Grassroots Democracy Research Articles

India's organic farming revolution: what it means for our global food system

Should you buy organic food? Is it just a status symbol, or is it really better for us? Is it really better for the environment? What about organic produce grown thousands of miles from our kitchens, or on massive corporately owned farms? Is local or small-scale better, even if it's not organic? A lot of consumers who would like to do the right thing for their health and the environment are asking such questions. Sapna Thottathil calls on us to rethink the politics of organic food by focusing on what it means for the people who grow and sell it--what itmeans for their health, the health of their environment, and also their economic and political well-being. Taking readers to the state of Kerala in southern India, she shows us a place where the so-called Green Revolution program of hybrid seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and rising pesticide use had failed to reduce hunger while it caused a cascade of economic, medical, and environmental problems. Farmers burdened with huge debts from buying the new seeds and chemicals were committing suicide in troubling numbers. Farm labourers suffered from pesticide poisoning and rising rates of birth defects. A sharp fall in biodiversity worried environmental activists, and everyone was anxious about declining yields of key export crops like black pepper and coffee. In their debates about how to solve these problems, farmers, environmentalists, and policymakers drew on Kerala's history of and continuing commitment to grassroots democracy. In 2010, they took the unprecedented step of enacting a policy that requires all Kerala growers to farm organically by 2020. How this policy came to be and its immediate economic, political, and physical effects on the state's residents offer lessons for everyone interested in agriculture, the environment, and what to eat for dinner. Kerala's example shows that when done right, this kind of agriculture can be good for everyone in our global food system.

Местное самоуправление: история и современная практика

The article is devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the USSR Law “On general principles of local self-government and local economy in the USSR”. Adopted on April 9, 1990, the Law represents the first legal document that legally sets forth democratic decentralization of the Soviet state by creating a new political institute of grass-roots democracy which is closely linked to territorial communities. The Law was created in the period of radical changes in the social life, “at the crisis point of eras” and reflected the features of the Soviet system that was receding into the past. But in the focus of the Law there were the new rules, which clearly demonstrated visible signs of the newly emerging social relations, the parameters of the mechanism of the new government. The article focuses on the history of developing the fundamental ideas of local self-government. Although some legal definitions contained in the Law, have lost its relevance, its core ideas could not become outdated and serve as guidelines for present-day establishment of local authorities in the Russian Federation. For example, determinative participation of the population in the solution of issues of local significance, territorial determinancy of local self-government, economic independence of local authorities, municipal property, the balance between powers and their financial support, organizational independence of the local government. The article analyzes how these principles are currently being implemented.

Gewerkschaftliche Erneuerung in der Eurokrise

The Eurozone crisis has deepened the structural and organisational weaknesses of the Spanish trade union movement. At the same time, unions were challenged by new social movements in a cycle of protests following the indignados of 15M. In consequence, a hesitant strategic reorientation and regeneration of the trade unions took place as they struggled to include social forms applied by the new movements such as grassroots democracy and civil disobedience into their strategic repertoire.

English

The inclination and imposition of non-elected local government council impoverished the political institutional structure of local government while many state governors have trampled upon the constitutional provision which vindicate and established democratically elected local council. Therefore, this study carefully examines budding appointed caretaker committee in Nigerian local government which has become a quagmire to survival of grassroots democracy. This study employs qualitative source of data, samples are drawn from the states operating appointed caretaker committee system in Nigeria. The study concludes that out of 36 states, 14 states comprising six geo-political zones are operating appointed caretaker committee local government council in Nigeria. The subject of non-conduct of elections at the third tier of government has become a common trait within the political spheres of most states. The tier of government which is closest to the grassroots is thus hijacked, prevented from meeting up with its primary and major obligations; the citizens have been denied fair representation with feelings of alienation and disillusionment. Therefore, the study recommends constitutional review and its strict compliance in order to democratize political institution of local government whilst the lacunas and loopholes entrenched in the 1999 constitution should be amended to stem the proliferation of appointed local government executive councils in Nigeria. Key words: Local Government, Caretaker Committee, Democracy, Grassroots, Governance, election.

