Author: Katharina Holec

Inclusive Democracy, Sustainable Democracy?

PhD Thesis by Katharina Holec

In my PhD thesis at the University of Düsseldorf I look at the effects of decriptive and substantive representation in consultative citizen participation on legitimacy beliefs of individuals.

Summary

Legitimacy – as a sum of individual beliefs about the appropriateness and acceptability of a political community, its regime and authorities – is the key element in stabilizing nowadays democratic systems. But, dissatisfaction with the performance of political systems is increasing and understandings of democracy can be divergent. Especially when political involvement is reduced to the possibility of choosing representatives legitimacy beliefs remain hard to rebuilt and understandings of democracy remain hard to align between different citizens. To solve this “legitimacy problem” plenty democratic theorists and researchers suggest more possibilities for political participation in the democratic process. Consultation is one mean often used by local municipalities to increase satisfaction and understanding of political processes. But consultative participation often promises too much. Like all political participation consultation is biased. Social inequality in society influences who participates. And who participates will ultimately influence a processes outcome. . The risk of losing marginalized voices in the process is high.

I want to enable a detailed understanding of the advantages of including these voices for local democratic legitimacy beliefs. Therefore, I follow Pitkin’s (1972) ideas on descriptive and substantive representation applying them to a consultative participation process. I ask

(a) Does descriptive representation in the input of a consultative participation process increase substantive representation in the throughput and outcome of a political process?

(b) How important are descriptive and substantive representation for increasing legitimacy beliefs after the political process?

I focus specifically on three levels of the policy making process (1) the input level, where I consider descriptive representation to be relevant, (2) the throughput level, where I consider substantive representation as ‘speaking for’ relevant and (3) the outcome level, where I consider substantive representation as ‘acting for’ by local municipalities relevant. While I consider (1) and (2) to be relevant criteria for increasing legitimacy beliefs by improving the political process, I consider (3) to be relevant for increasing legitimacy beliefs by improving real life living conditions.

Transdisciplinary Research – Meeting FixMyCity and Liquid Democracy in Berlin

Transdisciplinarity as cooperation with practice is an enormously relevant aspect for our project. In order to incorporate the ideas and requirements of practice into the development of our concepts and procedures at an early stage, we went to Berlin on October 24th and 25th.

Once there, we first went to a meeting in the offices of FixMyCity, where Boris Hekele was waiting for us. After a short tour of the work spaces in the former Tempelhof Airport, the founder of FixMyCity told us about past and current experiences with participation in mobility transitions – mainly the improvement of cycle paths and cycle parking in various districts in Berlin. This gave us an insight into participation procedures currently running mainly online.

After a long walk across the Tempelhof field and thus the assessment of the impact of a previous participation procedure on the design of urban space, we finally arrived at the office of Liquid Democracy. We discussed the potentials of automated evaluation in participation procedures and possible deliberative potentials of these. The exchange was very helpful for us to identify needs in practice, as well as for the further conceptualization of the dissertations and the orientation of these towards problems in practice.

On Friday we had our first meeting with our mentor Dr. Oliver Lah and the Urban Change Maker Group, where we discussed our dissertation ideas in an international environment. The focus was again on the automated evaluation of participation contributions and the representativeness of procedures in the field of sustainable mobility. The feedback was very helpful for the further design of the dissertation projects.