1

Hannah Arendt, the Meaning of Political Equality

and Participatory Democracy

Shmuel Lederman

Abstract:

Scholars of participatory democracy do not usually turn to Hannah Arendt's work as a

resource, despite her advocacy of a citizen council system to replace the representative

party system. At the same time, scholars of Arendt seem not be aware of the explosion in

experiments in participatory democracy in the last two decades. In this paper, I argue that

Arendt's work should serve as an important addition to theories of participatory democracy,

particularly in light of recent experiments in participatory democracy. More specifically, I

show that Arendt views modern democracy as deeply unequal in political terms, since

equality for her means active participation of citizens in government. Arendt traces the

common identification of forms of government with certain relations of rule (of the one,

the few or the many) back to Plato's opposition to political equality as it was understood

and experienced in the Greek polis. Equality for the Greeks meant precisely that no one

ruled and no one was being ruled, since everyone was equal in their ability to participate

in decision-making. For Arendt, the challenge of contemporary democracy is to resist the

legacy of Western political thought and practice, by reviving a form of government where

relations of rule are replaced with relations of equality. This vision of radical political

equality, I argue, is the root of Arendt's support for a new form of participatory democracy,

in the form of citizen councils.

Introduction:

There is a crucial point in understanding Hannah Arendt's political thought, which is not

often recognized: in her view, we all share the capacity for speech, action and judgment in

politics. This is actually part of what defines "the political" for Arendt, and it is a recurring

theme in her work, although it is not often articulated clearly. In her 1954 essay "Concern

with Politics in Recent European Philosophical Thought," for example, Arendt presents

Kant's moral philosophy in quite different terms than the ones she uses in her later works,

where she describes it as "inhuman."1 In this early essay, she perceives Kant's moral

philosophy as a mark of his unique sensitiveness to human plurality. The reason is that it

is based on capacities we all share in common: "Kant's so-called moral philosophy is in

essence political, insofar as he attributes to all men those capacities of legislating and

judging that, according to the tradition, had been the prerogative of the statesman."2

1 Hannah Arendt, "On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing," in Men in Dark Times (New York,

1968), p. 34. 2 Hannah Arendt, "Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophical Thought," in Essays in

Understanding, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), p. 441.

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In a posthumously published essay from the same year, "Philosophy and Politics,"3

Arendt presents a similar view, in different terms. One passage in particular is crucial for

understanding much of what Arendt attempts to achieve, and worth quoting at some length:

The political element in friendship is that in the truthful dialogue each of the

friends can understand the truth inherent in the other's opinion. More than

his friend as a person, one friend understands how and in what specific

articulateness the common world appears to the other, who as a person is

forever unequal or different. This kind of understanding—seeing the

world… from the other fellow's point of view—is the political kind of insight

par excellence. If we wanted to define, traditionally, the one outstanding

virtue the statesman, we could say that it consists in understanding the

greatest possible number and variety of realities… as those realities open

themselves up to the various opinions of the citizens and, at the same time,

in being able to communicate between the citizens and their opinions so that

the common-ness of this world becomes apparent. If such an

understanding—and action inspired by it—were to take place without the

help of the statesman, then the prerequisite would be for each citizen to be

articulate enough to show his opinion in its truthfulness and therefore to

understand his fellow citizens. Socrates seems to have believed that the

political function of the philosopher was to help establish this kind of

common world, built on the understanding of friendship, in which no

rulership is needed.4

Let us examine carefully what Arendt is saying here. The political capacity she

describes here she calls phronesis elsewhere.5 This is, of course, an Aristotelian concept,

but it should be noted that Arendt presents it as expressing a more general, Greek

understanding of the distinguishing mark of the statesman. Elsewhere Arendt argues that

Aristotle articulates in his explication of phronesis the public opinion of the Athenians.6 In

other places, she suggests that the Greeks came to appreciate this capacity through their

constant exchanges in the agora; the influence of the Sophist way of argumentation; as well

as through the example of Homeric impartiality, echoed by Thucydides.7 In other words,

Arendt does not simply follow Aristotle, as much of the commentary on her use of

phronesis assumes, but rather reinterprets the meaning of phronesis. One indication of her

departure from Aristotle is that—as can be gathered from the above quote—Arendt is

interested not so much in the statesman's capacity for phronesis, but rather in "ordinary"

citizens and their capacity for phronesis. According to Arendt, in order to develop this

capacity, citizens have to learn to see the world from others' points of view, acknowledging

that each of them has a unique position, which is worth looking from, in the shared world.

