written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin (find your bioregion/watershed)

Toward a Bioregional State:

Bioregional Letter #21

CDIs: Civic Democratic Institutions that Facilitate
a Particular Watershed Jurisdiction's Politics
Through an Informal Rotating Citizens Recognition Voting Framework

[Editors note: This was written well before the ideas of the website Toward a Bioregional State that commenced in November 2001, well before I began to be interested in specifically a formal ecological facilitation and a specifically ecologically sound democratic theory of politics as the route towards sustainability. This was written before I saw the CDI in terms of grounding it ecologically as a watershed's facilitation tool. The CDI thus became "Article I." of Bioregional Letter #20 Constitution of Sustainability. If the ideas in Toward a Bioregional State all represent a common lineage from around November 2001 when I began to consider formal democratic procedural changes as the route towards sustainability, the CDI represents a separate lineage of informal democratic facilitation in general. I found the CDI ideas important in their formal repercussions later, when they were added as an important check and balance against any corruptions that may accrue within the formal frameworks of representation in the bioregional state.]

CDI: Civic Democratic Institutions: Preparing and Maintaining Local Input in Nation-State Level Politics and Cultural Frames

Cultural discourses are inherently political, which is shown in much of the political sociology of culture literature [Mellucci, 1995; Billig, 1995; Nash, 1989; Levine and Mainwaring, 1989; Navarro, 1989]. It can either make or break a successful mobilization to have a widely shared sense a fortiori of activities and interpretations of the world.

Especially in nation-states, political parties tend to be the reifying structures with the widest participation, and thus these nation-state political parties both aid in defining nation-state culture, as well as prescribing it to suit systemic interests in the aforementioned systemic drift which leaves local areas shortchanged culturally speaking. Crenson's understanding of non-politics is readily witnessed in the selectivity of these national-political parties in discussing local issues.

The CDI aids in local area formulation of their own political cultural frames and discourses, based on their community interests which are created out of their local political processes.

The Civic Democratic Institution form (CDI) is a structure for defensibly maintaining and registering local sentiment in a form of a 'living poll,' if you will, recognizing any individuals who are admired or culturally trusted in a degree in social relations. The Appendix One of this essay is a copy of a web-published document (at http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/cdi3.htm) describing the functions, features, and structures of the CDI.

One of the rationales of for creating the CDI was to embed organizationally different groups together in some degree (in my first thoughts) in an urban context, because I was initially worried about increasing social bifurcations in not only this country but worldwide.

And following from this sociopolitical isolation comes what I saw as a contributing factor for the nation-state failing its ability to address democratic and equity issues successfully because it was so divided. Bonacich's arguments for the systemic effects of divided labor markets comes close to my observations, [Bonacich, 1972] about the importance of social cultural forms of 'split labor markets' facilitating or debilitating particular political cultures. I wanted to stir up the pot a bit--yet only in a way that the people themselves could keep the stirring continuing, as well as in a way that would lead to moderation in politics instead of reactionary politics.

Throughout the description of the CDI in this essay, I will be using urban sites as the primary examples of where this would be useful. Because of the degree of sociospatial separation as well as 'ethnically' split labor markets, people thus lack of ability to organize a localized coalitional politics in a wider sense in an urban context. People exist in different networks sociospatially in an urban context. [Fischer, 1975] Thus the CDI would be most useful in urban areas, though it is in rural areas, because of their multiplexity of network connection, where it may have a lower 'critical mass' to be seen as useful. [Marwell and Oliver, 1984]

I should explain two terms at this point: multiplex and simplex relationships. Multiplex relationships are most likely to be found in rural areas, where particular individuals may share many different overlapping roles with other people in the vicinity. For example, a father-son-daughter business, in which they attend the same religious organization as most of the people who employ their services, who may be indeed the very people who loaned them the money to start the business. This is one complex example of a 'multiplex' social environment--where individual relationships may be more likely to carry many different roles, than, say, in an urban context.

