Opportunities

The Very Idea of Microdemocracy

A Hundred Million Chances…
We are missing a hundred million chances a year for people in low-income communities to help themselves and to start making democracy work better.

Low-income people are affected the most by decisions made in the public arena yet they have traditionally participated the least in making those decisions. Every couple of years or so, one of the more visible indicators of poor participation - low voting rates – draws a bit more attention to the pattern. But, the first signs of the phenomenon of ‘non-participation’ pop up much earlier and far more frequently in a hundred million or so ordinary encounters low-income people have, altogether, with public agencies every year.

A hundred million of anything ought to get some decent attention. In their ordinary encounters as parents at their children’s schools, or as patients at Medicaid-funded health care services or clients at the welfare office, WIC, and job training programs and other sites, far too many low-income citizens grow accustomed to other folks making decisions for them or about them. Despite the enormous importance of what gets decided there – affecting education, health care, income and shelter - the encounter becomes, far too often, the place where they learn not to participate; not there, not anywhere. Every day, all over the country, citizens walk through the doors of the public agency, past the flag, the plaques, pictures and official notices making clear its place somewhere in the patchwork of democracy and public institutions. But, far too often, once past the front door, they find themselves stuck in a dead end, having reached the endpoint of interacting with decision-making in the public arena.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In nearly twenty years of educational work with The Right Question Project (RQP) in low-income communities around the country, we have seen that citizens who have never before participated can learn key skills, adopt new habits and acquire the “look of a citizen,” ready to participate in decisions and ready to expect and require accountable decision-making. This change is triggered by learning to use simple and powerful tools RQP has developed that build skills for asking questions and participating effectively in decisions.

Frontline staff of many agencies and organizations working day in and day out with low-income people all over the country, can play a key role in making this possible. Many of them are frustrated by the constant flood of people who come through their doors, dependent on them to advocate for them, solve their problems and provide a temporary service to deal with stubborn, recurring problems. They have shown us how, with a slight, but significant shift in practice, they can move from “doing for” people to teaching them these essential skills. And, then, they see remarkable changes.

Building people’s skills for asking questions and participating in decisions have rarely been explicitly taught. But they are absolutely fundamental skills that all people in low-income communities can immediately use to help themselves. They are also essential democratic skills for more effective participation in decision-making on any level of democracy. Can you imagine a democracy in which citizens are not asking questions nor participating in decisions? Perhaps,that’s not a hypothetical…

The use of democratic skills deserves a name that makes an explicit link to democracy. We have, therefore, given the name Microdemocracy to the act of individuals using their democratic skills to participate effectively in their encounters with public agencies. “Participating effectively” does not mean that everyone gets everything they want or need. Instead, it represents the habits, actions and “look” of a citizen who expects accountable decision-making and has specific skills to use to try to insure that there are good decisions and accountable decisions being made. The hundred million encounters individuals have with public agencies on a micro level – currently the endpoint of their interaction with decision-making in the public sector - can be transformed into examples of Microdemocracy. The same skills that are used on the micro level can be used to participate more effectively on any level of democracy and, thus, Microdemocracy becomes a new starting point for democratic action.

The need for new efforts to expand participation in democracy

The experience of tens of millions of people on the micro level of democracy has been largely overlooked for far too long. Why has it been neglected, especially given how it is such a formative experience? Perhaps, because it takes shape long before the traditional and important forms of democratic action such as community organizing, advocacy and lobbying efforts that ask people to join, join in, sign on to and come over to in order to act as citizens

Many efforts to engage low-income people ask them to come over to some other place where democracy is supposed to be happening. They are encouraged to make their voices heard in the Halls of Congress or, closer to home, at a municipal public hearing; they are encouraged to pay attention to national politics or, closer to home, to join a community organization; and, of course, they are asked to register to vote and show up, close to home, at the voting booth.

Over the years, millions, tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on encouraging people to cross the chasm or just cross the street, and yet, so very few efforts to engage more people have led to any significant bump in participation rates.