They would have, further, to be able to distinguish what is a prejudice, a "windegg," and

3 Republished as "Socrates," in Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York:

Schocken Books, 2005). References below are to this version. 4 Ibid., p. 18. 5 Hannah Arendt, "Introduction into Politics," in The Promise of Politics, p. 168. 6 Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Culture,' in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought

(New York, 2006), p. 289, note 14. 7 Hannah Arendt, "The Concept of History," in Between Past and Future, p. 51.

3

what is truthful in their own opinions; and to be articulate enough to communicate the

truths they arrive at to their fellow citizens.

Socrates, in Arendt's story, believed it could be done. He attempts to encourage this

capacity among Athens' citizens, by engaging with them in dialogues, making them

acknowledge that many of the truths they believe they hold are nothing but "windeggs."

He attempts, in other words, to show them that the only way to discover which of their

opinions is truthful and which is not is to discuss them with their fellow citizens in a critical

manner. Socrates, it should be further noted, does not do this as a philosopher, in the sense

of someone who holds some wisdom and tries to convince others of its truth. As Arendt

often stresses, Socrates knows nothing, and has nothing to teach. But he believes that

thinking critically is crucial to a life worth living, and, moreover, that helping his fellow

citizens to think critically is the greatest good he can do for the polis. Finally, and crucially,

in contrast to Plato after him, Socrates does not reject opinions. To speak one’s opinion is

to formulate one's dokei moi: what appears to me, the way the world is opened before me.

Different persons have different doxai because the world appears differently to each one

of them. Since we all share the same world, doxa is not merely arbitrary or subjective.

Every opinion holds something of the truth, something of the world. Socrates attempts to

help the Athenians "improve" their doxai, so that the truth in them would come to light:

Socrates wanted to bring out this truth which everyone potentially possesses… [he]

wanted to make the city more truthful by delivering each of the citizens of their

truths. The method of doing this is dialegesthai, talking something through, but this

dialectic brings forth truth not by destroying doxa or opinion, but on the contrary

by revealing doxa in its own truthfulness.8

Socrates, in other words, understands what philosophy is in a different way than

the tradition of political thought since Plato has perceived it: philosophy is for him the

never-ending search for truth, a constant philosophizing. He believes that human truths can

emerge only through critical exchange of opinions. Furthermore, Socrates believes that

philosophy is for everyone, and in this sense, by philosophizing in the agora he actually

engages in politics: "To Socrates, maieutic was a political activity, a give and take,

fundamentally on a basis of strict equality, the fruits of which could not be measured by

the result of arriving at this or that general truth."9 It could perhaps be partly measured by

a different result: whether it generates friendship among the citizens, and thereby advances

a form of government where no one rules and no one is being ruled; where the statesman

is no longer needed, since the citizens themselves are capable of phronesis.

This is a highly democratic vision, in fact a radical one. It constitutes a major

challenge to the tradition of political thought, starting from Plato, in which the existence

of relations of rule, namely political inequality, has always been a pre-supposition. To

appreciate the extent of this challenge, one need only think about the way we still

distinguish between forms of government according to the question who rules: the one, the

few or the many. In Arendt's narrative, this is Plato's legacy, which originated in the

animosity of the philosopher to the essence of politics itself, which is speech and action

8 Arendt, "Socrates," 15. 9 Ibid. On the way Arendt makes Socrates a political person, see also E. Saccarelli, "Alone in the World: The

Existential Socrates in the Apology and Crito," Political Studies 55 (2007): 522-545.

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performed by equal participants, between whom there are no relations of rule. Let us

examine further the way Arendt reconstructs Plato's legacy.