Simplex relationships occur readily in an urban context. In urban sites, the population density allows for great organizational growth and the potential of individuals social relationships to become very splayed in urban space and very compartmentalized. More choice results in relationships which are simplex--and people are more likely to have only one level of relationship, like for instance a cab driver and his or her fare, or an economic exchange at a fast food restaurant. Multiplex and simplex relationships make it easier to comprehend what the CDI designs to do: make urban simplex relationships more multiplex in character, which provides for less 'critical mass' required to achieve unified cultural and political pressures.

The CDI acts as an 'introduction service' for urbanites, separated by the innately splaying sociospatial networks of urban areas and organizational life, and out of which a more complex cultural milieu is recognized. With the increasingly complexity of the urban culture comes less likelihood to be swayed by external solutions to their problems. With a more multiplex coalitional structure which the CDI aims to facilitate, community organizations become local systemic actors. From this localized context, they can network with other cities for wider nation-state level politics. . . .

The CDI conception is so webbed into social feedback effects it's rather germane to discuss it in terms of what it does, than what it 'is.' The CDI 'grounds' coalition building into existing cultural networks. It uses existing thoughts and feelings towards other citizens, pools them together and delivers a tally to the people of whom they find representative or admire, as a group. This brings local politics into integration with local cultural forms, and makes state elites work to maintain their power by reducing first-dimensional power relationships culturally speaking. Instead of local actors working to get the state's or a political party's attention, the latter groups have to acquiesce more when there is a stronger and more vocal local cultural milieu which is less dependent and more resistant to external ideas about what is 'good policy.'

The CDI balances out the highly unequal systemic power which occurs between a low-input, simplex urban politics and powerful nation-state political parties. The CDI creates a mobilizing forum on the local level which is designed to embed local groups in a long term process of coalition building as a social institutional process. This process is tailor made to the local cite because the actors which are recognized are selected for several traits on the organizational level of the CDI. The CDI makes sure they are

(1) popular amongst various groups instead of merely their own 'political machine,'
(2) with a cultural sense of creating an intermediary and facilitating role in cultural sense, instead of creating an ideological reactionary influence,
(3) and in addition, the CDI makes sure they are personally motivated to fulfill this role without any incentives besides the status recognition which becomes a symbolic rallying frame for them being framed in a social and political capacity by the CDI recognition.

The CDI aims at popularizing local political coalitional development as a cultural process, within cultural networks. The CDI [per se] has nothing to do with changing government structure, or changing voting law, etc. These winnowing aspects of the CDI are effected by its dual-tier voting structure, and the turnover period of one CDI is short enough (one year) to allow for issues to develop as soon as they become widely pertinent, instead of growing unobserved and unaddressed by government and exploding into violent conflict. The CDI voting mechanism is described in Appendix One, and I turn the reader to examine it further there.

Other CDI-like forms (or forums, in this case) in operation around the world are the Cuban political 'affirmative' political structure of localized political input, and the fiscal budgetary 'affirmative democracy' of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande du Sul, Brazil. [Navarro, 1997]. Including the CDI in this group, they have several uniting features:

(1) a mix of direct and representative features, to create a middle ground;
(2) they attempt to get around political party formation which divides a populace on a local level by an integrationist and coalitional input form of operation,
(3) by a means to institutionalize coalition building as a political means of integrating community level cultural organizations with local government level structures 'culturally,' thus minimizing sociospatial separation amongst different networks.

Though I mentioned in point (2) that they attempt to get around ideological conceptions, I mean in the sense, that they are structured to be deliberative political arenas instead of combative public factions (which I would argue exist only when they are left out of the deliberative process in some sense, in the past).

If the political theorist Goodnow and his ideas had been successful instead of had been co-opted in the Progressive Era of the United States (circa 1900), urban politics might have been quite different. His ideas of an urban administrative structure which moved to integrate local political input into urban governmental structure in a deliberative and consular sense would have been cut of the same cloth as the abovementioned three. [Frisch, 1982]

The CDI 'holds open' the possibility for effective democratic structures, which ideological and identity politics normatively closes and separates, leading to a further debilitation of the political democratic process, as systemically those unconnected with the government structure face only their small groups of identity or ideological adherents as their audiences against the state.

