I live in the United States. I am also fairly highly educated and live on the East Coast – which means I am in one of those small blobs of blue (“progressive”) on an otherwise deep red map. And after the leader of the Deep Red World won the U.S. presidential election, a lot of people like me have been looking for both an explanation and a source of motivation to keep working toward a more equitable, inclusive community.
I found both in a recent essay by Joe Matthews. He says that, “Democracy is not in decline. The nation-state is.” Think tanks such as International IDEA, Varieties of Democracy and Freedom House focus on the level of the nation, and regularly show steady and discouraging declines in the health of “people power” (mostly via elections). It’s clear that “nation-states have proven incapable of solving planetary problems and addressing planetary threats — climate change, technological advances, disease terrorism. And, at the same time, nation-states can no longer unify their people.” In other words, nations have become impediments to change rather than catalysts.
Instead, Matthews concludes, most real democracy (read: not just elections) takes place at the level where people actually live, in local communities.
I recently moderated a panel on “Civic Engagement Beyond the Ballot” for Next City, an online magazine and nonprofit organization focused on urban affairs in the United States, and the wealth of examples of public participation in municipal decision-making was just the inspiration I needed at this time.
I particularly loved the example of CivicLex, an organization that takes a truly holistic approach to nurturing civic health in one Kentucky county – starting with education about how local institutions work and extending to an online platform for soliciting public input into county challenges.
CivicLex isn’t alone. Democracy Local just launched, billing itself as a “planetary publication and learning community of, by and for everyday people governing themselves.” (No surprise: Joe Matthews is the publisher!) Proximate welcomes this growing ecosystem; we too exist to spread the word.
- PB
