10 Challenges for Local Democracy
Local communities are struggling with an historic rupture in democratic governance that is altering the traditional roles and responsibilities of citizens, government, and business in how we make public decisions and govern ourselves. This struggle is being shaped by four long-term trends.
Four Long-Term Trends
- Much of the policy shift at local and state government levels is driven by a pervasive fiscal instability and imbalance-a perpetual fiscal crisis- that has been building for the past 15 years, and reached crisis proportion during the 2008 housing bubble crash and recession. It may not be the ‘perfect storm’ cited in The Price of Government, but it will do nicely until one comes along.
- Many local communities are plagued by a structural inability of their governance system (the familiar three-legged stool of government, business, and civil society) to generate timely and responsive public policy decisions and results. Both community stakeholders and their governing institutions have lost the capacity to come together in public deliberation and problem-solving, and simply lack the political will to confront and address their most pressing fiscal, social, and political issues.
- Over much of the past 100 years, traditional political, educational, and community institutions in the US have become service-oriented, with work approaches increasingly hierarchical, narrow in scope, and expert-defined. Local governance and public work have become increasingly detached from everyday work environments and local sources of knowledge. This has in turn resulted in ever more limited and fragmented roles for professionals, elected officials, and citizens alike, and has diminished the capacities of local institutions to frame problems in ways that lead to positive change and action.
- Since the early 1970s, local government has operated within a consumerist and transactional value framework that emphasizes an individualist perspective over a community or shared sense of responsibility. This vending machine mentality about the purposes of government has been reinforced by well-funded ideological and corporate efforts to diminish the efficacy of government at all levels.
10 Immediate Challenges to Local Communities
Compounding these long-term trends are 10 more immediate challenges that local communities must overcome if they are to have democratic, responsive, and effective governance:
- Fiscal Crisis: Local governments will continue to confront the greatest revenue crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s-one that is likely to worsen over the next several years. Typically, the fiscal recovery of local governments lags 1-2 years behind the recovery of the general economy following a recession.
- Anti-Government Rhetoric: The pervasive anti-tax and anti-government framing language in the US reinforces the me at the expense of the we and shrivels the sense of community that underlies vibrant and productive democratic experience. The anti-government rhetoric that proved so successful for many 2010 state campaigns has yet to peak, and will elevate the level of cynicism in local communities about all levels of government, weakening the threshold of levels of trust in the fairness and competency of the public institutions essential for effective and participatory governance.
- Wealth Disparity: The disparity in wealth and income between the richest and poorest households is the greatest since 1929, and growing. The political freedom essential for a functioning democracy cannot be sustained without a broad sense of economic freedom and justice, and a strong economically stable middle class. The political compact that binds the governed to their government cannot be sustained if the economic gains of the wealthiest 1% continue to be matched by negative growth in income for 70% of the population. The underlying faith in democracy cannot be sustained if the oft-touted call for “shared sacrifice” means only sacrifice by the middle and working class to increase the wealth, comfort, and power of the richest 1%.
- Public Structures: The continued loss of public systems in local communities threatens the long-term viability of the underlying public structures that define and connect local communities, ensure their fundamental health and well-being, and enable them to get things done. Slashing support for public structures undermines the ability of local communities-and the nation-to create jobs, grow the economy, and to compete in the global economy of the future. Balancing local budgets in the present by “eating the seed corn” of future generations is short-sighted and foolish.
- Ossified Reform Values: Local government in the US is predominantly designed to uphold the values and solve the problems articulated during the Progressive Reform era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is simply time to reconfigure the structures and embedded values of local government. Citizen centered democracy and collective action must be incorporated as a matter of intentional design, rather than by exception and happenstance.
- Engaged Service Delivery: Local governments must find better ways of integrating the participation of ordinary citizens in the design and delivery of public services. Processes to convene diverse community conversations and to train citizens to be more effective civic problem solvers must be embedded in the policies and procedures of local governments. Expanding public participation must also be accompanied by implementing transparent measures to track and assess citizen engagement outcomes – “what gets measured, gets accomplished.”
- Type III Creativity: Local communities must do a better job of tapping the knowledge of ordinary citizens about the details of their neighborhoods and communities in crafting innovative solutions to the most pressing Type III community problems (problems with neither a clear definition nor clear solution). More collaborative and creative thinking is especially needed in finding ways to preserve essential public structures and services in an era of declining public revenues.
- Global Connections: Local governments in the US must become more directly connected with their peers elsewhere in the world. Much could be learned from Global South initiatives in participatory budgeting, democratic passion, online engagement, and structural adaptation – including the success and failures of attempts to develop new legal frameworks to support and uphold participation. City managers, administrators, mayors, and council members would be well served by a greater understanding and appreciation of the global interconnectedness of democracy, and the fragility of democratic institutions left untended.
- Incivility: US politics and governance are increasingly characterized by incivility and destructive public discourse. The lack of civility that permeates national and state politics is seeping into local communities. A recent American Bar Association report on civility warns, “Incivility leaves citizens frustrated, disillusioned, and reluctant to participate in democratic governance….Without a social structure that supports tolerance, a basic level of trust, and a spirit of community, political institutions become hollow. Government becomes less efficient, effective, and responsive.”
- Public Lives: Finally, people learn, or fail to learn, the skills and values they need to be active and effective citizens through the public lives they live in their local communities and the relationships they have with their local governments. The battle for democracy, and for participatory governance, will be won or lost in local communities. Local government cannot be an institutional observer on the sidelines of this struggle.