Plato's Legacy and the Meaning of Political Equality

According to Arendt, in his attempt to theorize politics in terms of relations of rule, Plato

drew on two basic experiences. The first was the household, where the master rules over

his slaves and the rest of the dwellers of the house.10 The advantages of this model are first,

that relations of rule are inherent in it. Second, that they are justified on a rational basis—

the superior knowledge the master has over his slaves: "The master… knows what should

be done and gives his orders, while the slave executes them and obeys, so that knowing

what to do and actual doing become separate and mutually exclusive functions."11 The

other model Plato drew on was the experience of fabrication, where a product is created

according to the preconceived model the artist has in mind. This is the meaning of Plato's

replacement of praxis with poesis, namely—acting with making:

[T]he division between knowing and doing, so alien to the realm of action, whose

validity and meaningfulness are destroyed the moment thought and action part

company, is an everyday experience in fabrication, whose processes obviously fall

into two parts: first, perceiving the image or shape (eidos) of the product-to-be, and

then organizing the means and starting the execution.12

Here too, the presupposition of superior knowledge is crucial, because it allows Plato to

justify rationally why the polis should be divided into rulers and subjects:

[T]he analogy relating to fabrication and the arts and crafts offers a welcome

opportunity to justify the otherwise very dubious use of examples and instances

taken from activities in which some expert knowledge and specialization are

required. Here the concept of expert knowledge enters the realm of political action

for the first time, and the statesman is understood to be competent to deal with

human affairs in the same sense as the carpenter is competent to make furniture or

the physician to heal the sick.13

A fundamental presupposition of the concept of rule, then, is a clear separation between

those who know, and therefore are entitled to command, and those who do not know—the

ignorant masses—whose role is therefore to obey. As far as the public realm was

concerned, this was a distinctively Platonic invention: "Plato was the first to introduce the

division between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know,

instead of the old articulation of action into beginning and achieving, so that knowing what

to do and doing it became two altogether different performances."14

10 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 223. 11 Arendt, "What is Authority," in Between Past and Future, p. 108. 12 Arendt, The Human Condition, 225. 13 Arendt, "What is Authority," p. 111. 14 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 223.

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Much of Plato's efforts at this transformation of the meaning of politics emanated

from the death of Socrates. However, the reason it proved so influential throughout the

tradition of political thought is related to the nature of action itself. It is inherent to political

action that it takes place between human beings who have different opinions, interests and

goals. This means that one can never know in advance what would be the consequences of

one's action, because one cannot know how others would react to it, influence it, etc. Plato

seemed to have found a solution precisely to this problem: how to make sure that the

beginner would remain the master of what he had begun. This can be achieved only if the

role of the others is to execute orders, rather than to be independent participants.15

Introducing the concept of rule into the body politic was Plato's way to escape from the

fact of human plurality and the insecurities of political action, and this is a major reason

why it remained has relevant to political thinkers throughout Western history, and not only

to the specific situation of the polis:

Escape from the frailty of human affairs into the solidity of quiet and order has in

fact so much to recommend it that the greater part of political philosophy since

Plato could easily be interpreted as various attempts to find theoretical foundations

and practical ways for an escape from politics altogether. The hallmark of all such

escapes is the concept of rule, that is, the notion that men can lawfully and

politically live together only when some are entitled to command and the others

forced to obey.16

This transformation of politics into relations of rule was not only precisely what

"Socrates had feared and tried to prevent in the polis"17; it was also foreign to the Athenians

themselves:

[T]he whole concept of rule and being ruled, of government and power in the sense

in which we understand them as well as the regulated order attending them, was

felt to be pre-political and to belong in the private rather than the public sphere.

The polis was distinguished from the household in that it knew only 'equals',

whereas the household was the center of the strictest inequality. To be free meant

both not to be subject to the necessity of life or to the command of another and not

be in command oneself.18

The polis was an isonomy: a form of government where no one rules and no one is being

ruled. It did not distinguish between "the few" and "the many." Introducing relations of

rule into the body politic meant, then, not only an attack on human plurality, but also on

15 Ibid., pp. 222-223. 16 Ibid., p. 222. 17 Arendt, "What is Authority," pp. 115-116.

18 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 32.

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human equality, in the sense in which it was understood in the polis, namely in the sense

that "all have the same claim to political activity."19

Finally, Plato's transformation of political equality into relations of rule also

constituted an attack on human freedom, since for the polis, "to be free meant to be free

from the inequality in rulership and to move in a sphere where neither rule nor being ruled

existed."20 In this sense equality, for Arendt, is nothing other than political freedom, and

both are possible only in a form of isonomy. Arendt makes it perfectly clear elsewhere:

"Freedom as a political phenomenon was coeval with the rise of the Greek city-states. Since

Herodotus, it was understood as a form of political organization in which citizens lived

together under conditions of no-rule, without a division between rulers and ruled. "21

Indeed, as Arendt would later write succinctly in On Revolution: "freedom means the right

‘to be a participator in government,’ or it means nothing.’22 Equality and freedom are non-

sovereign in nature, and they are possible only in a form of government where the concepts

of sovereignty and rule are renounced.