Fiscal Decentralization, Grass-Root Democracy and Local Development in Indonesia

This paper examines how the introduction of the Fiscal Decentralization (FD) at the turn of the Century that offered greater freedom in local governance affected grassroots politics and local development in Indonesia. We find that socio-culturally homogenous communities are more likely to experience a change in the way they select local leaders at the time of the introduction of FD and we identify multiple political transitions in this respect. We then compare local development outcomes of various politically treated communities (relative to those that did not experience any change) before and after FD to identify the causal effect of FD on local development: FD positively affected local development when it also induced community level political change (yielding new democracies and oligarchies). Moreover, this positive impact of change on local development was maximum when it gave rise to new grassroots democracy. We argue that change in grassroots politics at the critical juncture of the nation's history was key in fostering local development as it signalled community resolve for development and forced local political leadership to be more pro-people. But as costs of bringing about such changes is smaller with sociocultural homogeneity, such communities are more likely to engineer political change to reap the benefits of FD.

Building a new society on the base of locality: transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s

The aim of this article is to explain the transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s, as well as the “ideals of society” embedded in Community Construction that aims to reconstruct the local community. Based upon the analysis of discourses of movement agents, I differentiate four ideal-types of “good society” configured in the Community Construction. First, by the ideal-type of “indigenous (bentu) society,” people hope to reconstruct local history and local culture. Secondly, by “civilized society,” people want to build a society in which its residents live in solidarity and civility. Thirdly, by “civil society” people emphasize the importance of grassroots democracy and the subject position based on locality in order to respond to forces of the state and the market. Lastly, by “civic society” people aims to construct communities encompassing different geographical ranges, in which people from different backgrounds can live together and integrate into a civic nation. Among these ideal-types, “civic society” is the articulating link between “indigenous society” and “civil society,” while locality has become the fundamental element in defining “culture” and “community” in Taiwan. As a result, the cultural resistance based on locality has transformed into the cultural governance focusing on locality.

Occupy the System! Societal Constitutionalism and Transnational Corporate Accounting

Today’s most pressing constitutional question is posed by a global economic system whose expansive tendencies seem no longer controllable. The current financial/debt crisis has triggered diverse reactions in the political arena ranging from the reformist ordo‐liberal approach followed by France and Germany in the context of Eurozone negotiations to the anarchist ideas of the Occupy Now movement. As different as these reactions may be, they can be clearly situated in an ideological coordinate system which has basically remained unchanged since the 1920ies. In the past century, two lines of thought have determined our conceptions of political economy: The German debate of the Weimar republic has labelled these lines of thought as Economic Democracy (Wirtschaftsdemokratie), on the one hand, and Economic Constitutionalism (Wirtschaftsverfassung), on the other. The Societal Constitutionalism approach apparently shifts the established ideological coordinates by developing a theory of self‐constitutionalizating of social spheres. It seeks to combine the virtues of grassroots democracy with the sophistication of systemic social theory. Thus, its normative claim can be formulated as an oxymoron: 'Occupy the System!' The claim is an oxymoron, because it points to the apparent impossibility of critical social theory in a functionally differentiated society: How can a functional system such as the economy be 'occupied' or 'democratized'? In my contribution, I try to find the grain of truth this oxymoron contains. With a view to the concrete example of transnational standard‐setting procedures in the field of corporate accounting, I examine institutional and systemic processes which enable an emerging political discourse at the core of the global economy.

The ‘4Project’, Suning County, Hebei: Enabling Rural People to Come Together and Re-Organize

Abstract Faced with the countless problems of rural society, in 2008 Suning County began to ponder and explore ways to solve these rural problems right at the root. Suning spent time and effort putting thought into the practicalities of working in the countryside, and combined this with the frame of reference gleaned through useful experiences of solving the ‘Three Rurals’ (the state’s term for three major issues troubling rural China). On this basis, Suning County devised the 4Project – a four-fold approach – to bring rural people back together, encouraging them once again to organize. Through development of grassroots Party organizations, grassroots democracy organizations, comprehensive stability maintenance organizations, and economic cooperatives, the local people, who had been scattered and lacking unity, were brought into these organizations.

