders, have supported these innovations in the developing world.

The challenge today is this: How can we replicate and mainstream innovations and good practices of civil society, governments, and the private sector to improve the quality of participatory democracy so that no one is left behind?