Through the polis, Arendt tells us that equality, freedom, appearance in the public

sphere—are all conditioned on a form of government where citizens have the opportunity

and the spaces to actively participate in government. In order to consider seriously such

form of government, one has to reject Plato's legacy, and assume that "ordinary" citizens

are perfectly capable of acting, thinking and making considered judgments. Arendt not only

rejects basic assumptions of the tradition of political thought, but also advocates an

institution which could embody this rejection; that would constitute a new form of

government that would reflect genuine political equality.

Citizen Councils

The council system appears in various places in Arendt's writings, from her responses to

the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine in the 1940s, through her celebration of the 1956

Hungarian Revolution and her book On Revolution, to interviews she gave late in her life.

However, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the ever-expanding scholarly literature

on Arendt, in two main senses. First, in the simple sense that, while it is often mentioned

by commentators, there are only a few studies dedicated to the role of the councils in

Arendt's thought.23 This neglect expresses a common tendency among commentators to

19 Arendt, "Introduction into Politics," p. 118. 20 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 33. 21 Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 20. 22 Ibid., p. 221. 23 See Mike McConkey, "On Arendt's Vision of the European Council Phenomenon: Critique from an

Historical Perspective," Dialectical Anthropology 16 (1991): 15-31; Jeffrey C. Isaac, "Oases in the Desert:

Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics," American Political Science Review 88(1) (1994): 156-168; John F.

Sitton, "Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy," in Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, eds. Lewis

Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994); Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Massachusetts, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), chap.

6; Mark Reinhardt, The Art of Being Free: Taking Liberties with Tocqueville, Marx, and Arendt (Ithaca and

London: Cornell University Press, 1997), chap. 5; John Medearis, "Lost or Obscured? How V. I. Lenin,

Joseph Schumpeter and Hannah Arendt Misunderstood the Council Movement," Polity 36(3) (2004): 447-

476 Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and

7

regard Arendt's support for the council system as a romantic utopia Arendt herself did not

take seriously24; presented in her "darkest moments"25; invoked as a kind of a metaphor for

the need for moderate democratic reforms and a more vibrant civil society26; or backed

away from after On Revolution.27

The second sense in which the council system is a neglected theme in Arendt

scholarship, is that even commentators who do take it seriously, tend to focus on specific

places and historical episodes where Arendt discusses the councils directly. They do not

pay sufficient attention, I would argue, to the way Arendt's support for the councils relates

to her political philosophy as a whole. The scope of this paper does not allow for much

elaboration on the links between Arendt's support for the councils and her broader political

philosophy. Part of the aim of my discussion above, however, was to show how even when

discussing subjects that are seemingly unrelated to the councils at all, such as the relations

between philosophy, politics and judgment (which her discussion of phronesis anticipates),

Arendt actually lays the normative, theoretical groundwork for a much more participatory

form of government. In this sense, the discussion above is meant to be just one

demonstration of John Sitton's suggestion, more than twenty years ago, that Arendt "clearly

believed that council democracy is the only possible modern embodiment of her political

principles. Far from merely revealing a perverse delight in historical rarities, Arendt's

argument for council democracy is the concentrated expression of her political

philosophy."28

Let me attempt to demonstrate further the importance of this theme in Arendt.

Arendt's late writings very much focus on the question of judgment, in which she draws

heavily on Kant. Kant appeals to Arendt precisely because he, like Socrates, thought that

philosophy, in the sense of critical reflection, is an activity everybody could and should

engage in: "Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much

bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of

its moral implications."29 Arendt points out the difference between Plato and Kant

regarding the problem of man’s epistemic relation to the world. Plato regarded every

external stimulus as a distraction from the most genuine human activity—philosophizing.30

Kant, in contrast, saw the interaction between the senses and the intellect as crucial for

Hannah Arendt, Cambridge University Press 2008, chap. 9; James Muldoon, "The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System," Critical Horizons 12(3) (2011): 396-417. 24 Bhikhu C. Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (London and

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1981), 170; Leah Bradshaw, Acting and Thinking: The Political Thought

of Hannah Arendt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), p. 54. 25 Jeremy Waldron, "Arendt's Constitutional Politics," in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed.

Dana R. Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 202-203 26 Albrecht Wellmer, "Arendt on Revolution," in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana R.

Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 224; Steve Buckler, Hannah Arendt and Political

Theory: Challenging the Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 123. 27 J.M. Bernstein, “Political Modernism: The New, Revolution, and Civil Disobedience in Arendt and

Adorno,” in Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations, eds. Lars Rensmann and Samir

Gandesha (Stanford: Stanford Univrsity Press, 2012). 28 Sitton, "Hannah Arendt's Argument," 325. 29 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind [part I-Thinking] (San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt, Inc.,

1978), p. 13. 30 Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1992), p. 27.

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cognition. Practically, this means that the philosopher begins from experiences common to

everybody, and not from those that distinguish him from others. The Kantian philosopher,

writes Arendt, "clarifies the experiences we all have; he does not claim that the philosopher

can leave the Platonic cave or join in Parmenides’ journey to the heavens, nor does he think

he should become a member of a sect."31 Consequently, this kind of philosopher, "remains

a man like you and me, living among his fellow men, not among his fellow philosophers."32

Kant’s philosopher also has a higher regard for "ordinary" persons and their judgments,

since "the task of evaluating life with respect to pleasure and displeasure—which Plato and

the others claimed for the philosophers alone… Kant claims can be expected from every

ordinary man of good sense who ever reflected on life at all."33 Arendt points out that these

two aspects of Kant’s way of thinking are but two sides of the same coin: equality.

Philosophical knowledge, according to Kant, is indeed relevant to everyone, and every

person should be able to understand it—a position Arendt sums up as follows:

"Philosophizing, or the thinking of reason… is for Kant a general human ‘need'. It does not

oppose the few to the many."34

Arendt goes on to explain, that the disappearance of this distinction between "the

few" and "the many" in Kant, opens up the way for overcoming the rift between philosophy

and politics:

With the disappearance of this age-old distinction, however, something curious

happens. The philosopher’s preoccupation with politics disappears; he no longer

has any special interest in politics; there is no self-interest and hence no claim to

either power or to a constitution that would protect the philosopher against the many

… With the abandonment of this hierarchy, which is the abandonment of all

hierarchical structures, the old tension between politics and philosophy disappears

altogether.35

Interestingly enough, in an earlier version of Arendt's lectures on Kant's political

philosophy, she suggests the following formulation of what she has in mind in turning to

Kantian judgment: "We deal with a form of being together … where no one rules and no

one obeys. Where people persuade each other."36 The link Arendt draws in this statement,

between Kantian judgment and the challenge of establishing an isonomy, might seem

inexplicable. That is, until we realize that this is an underlying theme that runs through the

entirety of Arendt's oeuvre: laying out the theoretical foundations for a political community

where politics is conducted in the manner of speech and action between equals.

From this perspective, Arendt's support for the council system is of major

importance to understanding her political philosophy. To reiterate, they should be seen as

the modern institutional embodiment of Arendt's rejection of Plato's legacy, namely the

separation between "the few" and "the many"; and the relations of rule upon which the

body politic must be based as a natural consequence. Arendt's descriptions of the councils

31 Ibid., p. 28. 32 Ibid, emphasis in the original. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 29 35 Ibid., emphasis added. 36 Cited in Ronald Beiner, "Interpretive Essay," in Arendt, Lectures, p. 141.

9

provide further evidence for this interpretation. The councils were "spaces of freedom… It

was nothing more or less than this hope for a transformation of the state, for a new form of

government that would permit every member of the modern egalitarian society to become

a 'participator' in public affairs, that was buried in the disasters of twentieth-century

revolutions."37 Most famously in Russia, the Bolshevik party destroyed the councils that

had spread all over the country. In their popularity and the kind of government they strived

for, they posed a crucial challenge to this revolutionary party. It is suggestive how Arendt

describes this challenge:

It was the party programs more than anything else that separated the councils

from the parties… the councils were bound to rebel against any such policy

since the very cleavage between the party experts who ‘knew’ and the mass of

the people who were supposed to apply this knowledge left out of account the

average citizen’s capacity to act and to form his own opinion. The councils, in

other words, were bound to become superfluous if the spirit of the

revolutionary party prevailed. Wherever knowing and doing part company, the

space of freedom is lost.38

The professional revolutionaries, as Arendt describes them, were a clear example

of small elite who theorized and sought to penetrate into the hidden, inner logic of reality

while forcing the many to carry out what this inner logic "demands." In Arendt's

description, these revolutionaries had done little other than watching and analyzing the

disintegration of society around them, but were still surprised by the outbreak of the

revolutions. They were, however, the ones who took power, and once they did, they did

their best to shape the revolution in light of their preconceived theories, and their analysis

of past revolutions.39 This, and of course the struggle for power, led them to suspect

anything that did not fit their theories and models of how to "make" the revolution, and

anyone who did not obey and acted accordingly. They treated the councils as "mere

executive organs of revolutionary activity,"40 and when the councils resisted, they moved

on to crush them.