Grassroots Democracy and Inequality Reduction in Rural Vietnam: The Case of Thái Bình in 1997 and Now

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) adopted grassroots democracy as a political tool to reduce inequality which was a causal factor prompting farmer protests in Thái Bình in 1997. At the international level, the nexus between democracy and inequality has attracted extensive scholarly research over the last two decades. By revisiting the case of Thái Bình, on the one hand, the article attempts to assess the impact of grassroots democracy after 15 years on inequality reduction thereat, and on the other, to contribute to the general discourse on the nexus between these two concepts. The article is organized in two major parts: the first being the literature review and theoretical framing, and the second, findings presentation. It concludes that grassroots democracy has contributed to inequality reduction in rural Vietnam, but is far more likely to meet the demand to avoid a challenge for the CPV again due to the inequality that remains.

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. It is widely considered a ‘good thing’ that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability, but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this paper takes a critical look at what this policy's ‘success’ consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a ‘success’ in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households – and Dalits and women in particular – especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low‐caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high‐caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging.

Grassroot Democracy and Empowerment of People: Sharing the Indian Experience on Local Governance

Grassroot Democracy and Empowerment of People: Sharing the Indian Experience on Local Governance

Do elected leaders in a limited democracy have real power? Evidence from rural China

Do elected leaders in an authoritarian regime have any real power? Does grassroots democracy in a one-party state entail parochial problems? Making use of primary survey data covering two election cycles in a mountainous area of China, where an administrative village consists of several natural villages (NVs), we find that elected village heads favor their home NVs in resource allocations, especially when these NVs have a large population. In contrast, the home NVs of appointed Communist Party secretaries do not receive disproportionately more resources, on average. This pattern of resource allocation is compatible with the interest of village heads and suggests that as elected leaders, village heads have some true power in resource distribution.

Pakistan's Devolution of Power Plan 2001: A brief dawn for local democracy?

Local government is not a new concept in Pakistan. Since the founding of the country in 1947 Pakistan has always had local governments as the lowest-tier political structure. However, grassroots democracy has been eclipsed at different times in the country’s history. As we write this article, there is no elected local government in Pakistan. The article documents the recent history of decentralisation with special reference to the Devolution of Power Plan (DOPP) introduced by the military government of General Pervez Musharraf in 2001. The author was closely involved with the DOPP at both policy and implementation levels. The paper also looks at political economy issues relating to decentralisation in Pakistan.

A CITIZENSHIP OF DISTINCTION IN THE OPEN RADIO DEBATES OF KAMPALA

ABSTRACTThis article investigates practices of speech and sociability in open radio debates in Kampala to decipher imaginaries of citizenship in contemporary Uganda. In theseebimeeza(‘round tables’ in Luganda, also called ‘people's parliaments’) orators are engaged in practices of social distinction when compared to those they call the ‘common men’. These spaces of discussion reflect the importance of education in local representations of legitimacy and morality, whether in Buganda ‘neotraditional’ mobilizations or Museveni's modernist vision of politics. Theebimeezaand the government ban imposed on them in 2009 reveal the entrenchment of the vision of a ‘bifurcated’ public sphere, the separation of a sphere of ‘development’ and a sphere of ‘politics’, the latter being only accessible to educated ‘enlightened’ individuals – despite the revolutionary discourse and the institutionalization of the Movementist ‘grassroots democracy’ model in 1986.

The persistence of ‘normal’ catchment management despite the participatory turn: Exploring the power effects of competing frames of reference

Presented as a panacea for the problems of environmental management, ‘participation’ conceals competing frames of meaning. ‘Ladders of participation’ explain insufficiently why public engagement is often limited to consultation, even within so-called higher level partnerships. To explain how participation is shaped to produce more or less symmetric exchanges in processes of deliberation, this article distinguishes between (1) discourses/practices, (2) frames and (3) power effects. This article’s empirical focus is the experience of participatory catchment organisations and their central but under-researched role in integrated catchment management. In addition to an analysis of policy statements and other relevant documents, this article draws on qualitative interview and participant-observation data gathered in an international participatory knowledge exchange that we facilitated among four participatory catchment organisations (and various other agencies). Results suggest that while statements about legislation promise symmetric engagements, the mechanics of legislation frame participation as asymmetric consultation. In their own arenas, participatory catchment organisations deploy participation within a framework of grassroots democracy, but when they engage in partnership with government, participation is reshaped by at least four competing frames: (1) representative democracy, which admits, yet captures, the public’s voice; (2) professionalisation, which can exclude framings that facilitate more symmetric engagement; (3) statutory requirements, which hybridise participatory catchment organisations to deliver government agendas and (4) evidence-based decision-making, which tends to maintain knowledge hierarchies. Nevertheless, participatory catchment organisations proved capable of reflecting on their capture. We thus conclude that the co-production of science and society, and the power effects of framing, must become explicit topics of discussion in processes of environmental policy deliberation for participation to result in more symmetric forms of public engagement.

