Tom Chance, member of People & Planet’s Management Committee, writes:
Tom Chance
Democracy is one of People & Planet’s core values, yet for many annual consultation exercises and informal feedback fall far short. P&P is better than most with its grassroots focus, but most of the communication and decision making still emanates from the support office. Web forums, mailing lists, wikis and other internet-based tools are often brought up as potential solutions. But whilst they can help facilitate mass communication across the network, they are also profoundly undemocratic in many ways.
First it’s important to understand how the internet might fit into existing P&P structures. There are, I think, two central principles at play: stand aside and consultation.
At the moment things are fairly laissez-faire, with the “stand aside” principle allowing groups to choose which campaigns they run and how to run them. Being part of the P&P network can just mean getting resources in the post and nominally running one of the campaigns, even if your focus is far more radical/reformist. So in one sense, so long as the support office continue to send you the goods it really doesn’t matter what they do.
The other principle is consultation. Every year representatives from groups gather at the Forum to give the office feedback and, if funding allows, change the broad direction or even the subject of the three campaigns. Even if students get a free vote, e.g. for a completely new campaign, the support office go off and work out the details with (so far as I can tell after four years) little student participation. The next year a new crop of students get to feed back again. This process seems to have pretty good results, going by the success of campaigns and the lack of serious dissent in the network.
So hand in hand, these two principles keep most people happy. The support office know roughly what the network wants and can get on with producing quality materials. The network can get on with campaigning and enjoy the support of the office when needed. But there are undoubtedly problems, as is evident at every Forum, where sessions overrun and some students get frustrated with the constraints of the consultation exercises.
Democracy requires continuous participation
One big problem with democracy by consensus is that it takes time. Participants need time to understand the issues under discussion, to develop their own perspective through solitary reflection and social debate. Whilst the support office do send out a consultation document in advance of the Forum, it can be difficult to get good discussions going on your own group, especially if you mostly agree, which may be the case given the months or years that you will have spent working together. Moreover, you have little or not idea what the rest of the network thinks, so your own perspective will be pretty limited.
When representatives finally turn up the the Forum they’re thrown into a lightning debate and expected to find a common platform in about an hour! Perspectives clash, commonalities can be difficult to draw out. Good facilitation usually ensures that most people get their say, but that’s hardly the same as the kind of thorough discussion that will produce really good decisions.
Wouldn’t it be better if we were discussing the issues as a network all year round? Wouldn’t the Forum run much more smoothly, and be far more democratic, if it was the culmination of these discussions rather than a rapid consultation exercise? To many it seems crazy that we don’t take these discussions onto the internet.
Reinforcing undemocratic norms
Would this be better? Well, possibly. The problem is that both the Forum and the internet tools have undemocratic aspects. Both take time, energy and money to participate; intense discussions favour the most engaged, knowledgeable, energetic people; groups that depend upon the support office the most have more motivation to get involved, but are more likely to lack the resources (including people) to participate; with the internet in particular, bored students and internet addicts can hijack discussions in the course of an afternoon, unable to resist responding to that latest forum post or email.
For these kinds of discussions to be remotely democratic, uni/school groups need strong internal democracy, so that the group as a whole is being well represented on the internet and at the Forum. Then participants need to exercise a good deal of self-restraint, working as much at including other people as at expounding their own views. Otherwise discussions and decisions will simply reflect the perspectives of those active, resource rich, knowledgeable activists. To an extent the consultation approach moderates this by restricting the power of participants, but that’s hardly an ideal solution!
A more radical application of stand-aside
One alternative to replacing consultation with direct democracy on the internet is an extension of the stand-aside principle. The internet may be a rubbish tool for facilitating discussions and decision making processes, but it’s a great way for people to organise and mobilise. We have enough time, energy and expertise across the network to organise our own fantastic campaigns. Fed up with Fairtrade? Get behind the No Sweat solidarity campaign! If you’re unhappy with the direction of the AIDS/HIV campaign then suggest a new one.
Most groups will continue to need the support office, so democracy within this structure is important. Tom and Anne-Marie’s article outlines several issues and ways of addressing the current shortcomings. But ultimately the internet will be much more useful at building another sphere of discussion, another kind of democracy. We should be building these spaces and looking for ways to improve our work without turning our noses up at the support office and the Forum, but without depending on them either.
The new P&P web site now allows more interaction from students, but its development and nature just reinforces the vertical hierarchy that the internet could avoid. When they were developing it we were barely consulted, despite the enormous experience and interest within the network. Now it’s up - and what a cool improvement it is! - we still have the same model of static, support office-managed pages with limited opportunities for us to add content through staff moderation.
We finally have a web forum and journal for the grassroots, developed without and now promoted by the support office. But it’s hardly making the full use of the technology!
Contrast this with grassroots networks that evolved on the internet. When Howard Dean stormed the US Democratic presidential primaries in 2004 his slogan was simple: “You have the power!” His campaign team used the internet to cede control to the grassroots at every opportunity, devolving power by handing the tools over and letting the network of pro-Dean activists create the content. They could organise meetups, post blog entries, discuss strategy and more. The campaign was so successful that “Dean Corps” groups appeared, undertaking low-intensity community work such as cleaning up riverbanks, reading to children and collecting food for homeless people.
We could have a national web site that provides the support office’s content, but also a section that each uni/school group would have complete control over. Forums, blogs, file upload spaces, wikis, news, photo galleries, anything groups wanted, so long as somebody in the network could implement it. An editorial team, comprising of students and support office staff, could select content that would “float up” from group web sites to provide an overview of regional news, Go Green resources from across the network - really any combination of content imaginable. All of this is technically possible today.
None of this would solve the democracy issue. But it might help strengthen existing democratic structures by facilitating ongoing discussion, and it would create a new space for “stand-aside” democracy to really empower the grassroots. It remains to be seen what the network as a whole has the resources to implement, what the support office will support, and whether the grassroots will take control.
Respond to this article on the network-run web forum.