A Call for Invention Participatory democracy may help strengthen local government’s role in the federal system.

By KENNETH C. TOLLENAAR*

N a recent article on “Administra- I tive Decentralization and Political Power,” Herbert Kaufman begins by reminiscing about the days when bureaucrats “were regarded by many as heroes in the struggles for a better social order.”l To that bit of nos- talgia may be added a fond recollec- tion of the time when the conventional wisdom on citizen participation was that citizen committees can aid pro- fessional administrators, particularly by way of helping them “sell” their programs to the public, so long as those committees are confined strictly to an advisory role and are dissolved as soon as their work is done.

The concept of “citizen participa- tion” as we knew it until scarcely 10 years ago was distinctly Jacksonian, rather than Madisonian or Hamil- tonian, but at least since the early 19th century it had been institutional- ized at each level of American gov- ernment in such forms as mass media and in-house reporting activities, open meeting requirements, public hear- ings, appeals procedures, publication requirements, use of lay committees and part-time or unpaid elective or

* Mr. Tollenaar is acting director of the Bureau of Governmental Research and Ser- vice, University of Oregon. He was for- merly executive secretary of the Association of Oregon Counties. This is his address before the Western Governmental Research Association in Portland, August 30.

1 Public Administration Review, Janu- aryfiebruary 1969, p. 3.

appointed offices. The possibility of citizen participation has been a major rationale supporting the local govern- ment role in the federal system. As stated by the Kestnbaum Commission in 1955:

The states have the constitutional re- sponsibility for the future development of local government. This responsibility has two important aspects. One is to create local units of government that are efficient units for providing govern- mental services. The second is to main- tain a system of local government that achieves the traditional American goal of extensive citizen participation in the affairs of govern;-ient.2

The new concept of participatory democracy is in some ways merely an extension of the familiar concept of citizen participation, but in others it differs from it in kind. “Participa- tory democracy,” says a contempo- rary writer on the subject,

may be said to require the elected and appointed representatives of our representative democracy to share their planning, policy determination and de- cision-making with groups of people who proclaim a more intense ideological or parochial interest in certain specific public matters than does the general electorate. Moreover, such groups are to be provided with resources from public funds sufficient to make their efforts forceful and effective.3

2 Commission on Intergovernmental Re- lations, A Report to the President for Transmittal to the Congress (Washington: 1955), p. 48.

8 Henry D. Harral, “Participatory De- mocracy,” Horizons, December 1968.

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Participatory democracy, as distin- guished from mere citizen participa- tion, is concerned primariIy with the planning and administration of spe- cific governmental programs a t the local level, and especially at the neighborhood level. It involves the efforts of mass clienteles of certain governmental programs to close the gap between the legislative promise to improve the quality of life and its fulfillment within the community.

As the concept has been developed in recent years, it has both opera- tional and therapeutic aspects. In its operational aspects, i t strives for greater “relevance” in governmental problem solving and is presumed to lead to a better identification of goals and a better selection of means to achieve them than is possible solely through the devices of representative democracy and its, bureaucratic trap- pings. In its therapeutic aspects, par- ticipatory democracy has been traced back a t least as far as Emile Durk- heim’s development of the social psychological concept of anomie-an unstable condition associated with the breakdown of individual and social value systems in modern industrial societies. The hope is that widespread participation in governmental decision making will be a way of overcoming the anomic psychology of our times, especially now that governmental pro- grams have come to have such a direct and intimate effect on personal lives and fortunes.

The effect of participatory democ- racy on intergovernmental relations was considered in the context of the poverty program by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental

Relations in 1966. The ACIR report, Intergovernmental Relations in the Poverty Program, considered the evi- dence that participatory democracy constitutes a “friction point in inter- governmental relations,” referring to ambiguities associated with “max- imum feasible participation” as it relates to the program and also to instances where the objective of the participants has allegedly been more to disrupt than to participate. The report concludes, however, that the principle is consistent with a strong federal system, citing the belief that “effective, responsible local govern- ment depends on widespread citizen participation” and that, accordingly, “maximum feasible participation can , . . be viewed as a potential con- tributor to local government’s role as a strong partner in the local-state- national system and to stronger state and national political institutions as well.”

* * * Whether participatory democracy

affects intergovernmental relations, and if so in what way, depends on what we conceive to be the goals and current concerns of our intergovern- mental system. It is assumed here that the central goal is to maintain a division of functions and powers among the federal, state and local government levels in such a way that, in Kenneth Wheare’s definition, “the general and regional governments are each, within a sphere, coordinate and independent.” While William Ander- son and others have correctly argued that this is a contradiction in terms -that you cannot “coordinate” three entities which are truly (‘indepen-

19691 A CALL FOR

dent”-still, the ambiguity of the statement does not detract from its value as a goal.

