Locating democracyJANE WILLS, GEOGRAPHY, QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

RSA CONFERENCE THE GREAT REGIONAL AWAKENING, DUBLIN, IRELANDJUNE 2017

Demos-Kratos?Popular sovereignty … BUT mediated by institutions, representatives, interest groups …

The semi-sovereign people? A realist’s view of democracy in America (Schattsneider, 1960)

… or can we be less realistic as Mill, Dewey, Dahl and many others would ask us to be?

What and where is the place of the people in representative democracy?

And this highlights the geography of political/civic institutions and their connection to culture/citizenship.

The geographical balance of powerEvery polity has a geographical balance of political power – beyond the obvious differences of geographical structure unitarism/federalism/confederalism

The (unwritten) constitution: the set of fundamental principles or precedents according to which a state is governed constitute the polity and there is always a geo-constitution.

This in turn reflects statecraft and shapes citizenship

In the case of the UKThe institutions predate the mass franchise (1832-1867-1928/1931)

“British democracy has been very much a ‘top-down’ affair with the emphasis being placed upon leadership rather than mass participation” (Whiteley, 2012, 3)

But democracy was coterminous with rising centralisation – at its peak in the c20th alongside “a long decline in the vitality of provincial culture” (Moran, 2017, 21)

Major shifts over 500 years … with key moments of change – the Reformation, industrialisation, Irish independence, joining (and leaving) the European Union … unfrozen moments

Time Regime The major

political

tradition

The institutional

infrastructure of the

state

The geography of

power relations

The ‘civic offer’ to citizens

C17th

C18th

Juridical Conservative Crown, parish,

borough

Semi-

autonomous

localism

To be self-appointed and

anointed guardians of order;

to serve.

C19th Governmental Liberal Parliament, local

authorities (county,

city, borough, district)

Central oversight

of local expansion

For some: to vote, join a

party, stand for office.

C20th Welfarist Social

democratic

Government,

parliament, civil

service, local

authorities

Centralisation Universal: to vote, join a

party, stand for office, join a

movement.

C21st Localist Liberal-

republican/

institutional

Government,

parliament, civil

service, local

authorities, state-

funded bodies, civic

organisations.

Towards

subsidiarity,

dispersed away

from the centre

Universal: to vote, join a

party, stand for office,

organise, negotiate, co-

produce.

The shifting governmental regimes and spatial orders of English state-craft, from the seventeenth century

Devolution, localism and civic engagement

A new momentum for a new political geography?

Top-down : the 3ds of decision-making, democracy, deficit

and bottom-up : another 3ds of lack of deference, DIY(can-do) and a (potentially) disruptive creativity

But, best characterised as liberal institutionalism – as evidenced in NI, Scotland, Wales and London

BUT what institutions do we have to engage?

The citizen and the stateNational constituencies, party candidates, parliament (via votes and surgeries)

In the cities: local government, wards (via votes and surgeries) – and city-deals are based on combinations of these, making them more remote from the people.

In the shires: overlapping counties, districts, town and parish councils (via votes and surgeries)

Obvious gaps between: ◦ the people and the parties;

◦ the urban people and local politics at the neighbourhood scale.

The unparished big cities and urban areas where most people live

Locating localism via four different projectsState-led localism

◦ Poplar Neighbourhood Community Budget (2012-13)

◦ Lambeth Council, Co-operative Council, neighbourhood working in Tulse Hill and Open Works, West Norwood (2014-15)

Civil-society-led localism◦ Neighbourhood Planning, Highgate, Exeter and Leeds (2012-15)

◦ London Citizens – with focus on Tower Hamlets (2001-2015)

Locating localism: key findings1. Community-wide neighbourhood institutions are essential …

◦ Across diversity; Incorporating existing organisations; Forging an alliance and relationships between the willing (always a minority sport); For leadership, voice, activity, negotiation, and action

2. The neighbourhood scale (parish) has persisted as socially significant for hundreds of years – despite long reports of its death – but now missing in urban areas.

3. So how to create this local civic infrastructure and activity to find collective voice and engage people?

4. But need civic capacity and state response (civic offer) for localism to take off … without a community partner the state reverts to type … and ends up doing yet more consultation … largely business as usual.

A parish system – 213 in Cornwall alone

Reasserting the importance ofthe neighbourhood/parishscale in the city

Back to the parish (seriously?!)Only 200 years out of date … but is it? There is a debate to be had:

◦ “Localities have come to be seen as open, porous, permeable, heterogeneous, incoherent, dynamic and incomplete; products of mixture, encounter, intermingling; characterised by juxtapositions and co-presences; sites of distanciated connections; marked by other times and places and implicated in numerous networks.” (Clarke, 2013, 499)

◦ Tomaney: “I seek to rescue local attachments and a sense of belonging from the condescension of the cosmopolites and, instead, to present a defence of parochialism as a mode of dwelling.” (2013, 659)

Thinking about how we live with people in places, in everyday exchanges – despite globalisation, flows and time-space compression – and without the necessity of hard borders and exclusions … in relationships that can be the foundation for all sorts of action.

Revisiting the 1970s neighbourhood revolution (Kotler, Hess and others in the US and the new left in the UK) – taking territorially-oriented politics seriously.

Back to the parish (seriously?!)Can we “recast the neighbourhood as the most basic unit of the nation’s political life”? (Looker, 2012, 578) as Kotler wanted to do in the 1970s in the US JS Mill argued in c19th …

Dahl and Tufte “very small unions seem to us necessary to provide a place where ordinary people can acquire the sense and reality of moral responsibility and political effectiveness in a universe where remote galaxies of leaders spin on in courses mysterious and unfathomable to the ordinary citizen” (1974, 140)

“locale is at the core of the civic experience, but contemporary society is fundamentally delocalizing. This is the greatest dilemma of our political life, and we must find a way to address it.” Cahoone (2002, 13)

The importance of everyday relationships and the potential for greater popular self-government.

Revisiting the history of the parish reveals the extent of lay self-government … how to think about this now?