Dar Daniel,

The book chapter Negotiating Differences: The Role of Social Identity in the Emergence of Institutions for Local Governance presents a case in the Netherlands in which different local groups are competing for a stronger economic and legal position within the local community. It shows that democratic innovations can (unintentionally) undermine local democracy. The search for new forms of local governance introduces new uncertainties and shifting expectations about roles and responsibilities and can therewith undermine formal arrangements and benefit certain groups at the cost of others. This aspect has not yet received much attention in the ongoing debates about Big Society and shifting forms of local governance.

Is this what you are looking for?

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-12274-8_19

single-vote system

Daniel, I am sure that you are acquainted with the work of Slavoj Zizek from your university. He has many concerns about the future of democracy. One of them is a continuous trend for depoliticization. There are several mechanisms which foster depoliticization. Zizeks favourite is charity. I now would like to add local democracy. Contrary to the global euphoria about local governance/democracy my proposition at the moment is that it tends to foster depoliticization.

Dear Raoul, Thank you for the answer as well as publication. The idea you described is inspirational from my point of view, and there is definitely a lack of systematic research in this field. However, I see a problem with operationalization of the mentioned shifts by means of set/s of indicators which would help us to evaluate them, understand them and explain them... Best regards, Daniel

Dear Frans, I cannot say that I am expert on Zizek´s outcomes but I am familiar with some of his ideas. Concerning the depoliticization, I would add an element of temporality at this point. Direct democracy is a kind of fashion nowadays, but there are no doubts that it is not any cure-all. Therefore I still see importance of representative democracy. And... taking into account main features of representative democracy, existence of some entities, which helps with recruitment of elites and which helps to overcome limited rationality of individuals, seems to be necessary. Best regards, Daniel

Dear Cornel, Could you be a more specific in your answer, please? Best regards, Daniel

In the U.S., I'd suggest looking at the impacts of the spreading movement for ranked-choice voting (RCV, also known as instant runoff voting and as the alternative vote). Ann Arbor, Michigan, tried it briefly and with good results for progressives in the mid-1970s, but it was quickly squashed. San Francisco voters adopted it in 2002 for electing its legislature (the Board of Supervisors) and citywide offices, including the mayor, and has been used since with wide voter acceptance despite a failed attempt by the local chamber of commerce and allies to repeal it in 2012. (See DeLeon-Lijphart cite below.) Briffault wrote a useful law review article on the early spread of RCV from San Francisco as an illustration of cities as laboratories of democracy. In the Bay Area, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro have adopted RCV and it's working well. Other cities, including the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, have also adopted RCV. The current mayors of the two cities wrote a recent op-ed touting its benefits (cite below). Also, check out FairVote, directed by Rob Richie, which is a major institutional force behind diffusion of this electoral reform and a central information clearinghouse of all major studies of its impacts (www.fairvote.org). I should note that many U.S. cities adopted much more ambitious RCV-type systems in the past, including full-blown STV/PR systems in the Progressive Era, but only the Cambridge, Mass. system survived repeal by urban political machines. (Barber, cited below, gives the history.) Buried under three generations of collective amnesia, it was an idea whose time had not yet come -- now revived in more modest ways as RCV.

CITATIONS:

Richard Briffault, “Home Rule and Local Political Innovation”. Journal of Law and Politics 22 (Winter 2006): 1-32.

Richard E. Deleon and Arend Lijphart., “In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 2013, http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/In-defense-of-ranked-choice-voting-4215299.php.

Don Fraser and George Latimer, “Ranked-choice voting upholds majority-rule principle, broadens choice and opens up political process,” MinnPost, September 16, 2013, http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/09/ranked-choice-voting-upholds-majority-rule-principle-broadens-choice-and-op

Kathleen L. Barber, Proportional Representation and Election Reform in Ohio (Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 1995).

Dear Richard, First of all, thanks a lot for very useful comment. I will definitely read the recommended publications, and I am really curious what outcomes have been generated by means of such electoral innovations. Best regards, Daniel

Daniel, local level politics definitely tend to get drowned in the overwhelming  amount of news and research about big government. I recommend looking through newer dissertations and MA thesis, some of our students are interested and have hands-on experience with local politics as they served in the military and observed local dynamics first hand. I also recommend following Radio Free Europe (RFL/RL) for local news and analysis further east in Europe, and Central Asia. While not scholarly, these analyses provide useful insights into the type of outcomes that you are looking for.