In the light of this central and primary goal, it appears that parti- cipatory democracy will affect inter- governmental relations as it affects the strength of local government as a “coordinate and independent” level of government. Participatory democ- racy has, so far at least, been applied only on the local level, even though federal statutes created it.

There is evidence that partici- patory democracy has both weakened and strengthened local government. One of the ways in which local gov- ernment appears to have been weak- ened is that, in the name of the con- cept, direct program relationships between federal agencies and clientele organizations have been established which bypass both state and local government to a greater or lesser ex- tent. In part these arrangements are witness to previously existing weak- nesses in local government. As the ACIR poverty report points out, one of the reasons for resorting to direct relationships between the federal gov- ernment and clientele organizations was the recognition that city govern- ment has avoided involvement in social issues and programs, while county governments are too poorly organized to be effective. The found- ers of the model cities program in- tended to work more closely with local governments than was the case under the poverty program, but in actual implementation the role of mass clientele organizations tended to be the dominant one.

Another way in which local govern-

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ment may be weakened by partici- patory democracy, at least in the short run, is by becoming embroiled in noisy and irresolvable conflicts with those in pursuit of power as an end in itself, or who are more inter- ested in fomenting a broad social revolution than in improving specific economic, social and political condi- tions. These will waste local resources, discredit the entire effort of govern- ment to seek solutions to social prob- lems and may have other deleterious effects, including possible discourage- ment of new leadership.

* * * These and probably other con-

siderations have led some to give up on participatory democracy. Daniel P. Moynihan has concluded that participation “does not seem to have led to more competent communities. In some instances it appears rather to have escalated the level of stale- mate.”4 He, for one, is ready to go back to working through the local government establishment. Floyd Hyde, the present HUD assistant secretary for model cities, stated recently that the present administra- tion has “some deep concerns” about some of the outcomes of participation, and he went on to announce that “in- creased attention will be given to that aspect of citizen participation policy which requires widespread involve- ment of persons beyond the bound- aries of the model neighborh~od.”~

Daniel P. Moynihan, “Toward a Na- tioiial Urban Policy” (an address to the Annual Honors Convocation, Syracuse Uni- versity, May 8, 1969).

Floyd H. Hyde, “HUD Builds Partner- ship for Partidpation,” Public Management, July 1969, Pp. 17-19.

460 NATIONAL CIVIC REVIEW [November

Yet, there is some evidence and even more hope that participatory democracy may be strengthening local government, despite the difficulties noted above. In an age of mass pro- duction, mass communication and mass organization, it seems doubtful that local government’s claim to legit- imacy can long rest on its efficiency and effectiveness as a provider of pub- lic services and facilities. Rather, its claim must rest on its function as the primary vehicle through which self- government is exercised. The munic- ipal reform movement, including the reduction in the number of elective offices, nonpartisanship and profes- sionalism, may have sterilized local government, but it has made its claim to representativeness and responsive- ness more tenuous. If this analysis is correct, participatory democracy may prove to be the salvation of local government rather than its undoing as some have supposed.

* * * Leaving for the moment the ques-

tion of the relative strengths of the local, state and federal levels, which is the central concern of intergovern- mental relations, another kind of potential impact of participatory de- mocracy has to do with the relative roles of various decision centers within government at all three levels. Specifically, participatory democracy may alter the role in intergovern- mental decision-making which has been played by the so-called “vertical functional autocracy.’’ (Technically, the structure referred to is an OK- garchy, but we will stick to “autoc- racy’) because of the currency this term has gained.)

Standing a t the center of the autocracy are the professional ad- ministrators of numerous intergov- ernmental aid programs. Closely as- sociated with them are columnar structures involving middle manage- ment persons, legislative committee and subcommittee members and staffs, and special interest groups having a stake in the programs. Through the authority of its expertise, its control over the generation and dissemination of information, its professional corn- mitment to specific intergovernmental programs and its continuity over the years, the vertical functional autoc- racy is said to influence unduly the establishment of policies and the im- plementation of governmental pro- grams. In this view, federal, state and local government chief executives are seen as struggling unsuccessfully to gain program initiative and achieve greater overall coordination, and be- ing frustrated in their efforts by the vertical functional autocracy.

The Advisory Commission on Tnter- governmental Relations’ 1969 annual report notes several recent disappoint- ments in efforts to move toward a bloc grant system, to consolidate existing functional grant programs and other- wise to reform the intergovernmen- tal system. Nevertheless, the report sounds the call for a “new federalism” (the same phrase used by Jane Perry Clark in 1938 and Richard Nixon in 1969) which will strengthen “top policy makers at all levels of govern- ment,” presumably at the expense of the vertical functional autocracy, through “devolution of administrative power, grant packaging, consolidation and revenue sharing.”