The councils, on their part, "were not content to discuss and 'enlighten themselves'

about measures that were taken by parties or assemblies."41 Having their own notions about

what the revolution means and what it should aim for, they refused to simply take orders

from those who supposedly "know," and attempted to form their own institutions as organs

of a new form of government, where this, and any other kind of relations of rule between

the few and the many would be abolished. The workers' movements; the people in the

Hungarian Revolution; as well in Russia in 1905 and 1917, Germany in 1918, etc.— they

all discovered they had "their own ideas" about how their political community should be

transformed in order to guarantee their freedom, and provide them spaces to practice it on

a permanent basis. They had not to succumb to the party and its theoreticians' presumption

37 Arendt, On Revolution, p. 268. 38 Ibid., emphasis added. 39 Ibid., pp. 263-265. 40 Ibid., p. 266. 41 Ibid., pp. 266-267.

10

of superior knowledge, to trust their own capacity to form their opinions, and to act on

them.

Of course, the councils are just one form, although a privileged one for Arendt, of

participatory democracy, a form of government where no one rules and no one is being

ruled, a kind of a modern polis, in Arendt's (idealized) conception of it. Arendt refers also

to other possible forms, along the lines of Jefferson's wards, the Paris Commune and others.

This might be one reason, among others, why Arendt does not elaborate much on how a

council system would work. This, in turn, is one reason why commentators tend to treat

Arendt's council system as sheer utopia. This might be so, but it is still worth noting that

in the last two decades there is an explosion of experiments with local participatory

democracy, many of them follow the tradition of the councils. These experiments, I would

argue, shed interesting light on Arendt's support for a council system.

Participatory Democracy Today

It is estimated that over the last two decades, 1500 cities around the world have

experimented with participatory budgeting (PB), a form of local resources allocation where

the citizens actively participate in the decision-making process. The first and most famous

experiment took place in the Brazilian city Porto Alegre. A large metropolis in southern

Brazil, Porto Alegre is home to some 1.5 million residents. In 1989, the Brazilian labor

party rose to power, and, starting in 1990, led a broad public decision-making process on

the city budget. Two models of participatory democracy served as inspiration for this

experiment. The first was the de-centralized structure of the local Catholic Church, which

had always stressed the importance of its members’ participation and initiative. The second

was the tradition of workers' councils, which was preserved as a vision within the party.42

The process was based on a participatory pyramid on three levels: neighborhood

assemblies, councils of delegates in the districts, and a general council at the city level. In

addition, a complementary process took place, in which citizens' assemblies met on the

basis of thematic topics (housing, healthcare, education, etc.) to set priorities, and similarly

sent delegates to higher-level assemblies. Following such a grassroots process, the

municipal assembly, while in principle entitled to reject the budget proposal that was

suggested by the delegates from lower councils, had in fact a marginal role in this process,

as it was tightly controlled by the delegates. The city-level council had more leeway, but

it, too, could hardly risk defying the expressed will of the citizens, so that the budget usually

reflected the budgeting process.43

It is estimated that in subsequent years around a hundred thousand residents (8

percent of the city population) took part in a process of prioritizing public works, such as

street paving, the laying of water and sewage lines, building new schools and hospitals,

etc.44 More than half of them reported in surveys they have benefited from work and

42 Rebecca Abers, Inventing local democracy: Grassroots politics in Brazil (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne

Rienner. 2000), pp. 49-50. 43 Yves Sintomer et al., "Transnational Models of Citizen Participation: The Case of Participatory Budgeting," Journal of Public Deliberation 8(2) (2012): 1-32, at 5; Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza,

"Participatory Budgeting as if Emancipation Mattered," Politics and Society 42(1) (2014): 29-50, at p. 36. 44 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, "Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre: Toward a Redistributive

Democracy," in Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon, ed. Boaventura de Sousa

Santos (London and New York: Verso 2005), p. 337.