We tried to explain Russian failures by number of factors. We pointed out  lack of political demand for economic market oriented reforms and for democratic institutions (comparing with Estonia or Poland or Slovakia as well) see http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/understanding-market-reforms-jose-mar��a-fanelli/?k=9781403949417&loc=us OR at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1431892. The most general explanation is the lack (or absence) of the taxpayers Democracy experience in the past and wrong incentives caused by Universal Suffrage institutions - especially in transitional countries: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2367861

Dear Georgeta and Moshe, Thanks a lot for your comments and proposals. I will try to become familiar with the materials you proposed. Best regards, Daniel

DK

I will share with you experiences from an african perspective.  Local level democracy may have negative or uniintended outcomes such as

1 - The creation of local elites

2 The polarisation of relations especially due to extreme party affiliations.  If inter party relations are week at national level, the effect is felt more at local level and this negatively harms relations taking into account the social connectedness at this level

3 Some including myself propose a no-partisan system of local governance at local level to avoid both intra and inter party violence

Regards

OD

Colleague Oswald Dirwayi just addressed, I believe, the core problem of democratic transition (I mean violence). It is not so important for Slovakia, of course, but it is the key to very possibility of Democratic Development. "Free" elections without due safeguards of personal life, liberty, dignity and property, under tough control of local "roving bandit" deliver only additional instrument for  the bandits oppression, making population's loyalty transparent through the electoral statistics. The only way to avoid reprisal - to comply bandit's will. The latter choice makes election definitely not free. We have the paper (case study of elections in Chechnya - Russian region and Arabian ("Palestine") Autonomy elections) addressing some aspects of mentioned by Oswald problem. See Democracy: A Conflict Extinguisher or a Fuel for Terror? http://ssrn.com/abstract=2458837

Most people look at the changes through materiality. For example, Indonesia. People keep saying that the country is becoming more democratic than before during Suharto. However, the promise of greater democracy is about self-ruling, self-management. Speaking about innovation. This term, under the New Public Management means creating conflicts because through conflicts come the creativity. I have seen in Indonesia where people almost murder the politicians who lost during the election, while in Bogota, the politicians who lost during the election were turtured. Innovation, under the New Public Management also means war. So the politicians will visit regions and countries to promote conflicts and wars.

I researched this topic in México, Venezuela, Brazil and Nicaragua at local level (See, “Redes y Jerarquías. Participación, representación y gobernanza local en América Latina“). Some innovations al local level (like participatory municipal councils) generates horizontal networks with other social and economic organizations, individual leaders and public institutions in terms of network measurements (degree, betweenness and closeness), but other democratic innovations strength hierarchical networks (in terms of the same measurements). Interesting, in case of Zulia, Venezuela in 2008, some networks tend to have high level of centralization in degree and closeness but not in betweenness (I explain this results on the base of party mobilization of PSUV for this moment and highest level of opposition in Zulia). Type of party system at local level is a clue variable in the variation of the democratic innovations networks. In other words, democratic innovation consequences (in this sense) are related with the type of connections they made with classic democratic ways of electoral representation.

Dear Gisela, thanks a lot for very interesting comment. Did you publish results of your research also in English? Best regards, Daniel

Dear Caroline, thank you for you comment. However, I have a question. You have used the NPM as example of democratic innovation. But if one looks at the content of the NPM, it is a set of rather managerial innovations (measures) than democratic innovations (measures). In addition, some of them could be understood as "anti-democratic" or "non-democratic" measures. So, what is fundamental rationale in your connection between democratic innovations and the NPM? best regards, Daniel

This is a very interesting question that researchers who have done some works in policy and programs need to reflect on with regards to what they observed. My experience of the works I have done in Ethiopia inform me that

(i) Democratic innovations that are based on the assumption of active participation of local communities are important for transformation.

(ii) Democratic innovations require political commitment, are time taking to instill democratic values in the mind set of local people who have been subjected to authoritarian governance induced by tradition or dictatorial political leadership.

(iii) The grounding of democratic social practices to achieve preset objectives with the active participation of local people is a process and requires committed and disciplined cadres who work with the people—understanding the local people, prioritizing their needs, mobilizing them what such people could do and enabling them to own their agenda.

