Participatory Democracy: A Tool for Social Change

Participatory democracy has been a hallmark of social movements since the days of the New Left. It has been a feature of anarchist praxis since the 19th century, and a component of numerous Indigenous polities, such as the Iroquois Confederacy. In recent years, the mantle of participatory democracy has been taken up by a variety of political actors and grassroots organizers. Whereas direct democracy is sometimes reduced to divisive referenda, participatory democracy is infused with concrete elements of deliberation and civic engagement. Participatory democracy’s most notable institutional expression has come in the form of participatory budgeting. Introduced in 1989 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by the Workers’ Party, participatory budgeting has expanded to more than 3,000 cities around the world. Other participatory democratic institutional-forms are also spreading across the world: citizens assemblies coupled with referenda, communal councils in Venezuela, participatory urban design in Barcelona, and the post-state autonomous zones in Chiapas and Rojava.

Participatory Democracy: From the Port Huron Statement to Occupy Wall Street

This is the fiftieth anniversary year of the Port Huron Statement, the founding declaration of Students for a Democratic Society, issued as a “living document” in 1962. The SDS call for a participatory democracy echoes today in student-led democracy movements around the world, even appearing as the first principle of the Occupy Wall Street September 17 declaration.

As a signpost of the early 1960s, the Port Huron Statement (PHS) is worth treasuring for its idealism and for the spark it ignited in many an imagination. The Port Huron call for a life and politics built on moral values as opposed to expedient politics; its condemnation of the cold war, echoed in today’s questioning of the “war on terror”; its grounding in social movements against racism and poverty; its first-ever identification of students as agents of social change; and its call to extend participatory democracy to the economic, community and foreign policy spheres—these themes constitute much of today’s progressive sensibility.