Associative Democracy

= concept and book

Book

Book: Associative Democracy. New Forms of Economic and Social Governance. By: Paul Hirst. Polity Press, 1993.

URL = http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=978074560951

"In this book Paul Hirst makes a major contribution to democratic thinking, advocating "associative democracy"; the belief that human welfare and liberty are best served when as many of the affairs of society as possible are managed by voluntary and democratically self-governing associations."

Concept

Paul Hirst:

"Associative democracy is a normative political theory. Its core propositions are as follows:

1.That as many social activities as possible should be devolved to self-governing voluntary associations.

2.That by doing so the complexity of the state will be reduced and the classical mechanisms of democratic representative government will be able to work better.

3.That self-governing voluntary associations should, wherever possible, replace forms of hierarchical corporate power. This would give the affected interests voice and thus promote government by consent throughout society and not merely formally in the state.

4.That for many essential public functions, such as health provision, education and welfare, voluntary associations should provide the service and receive public funds for doing so.

Associationalists contend that there are in any complex and free society different versions of what the good life should be and the task of the state is to help realize as many of these as possible not to impose one of them. The state can and must perform the core functions of assuring public peace, adjudicating in clashes of norms and mobilizing resources for public purposes. Unlike economic liberal doctrines that seek to limit the functions of the state and expand the scope of the market, associationalism seeks to expand the scope of democratic governance in civil society. It also like free market doctrines seeks to promote choice through competition, but it does so by giving individuals the option to move between non-profit making associations. Individuals have voice within associations and the option of periodic exit to move between them. This combination constrains associations to attend to the needs of their members, if voice fails or is too arduous then exit is an effective challenge to entrenched oligarchy.

Associationalism is thus a political theory that combines a normative appeal with an account of the working of institutions. It is relatively unusual in that modern political theory has tended to become purely normative, concerned with exploring concepts like equality or rights, and in consequence concern for the effects of institutions has fallen to political science. In this sense its combination of advocacy and reference to institutions is much more like traditional political theory, such as Aristotle or Rousseau. This does not mean that it is old fashioned. The present division between normative and supposedly value-free discourses is not helpful in promoting political debate about institutions.

Associationalist doctrines have a long pedigree stretching back to the early nineteenth century. Associationalism is the original ‘Third Way’ between free-market capitalism and centralized state socialism. It declined from the 1920s onwards with the success of political movements advocating state socialism and the increasing concentration of state power inevitable in a century of social and international conflict. Associationalism returned in the late twentieth century as a doctrine of social reform and democratic renewal. It attempts to address a double crisis of the declining effectiveness of representative democracy and the increasing dissatisfaction with centralized and standardized state welfare. It attempts to address the issue of democratic accountability in extensive public service states by separating funding and provision, making the state responsible for core decisions about the scope and cost of services but not attempting to perform the conflicting roles of provider and source of accountability for provision. Associationalism argues that far from being one welfare state, there would be as many as citizens chose to organize, catering for the different values of individuals, but based on common basic public entitlements. Individuals could then top up the basic public provision distributed according to membership and thus craft or enhance services to meet their own needs. In this way they would control their own collective consumption and be willing to contribute to common public services (associations would only receive public funds if they were open to all and willing to provide a service on the basis of public entitlements). Associationlism has returned as a doctrine of renewal in several contexts: as a means of promoting decentralized but public governance as a counter to economic liberal dominance of public debate in the USA; as a means of countering excessive centralization in the UK and also addressing the crippling effects of tax aversion on welfare; and in Italy as a means of coping with the problems of the failure of the central state by relying on civil society and the third sector to provide governance and services. Other societies like Denmark or the Netherlands have long put associative principles into practice, and it can be seen that their democratic institutions have benefited from such decentralization and pluralism.

Associationalism has the merit, as we shall see below, that unlike most political doctrines, it confronts the fact that we live in a society where goods and services, public and private, are mostly provided by large hierarchically directed organizations. These are organizations over which consumers have little control through voice and frequently have no real option of exit. The widespread processes of privatization of public services and the conversion of government bodies into quasi-autonomous agencies reinforces this character of modern societies as organizational societies and blurs the division between public and private spheres. Of all the reform doctrines now current, only associationalism gives due recognition to the reality of an organizational society and seeks to address the problem by democratizing institutions in civil society and by decentralizing the state. It thus responds to the blurring of the public-private divide by attempting to install mechanisms of democratic governance in the institutions on both sides." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-hirst/renewing-democracy-through-associations)