However, democratic innovations if they are not properly worked out and grounded in the social practice of local people, fail to understand the local people who are intended to be beneficiaries of such innovations, are product oriented (top down) , hijacked by politicians who seek popularity are likely to fail to meet their objectives. Likewise, if they succeed to empower local people democratically, the demand side would be beyond the capacity of authorities to attend and respond to. This causes dissatisfaction and could instigate conflict and result in anarchy and confusion, because the supply side may not have a plausible option. There are innovations coming from the North to the South in many economic and social sectors that are raising the demand side of people without strengthening National Systems of countries in the south to be able to respond to such demands and in essence seem to be generating more conflict than the solutions to prevailing problems that they claim. Any democratic innovation I think should work to strengthen the national systems and the ownership of program activities by the main stakeholder in the process, the people. Democratic innovations should not be a threat to peace and stability as we see in many countries today.

Dear Oswald, dear Hailom. Thank you very much for your comments. I cannot say I am familiar with local politics in any African country, but you mentioned two interesting points which might be evaluated differently if one uses other perspective.

First, concerning the Oswald's ideas, why do you consider 'creation of local political elite' unintended outcome? And do you consider it a negative outcome? Is this based on some insufficciet power distribution? Or?

Second, as for the Hailom's ideas, I do agree that implementation of some democratic innovations into unprepared (or poorely prepared) political systems - regardless of the political level) - might be destructive in fact, and their impacts might be even negative than only unintended. However, if you look at Ethiopia, what democratic innovations could you evaluate as positive (in terms of their outcomes)?

Best regards, Daniel

Dear Daniel,

I did some reports in English for IDRC, Canadá. I can ask to IDRC a link to access to them if it is possible. Unfortunately I did not publish about these research results in English. I need to push myself to do it, but I had a really busy agenda last years. I hope to publish in English in the future or at least to translate from Spanish into English. I am preparing, just right now, a new book about representation, participation and democratic innovation in English, in association with a researcher from Grain Britain, with the participation of authors from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and México. But a book is a long project… Hopefully, I think it will be ready in 2016… If I get a published article in English or if I find the IDRC link to reports in English before, I will upload them to this site and alert you. Best, Gisela

Dear Daniel,

A number of democratic innovations have been operationalized in Ethiopia.

(i) Change of political and governance paradigm--The shift from a unitary state to an ethnically centered federal state is a milestone. Given the level of development of the country, it is difficult to think of democracy without the recognition of nations, nationalities and smaller ethic groups of the right to self administration. At a federal level it is managed by the two chamber parliament--the House of Representatives and the House of Federation. All ethnic groups are represented and budget ceiling is worked out in the House of Federation, among other issues. Affirmative actions are taken to strengthen governance capacities of regional states with low level of development. Development programs are developed considering the reality of each region and sub region to the district level to include local needs. Through decentralization, regions are empowered to implement their development programs and also generate ideas for policy. Democracy has been recontextaulized in Ethiopia to facilitate development as per contextual requirements. Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies and is peaceful and stable. Some may argue the opposite, however.

(ii) The Transition from command to market economy was done as the reality of the country requires; not as the IMF and World Bank recommended. This helped the country to manage the transition without crisis. It avoided the crisis observed in many countries that had to go through such a transition. The government has roles to play in economic sectors such as banking and finance, construction of roads, houses, telecommunication, power and energy.

(iii) In the social sector both education and health are democratized though recognizing the right of people to education and health. The strategies however are designed on the basis of the realities of the country. The health extension program is a locally developed paradigm and has enabled Ethiopia to meet the MDGs in health.

Overall what makes Ethiopia unique is that it has developed the capacity to synthesize democratic innovations to its local needs and as well as to develop new perspectives in democratic practices as grounded on its socio- cultural values.

However, there are business management related innovations which are less understood even at higher level and are seen creating confusions. There are still confusions with regards to rights and obligations as observed in schools with regards to rights of students which is contributing to the degeneration of student discipline to study, learn, attend classes and behave respectfully to instructors and scaling up of unsafe sex, and teenage pregnancy; addiction to alcohol and drugs. There are still confusions with regards to duties and responsibilities of the type of western democratic practices of political pluralism and media freedom. In effect it looks farfetched.