19691 A CALL FOR

Now, .with participatory democ- racy, there is a third group to con- tend with the autocracy. Mass cli- enteles are learning to organize and to manipulate the levers of the gov- ernmental machinery, thanks largely to their experiences under the poverty program. Kaufman has pointed out the possibility that citizen organiza- tions and chief executives, especially big-city mayors, may join efforts to wrest program initiatives from the vertical functional autocracy.

These are some of the possible ef- fects of participatory democracy on intergovernmental relations. One brief observation about the effect of inter- governmental relations on participa- tory democracy seems in order. This has to do with the effectiveness of the grant-in-aid device. Participatory democracy was smoothly and silently added to the mix of basic American political institutions in a very short period of time. This accomplishment seems even more impressive when you consider that the grant-in-aid device was used only a few years ago to se- cure the widespread adoption of the merit system in state and local gov- ernment, while today it is being used to spread participatory democracy, which includes the idea that program clientele should be employed in pro- gram administration even though merit system requirements must be modified to accommodate them. One is tempted to suggest that there are some other deserving ideas such as program budgeting and proportional representation, the diffusion of which could be greatly accelerated in the same manner.

The apparent conclusion is that

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participatory democracy can contrib- ute significantly to the health of the federal system by strengthening local government, thus assuring its con- tinued partnership in the system. It may also help confine the vertical functional autocracies to a more ap- propriate role, if that is really a prob- lem. If all this is to come about, however, it would appear that certain problems must be solved.

* * * First there is the problem of scale.

If the objective of participatory de- mocracy is to afford each person an opportunity to participate meaning- fully in the making of governmental decisions which affect his life, then it is apparent that some kind of decen- tralized governmental structure will have to be devised to reach down as well as out to primary groups which can have face-to-face communication with governmental representatives. This concept goes beyond neighbor- hood “multi-service centers” to in- clude something like the “neighbor- hood subunits” of city or county government proposed by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in its 1967 report Metro- politan Fiscal Disparities. The ACIR proposal suggests that such subunits should have limited powers of taxa- tion and of self-government with respect to specified functions but should be dissoluble by the parent city or county at any time.

I t probably needs to be stated here that decentralization entails certain consequences which are difficult for some people, including professional

(Continued on page 475)

19691 COSTS OF REFORM 475

be more than negligible. All systems have debits and efficiency is only a net figure. The reform model surely has debits and its achievements surely are not costless, and perhaps a hidden cost is some political alien- ation. Nor does it follow that the only plausible response is drastic re- form of the reform model, although some reappraisal seems in order. If political alienation is regarded as au- thentic and serious, there may be countermeasures other than structural modification. The manifest and dis- tressing corollary of our premise about the roots is that any measures are unlikely to achieve more than a slight diminution in the volume of political alienation.

A CALL FOR INVENTION (Continued from page 461)

government administrators, to accept. One is that, almost by definition, decentralization will produce a diver- sity of response to any given criterion of performance. It is neither logical nor fair to devolve authority and re- sponsibility with one hand, and with the other to command uniformity or adherence to professional standards of performance that might be ex- pected a t the higher level. Another cost, at least in theory, will be the loss of “economies of scale” and a certain amount of duplication, over- lap and confusion in administration.

A second problem, closely related to the need to decentralize, is to identify appropriate fu&tions or parts of functions which can be decentral- ized and appropriate modes of par- ticipation. A study by the National Advisory Council on Economic Oppor-

tunity-Dece&raZization to Neigh- borhoods: A Conceptual Analysis- suggests several degrees of autonomy and participation, ranging from “un- reviewable sovereignty” (which it re- jects totally) , through delegation of various types (e.g., standing delega- tion to establish parking regulations on local residential streets, revocable delegation to operate a neighborhood health center, etc.), through veto of certain actions of the parent govern- ment including assignment of key personnel to work within the subunit, through shared or joint decision-mak- ing, and through formal consultation and advisory procedures on matters requiring unit-wide decision.

A third problem is to provide tech- nical assistance and training in the appropriate uses of participatory de- mocracy. The alienation and cynicism which infect large numbers of people run too deeply to expect spontaneous responses to the availability of new institutional forms.

The solution of these and related problems poses a difficult challenge to governmental research. Basically, the call is for the invention of new political institutions for the govern- ment of large urban areas. Research in urban government in the past has been guided more by the need to achieve an appropriate degree of cen- tralization in certain functions than by the need to decentralize, and we are far from a solution to that prob- lem. Participatory democracy, how- ever, properly instituted, may be at least a partial solution to the problem of widespread apathy, hopelessness and hostility. That challenge cannot be ignored.