We have to get out of the loop of doing more of the same. We need to think in new ways about how to engage people long before they may get to the voting booth, become a neighborhood leader or an elected official.

From Micro Experience to Macro Impact: Microdemocracy on a Large Scale

We must find new ways to invest in people where they are; where they live their lives and where they either begin or end their participation in decision-making. Learning to use essential democratic skills to take more effective action on the micro level is an absolutely essential first step towards greater and more effective participation in decision-making and democracy on all levels.

The scale alone screams for a strategy. A hundred million encounters are taking place at settings that are actually outposts of democracy, for they are linked to decisions made further up the democratic food chain. How can we better seize the opportunity of these individual encounters at outposts of democracy?

Thanks to our work with The Right Question Project over the past fifteen years in low-income communities all over the country we have developed, tested refined new ideas and new methods for changing the status quo of disengagement. The Right Question Project is a unique organization, developing teaching tools that help all people, no matter their literacy, educational or income level, learn to use sophisticated thinking and advocacy skills to participate in decisions that affect them. It is a strategy that leads to greater and more effective participation in decision-making, to greater self-sufficiency, to seeing connections between decisions being made on multiple levels and to more effective democratic action.

Most of RQP’s work involves working with and providing training to the staff of agencies and organizations at work every day in low-income communities all around the country. In addition to the training of frontline staff, RQP’s own staff have done direct training with a wide range of people including sugar cane plantation workers in Hawaii, with Mexican, Vietnamese, Haitian, and Dominican immigrant parents of schoolchildren in California, Arizona, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, public housing tenants in Chicago, homeless shelter residents in Kentucky, migrant workers in North Carolina, welfare recipients in New Hampshire, adult literacy students across New England, patients in mental health institutions, inmates in correctional centers and halfway houses, youth in alternative diploma programs, and the list goes on and on. We have learned valuable lessons from each group of people with whom we have worked. We have also observed how many frontline staffpersons in agencies and organizations around the country see the importance of investing in the capacity of the people with whom they work to be more self-sufficient. We began to see the great potential for the role frontline staff could play in building that capacity. All these lessons led us to The Microdemocracy Strategy.

A New Scale of Democratic Action

The many thinkers and activists focused on democracy and ‘democratic participation’ have been existing in a parallel universe with the hundred million encounters that low-income people have with the outposts of democracy. The democratic participation universe has been advocating on behalf of the people who are not participating in democracy. But, what if the people who are not participating, began to participate? How might that change the face of democracy in this country? What if they began to participate in ways that are essentially democratic yet have not, to the point, been recognized for their democratic content?

Imagine if only 1 percent of the hundred million encounters are changed from endpoints of interaction with decision-making in the public arena into opportunities for people to use essential democratic skills to participate effectively. What would it mean if one million encounters became new starting points for democratic action?

We use the figure of 1 percent only to underscore the dramatic impact that such a small percentage would have. Our experience, however, is that we see changes at a much higher rate. We generally document, for example, immediate major changes in 10-20% of the people who learn the skills we teach, a noticeable change in another 30-60% of the participants and even small changes in another 10-20%. The major changes range from an immediate understanding of the significance of the skills, how they can push aside confusion and feelings of intimidation and being overwhelmed that usually prevent people from even considering taking action. Additional changes are noticed in people who learn how to use the new skills, where and when to use them, how to strategize, etc. Small changes would be limited to new skills in generating questions, distinguishing between kinds of questions and an improved understanding of criteria for accountable decision-making.

We believe that millions of frontline workers are perfectly positioned to teach the skills as part of their on-going work. Again, if only a small percentage of them initially teach the skills, the impact will be dramatic.

The Microdemocracy Strategy has enormous potential to dramatically increase the capacity and the numbers of people participating in democracy. The hundred million encounters at outposts of democracy are currently the endpoints of interaction with decision-making in the public sector. They can become starting points for democratic action.