Thank you, dear Gisela, for explanation. I keep my fingers crossed for you. Btw. citizen/public participation was a topic of my PhD thesis, and to be honest, while at the beginning of my PhD study my attitudes to citizen/public participation tools were rather of positive nature, later, and especially after my PhD study, I become much more critical in regard to various tools aimed at engagement of citizens within public policy making processes. :) Best, Daniel

Dear Hailom, reading your comment has led me to a feeling that Ethiopia could be (partly at least) considered a model of reform approach in African environment. However, I would like to ask::

1) What (or who) was the main driver of reforms linked to public administration area and political system?

2) Did some foreign elements (e.g. foreign advisors, transnational donors) played an important role within the described reform processes?

3) Is there any good article where I can find an evaluation (ideally in some comparative perspective) of the described reform processes?

Best, Daniel

Daniel, I had a publication in English with some results of the research about democratic innovation in Latin America that I mentioned to you. It is a chapter in a book edited by Maxwell A. Cameron, Eric Hershberg, Kenneth E. Sharpe that is called: New Institutions for Participatory Democracy in Latin America. Incredible, but I simply forget about it in my last message to you… Thank you for help me to remember. My chapter is called: “ ‘We‘re either burned or Frozen Out‘. Society and Party System in Latin American Municipal Development Councils (Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil)“. You can find it in:

http://books.google.com.mx/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pWTJAAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA21&dq=info:GmUp7oZ10CYJ:scholar.google.com&ots=70IGo8-C7o&sig=V56ckqWSIP8KGN6GHxMnTlRZyI0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

I hope this chapter can be useful for you! Comments are of course welcome.

The late prime minister Melea Zenawi along with his party was the main driver of all the reforms and most of them were authored by him. He was an extraordinary  intellectual and selfless political leader. There was no any external adviser as much as I know with regards to policy. However, external consultants were involved in the program development of sectors say health,  education and others on the basis of the policies formulated by the reuling party. The guiding ideology is revolutionary democracy and looks to have  taken some development strategies from South Korea and Taiwan.

If you read the Ethiopia chapter in the book Good Health at Low Cost  edited by the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, you can get some information. Also  access to the interviews I gave on U-tube, all available in google, search Hailom Banteyerga.

Thanks

Dear Daniel, the first of all that is very interesting discussion – as always with you.

I would like to add Central Europe specific point of view. A composition of Europeanisation and transformation factors which can lead to superficial outcomes. As an example I would give a compulsory social/public consultations of different documents. Most often these are documents created under the EU regional policy like operating programs or big grants documentation. There is a duty to consult these documents with residents and even more widely with the general public. I know many examples in which such consultations were used as a part of a political struggle. There were no effects for an upcoming policy - neither positive nor negative, but it had a negative effect on the "atmosphere" around the action taken.

Thanks, Hailom. I became really eager to learn more about the Ethiopian case thanks to your comments. :) Best, Daniel

Dear Katarzyna, I can just agree with you. It is nothing rare to see cases of "pretending" in Slovakia. It seems that both politicians and administrators became familiar with the donors´ requirements (including the EU), and the game is simple... They are able to pretend not only participation within public hearings but also even "competition as well as transparency" within public procurements... And these actions recently led me to the statement that any legal provisions or recommendations from any expert are uneffective in any community where the behaviour of its members is not interconnected with the values and where the mentioned behaviour is driven rather by hidden personal or group interests than by potential common interest... From this perspective I am not surprised that there is huge variability in the field of effects/impacts of any democratic innovation... Best, Daniel

Dear Daniel,

I wish to make two points given the very interesting developments of this debate .