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services of the PB.45 Contrary to common concerns about more participatory forms of

democracy, in Porto Alegre traditionally marginalized groups participated in large

numbers. "PB not only attracted existing neighborhood organizations," writes Baierle, "it

stimulated participation amongst those who had never previously been organized… the

general profile of participants is that they are from lower income households, are older and

have low to medium levels of education."46 The presence of women similarly increased

gradually until they became from an underrepresented group to the majority in many of the

PB forums.47 As a result of this inclusive process,

From 1990 to 2000, if one takes five major social indicators—access to treated

water, access to sewage systems, incidence of infant mortality, access to day care,

and housing—and analyzes their evolution in Porto Alegre, an important evolution

is revealed… Participatory budgeting concentrated in the areas with the largest

deficits in housing and public goods; in ten years, it managed to strongly diminish

this deficit."48

The success of the Porto Alegre participatory budget was not only the mere fact of

wide participation, nor even the improvement of living conditions in the neighborhoods.

On top of this, the dynamics of deliberation and the need to make joint decisions also

brought about the strengthening of social solidarity within and between neighborhoods. At

times, this was the result of the common interests of two or more neighborhoods; other

times, of the relationships that were formed during meetings between neighborhood

representatives: “Through the budget process, neighborhood groups learned to trust one

another, engaging in long-term relations of reciprocity.”49

The success of Porto Alegre, which the UN declared to be one the 40 best practices

of urban management in the world,50 led to the implementation of PB, first across Brazil,

then Latin America, and in the last 15 years throughout the world. Of course, many of these

experiments diverge significantly from the one in Porto Alegre in their aims, processes and

outcomes. They often leave little actual decision-making power to the citizens, so that

participation becomes a means to gain more legitimacy for the local government, or to

make for a more efficient management, rather than to promote political equality in Arendt's

sense of the term. In Porto Alegre itself, PB lost much of its meaning over the years, due

to changes in the governing party and other factors. My aim is, then, not to idealize these

experiments, but rather to treat them as they are: a series of experiments, at least some of

which point to the possibility that radical participatory democracy might not be as utopian

as most political theorists make it to be.

45 Ibid., p. 346. 46 Sergio Gregorio Baierle, "Porto Alegre: Popular Sovereignty or Dependent Citizens?," in Participation

and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century City, ed. Jenny Pearce (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),

p. 56. 47 Marion Gret and Yves Sintomer, The Porto Alegre Experiment: Learning Lessons for Better Democracy, trans. Stephen Wright (London and New York: Zed Books, 2005), p. 79. 48 Leonardo Avritzer, "Living Under a Democracy: Participation and its Impact on the Living Conditions of

the Poor," Latin American Research Review 45 (2010): 166-185, at p. 174. 49 Abers, Inventing Local Democracy, p. 168. 50 Santos, "Participatory Budgeting," p. 307.

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Ironically, as this explosion of empirical experiments with participatory democracy

was taking place, the theory of participatory democracy was increasingly being "supplanted

by liberal minimalist, deliberative, and agonistic theories of democracy."51 One prominent

scholar of participatory democracy has summed up the current situation as follows: “a new

way of doing politics is being practiced, but remains theoretically unaccounted for.”52

Arendt's thought, I would suggest, has still much to offer in terms of theoretical account

for this new way of doing politics, once the extent to which her political philosophy is

grounded in a deep commitment to radical, participatory democracy is recognized.

Conclusion

The role Arendt's commitment to participatory democracy plays in her political thought is

far from being properly explored. A deeper investigation of this theme in Arendt might

shed new light on various aspects of her work. It may also show that Arendt's political

thought has still much to offer to the theory of participatory democracy, by providing a

strikingly original understanding of the potential of such form of government, as well as of

the problematic premises ingrained in our political thought and practice, that incline us to

dismiss them as utopian or even dangerous. Experiments in local participatory democracy

in the last two decades suggest, at the very least, that some of these assumptions should be

re-examined. Democratizing democracy is still a major challenge we face, and at least on

Arendt's terms, it is nothing but the challenge of political equality, indeed of "the political"

as such.

51 Jeffrey D. Hilmer, "The State of Participatory Democracy Today," paper presented at the 66th annual

meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 3-6, 2008, p. 6. 52 Leonardo Avritzer, Participatory institutions in democratic Brazil (Washington, D.C., Baltimore:

Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 4.