Corruption and Democracy in Nigerian Local Government

Local government is created to ensure meaningful development of the grassroots through participatory approach. Democracy therefore serves as veritable avenue through which the purpose for which local government is created can be achieved. But, unfortunately in Nigeria, democracy has not thrived at the grassroots level due to endemic corruption. Some members of the Nigerian public have expressed their opinion to the effect that our anticorruption crusade in the last twelve years has been deficient in credibility because it appeared to lack the support of the Federal Executive Council who only rarely expressed their support in public. For the purpose of this study we adopt content analysis. This study therefore examines critically the effect of corruption on grassroots democracy and development, and concludes that corruption be deterred and punished in the local government system to enhance democratic participation of citizenry and effective service delivery.

Occupy the System! Societal Constitutionalism and Transnational Corporate Accounting

Today’s most pressing constitutional question is posed by a global economic system whose expansive tendencies seem no longer controllable. In addressing this question, the theory of Societal Constitutionalism apparently shifts established ideological coordinates by developing a theory of the self-constitutionalization of social spheres. It seeks to combine the virtues of grassroots democracy with the sophistication of systemic social theory. Thus, its normative claim can be formulated as an oxymoron: “Occupy the System!” The claim is an oxymoron because it points to the apparent impossibility of critical social theory in a functionally differentiated society: How can a functional system such as the economy be “occupied” or “democratized”? Yet the oxymoron contains a grain of truth. With a view to the concrete example of transnational standard-setting procedures in the field of corporate accounting, this article examines institutional and systemic processes that enable an emerging political discourse at the core of the global economic system.

Grassroots democracy, non-state approaches, and popular empowerment in rural Philippines

Discourses on grassroots democracy in Asia and elsewhere often focus on local governance issues such as decentralization, devolution, and local autonomy. Among social movements, discussions center on interventions in the political process through advocacies and campaigns on regime and system change or devising strategies and practices that engage the state. In all of the above, the state and state-related institutions are the central concern. There is, however, another dimension that remains relatively unexplored, one where the state recedes in importance and value. This alternative dimension looks at how poor and marginalized communities have been able to appropriate spaces and manage their own economic and political lives through mechanisms that lie outside the formal systems of governance and economics. This non-state sector encompasses political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. Utilizing notions adapted from Scott's “non-state spaces,” Migdal's “weak state” paradigm, and the concept of “pop...

Reinhold Niebuhr's Quest for Balance in the Public Oversight of Market Economies

Three basic themes played indispensable roles in Reinhold Niebuhr’s engagements with economic issues: (1) the foundational importance of a theological anthropology for his critical assessment of complex social, economic, and political issues; (2) his focus on two clashing theories of economic order: Adam’s Smith’s doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism and Karl Marx’s revolutionary vision for the collective ownership of property within a centralized state system; and (3) his endorsement of a realistic yet viable alternative to these two classic theories, one that involved pragmatic and incremental steps toward fostering economic justice through the public regulation and oversight of a free-market economy. These pragmatic measures included allocating government resources for vitally important public goods and services at federal, state, and local levels. Though Niebuhr was initially drawn to some form of democratic socialism, he embraced this incremental strategy within the context of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s implementation of his New Deal agenda. My analysis of Niebuhr’s contributions concludes with attention to new challenges confronting contemporary quests for economic justice in a post–New Deal era, one marked Soundings, Vol. 95, No. 4, 2012 Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania state University, University Park, Pa di sc us sio n diussion

Traditional Grassroots Democracy Among Tribes of North East India

Traditional Grassroots Democracy Among Tribes of North East India