1. Your last response about what you and Katarzyna name  "pretending" attitudes or tactics from political elites from eastern europe is very interesting and may have a real fortune. It is a common phenomena elsewere and could be applied for example for EU - Mediterranean Countries these 2 last decenies. In order to have access to Financial aids and subsidies, most political authoritarian regimes did cosmetic politics to match EU requirements on human rights or democratic minimum standards. It is a common to observe a psychological and behavoir conduct within many cultural settings to play the game without meaning it. Until The beginning of arab revolutions in 2011 and specially in Tunisia, most EU diplomats never recognized this deviance or inconsistency of pretending attitudes. But that type of behavior that negates and conturnates necessary change has also been wonderfully described 150 years ago in a novel called " El Gattopardo" by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa" . Though it is a litterary work, I suggest that you include it in your readings. ( look at the movie of Lucchino  Visconti " The Guepard" starring Burt Lancaster , Alain Delon, etc..). The Prince Salina, in this novel,  enonciates this theorem " You have to change everything in order to change nothing" ( Il faut que tout change pour que rien ne change). This social psychology of cosmetic change to avoid the real one from inside ( what you call the change of values) is the most difficult one. I have written a paper describing this type of cultural resistance in the arab world to keep innovation out. It describe the particular case of social isolation of a tunisian born social innovator and reformist named " Tahar Haddad", because of a book he published calling for women education in the arab world in 1930 . He could not survive more than 5 years and died alone. This is how some societies deal with imposed modernity and change of values or with shifting balance of power between its members. Isn't that also precisely what you look about when deepening your inquiry about democratic innovations ?

2. I am again bothered by the enduring common mistake that scholars do about what is named " democratic innovations studies", specially within ResearchGate. Most of scholars restrain their observations in strictly the political field first and to the volontary tentatives or policies within that field( or the cosmetic ones, as described above). If democracy development has to be considered including more than free voting , etc... as indicators, but also more fundamentally about its result, which we could define as change of power balance between individuals and micro cummunities or classes within a given site, then we should extend our expectations of democratic change coming from more than dedicated policies and publicised performativities. The Map is not the territory. Bureaucracies make very often this mistake. We should care about larger views than from bureaucratized conceptions of how democracy builds. We should beaware of "the streetlight effect" in that field for building a consistent efficient knowledge.Enlarging the definitions and the indicators to effective results of equality and empowering of poeple has already opened numerous fields of democratic development and we are indebted to Amartya Sen and somme others relevant works.

For example, I have studied and demonstrated 30 years ago, the case that a simple technical transportation  law change which consisted in the freeing of small lorries and vans possesion and access to all the poeple of tunisia , has effectively changed the rule of game within the rural areas and loosened the grip of the one party system in villages, more than any other measures of tentaive democratisation for 10 years ( I called it The revolution of freeing la Peugeot 404 bachée). The government of that moment never intended to loose his grip and control of the population. The technical measure was due to the lobbying of a french company Peugeot wishing to export more cars to tunisia. With that case and many others, you can show, documentate learn and build a larger knowledge base about institutionnal change and development. I personally recommend regularly to reread two outstanding scholars Vincent Ostrom ( institutionnal analysis and development) and James C Scott about hidden resistance).

All this types of approaches of a larger conception of how democratic innovations and change take place, have to be done through careful micro sociology observations enquiry and research. We have to accept the meta assomption that innovation is also the result of serendipity, even if we consider innovations in  politics.

Whatever this discussion has extended I thank you anyway, Dear Daniel, to have opened it, as well as good luck to you and to those who have brought their added value and build this theme about democratic innovations..

Dear Moncef, thank you very much for your very interesting comment as well as recommendations. Topic of democratic innovations belongs to topics of interdisciplinary nature. And it is scientifically exciting to see large diversity in approaches, explanations etc. Best wishes, Daniel

Dear Daniel and Moncef,

so enthusiastic review of the book "El Gattopardo" by Moncef led me to read it. For me the most important book about the social system and power probably will always be "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov, but this book also impressed me. Admirable is the way in which processes of long duration are described – the persistent constancy – and a description of the mechanisms of geographical determinism, but what particularly caught my attention, and what applies to your question Daniel - it is the importance of detail and almost ancient determinism of fate. For the new political system it is important how it is implemented. What relationships it creates – but it is not an effect of general processes but an effect of a detail, which may decide whether or not ultimately adopted solution brings real added value. The revolution/change often has this power but also often it is wasted.

Thank you for the recommendation - a great book and addictive entertainment.

Best Regards

Thanks Katarzyna !

Most often, those who have nothing to say are more active. Good sense forces you when you have no one to talk to, to be remembered. It seems like this is democracy. The right of everyone to give their opinion, even if they do not have the necessary training. The problem is that I am a majority. If we add the manipulation on all channels, we discover the background that some make their interests. It's just an opinion. All the best.