I was particularly interested in the 'whipping' cultural effects of unrepresentative political victories due to the lack of other candidates or discrimination, etc. There are two major choices in situations like these: wait, and in the next election elect someone else; or, if there is nothing resembling a group willing to challenge, just sitting back and being frustrated.

The first option, I would argue is less based on issues therefore and more capable of being based on a cycle of revenge. This can easily be manipulated to get people into power who merely have to say "I'm the exact opposite of so-and-so, and will do the exactly opposite of so-and-so,' and with little other strategic choice for the individual voter, they generally vote in droves for this challenging candidate. And what occurs generally once this 'challenger' candidate gets into power? It becomes obvious that they have merely used the public's lack of choice of other venues of reaction for their own ends. Generally they do nothing different, and the cycle of the 'false challenger' begins again--because of a lack of political method choice. One is forced to vote 'for' someone when one actually would rather more directly like to vote 'against' a particular person. The CDI integrates this, described below, in a 'voter veto.'

The second option: the disgruntled frustration, of saying to hell with it all, has been the option of most of the United States population for many years. This is related to a lack of recognized leaders. This is not related I would argue to a sense that there are no leaders. There are. Yet many potential leaders realize that the game as it is is a losing one.

There are two intents of the CDI: one is symbolical, and the other is deliberative.

The symbolical is described first. The CDI moves to make these leaders visible in the background without having them to do anything. It just recognizes them, and moves to recognize them with a facilitators role, which is 'seen' as actively taking on a social frame of recognition, taking on a status symbol which becomes a potential rallying point. The CDI 'election' has shown symbolically to the people at large that these people already have an informal 'party' following. This is the symbolic intent of the CDI.

The deliberative intent of the CDI is recognizing these individuals in addition as a cultural 'forum' group. Their recognition is both individual and civic. The CDI is nothing like a governmental structure, it is a cultural body of admired citizens--the whole spectrum.

Dealing with the symbolic context once more, it is the spectrum only of those who are 'widely' admired. In other words, the CDI attempts to disfranchise machine politics structural hold on cultural creation. That's a mouthful, so I will restate. I am saying that political parties tend to develop identities for nation-states, for cities, for people as individuals because they are the social status system as much as the nation-state political participants. And in time, a simulacrum develops where the 'culture' becomes the feedback which the political actors have selectively listened to, since everyone else who is ignored either goes hoarse, or just shuts up. Either way, a system develops between what official culture is and what politics is. Both reinforce each other.

The CDI aims to include local systemic power in this official cultural capacity of discourse. The CDI moves to create a way to sustain a coalitional based recognition system which is wider that what the political status quo would allow for their conceptions of what the 'culture' is. In other words, the CDI wants to widen the cultural recognition, which would move the political structures to adapt over time. The CDI wants to 'hold open' the cultural coalitional 'channel' of discourse as an option.

Continuing this, what about the racists, the fascists, extremists, etc.? Wouldn't they get equal voice? Extremists would have to pass the litmus test of the second round of voting, where the longer term of nine months voting meshes with the published tallies. These tallies allow people to vote against the people they hate, instead of indirectly finding someone else to vote for (who is only there mobilizing and capitalizing upon the widely shared opposition to this other person). The CDI just says that voting can cut both ways--both for or against these recognitions. This creates a nice, wide group of centrists, who don't lean either way.

Centrists? Yet doesn't that edit out of cultural recognition anyone interested in change? No. A quote from Max Weber may be opportune at this point, concerning external social selection pressures within organizations which lead to the 'organizational cream of the crop' being the least definitive elements possible as to satisfy more constituencies.

The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not alone or even predominately owning to the "human, all too human" factors, which naturally occur in the process of . . .selection [in an organizational context]. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of faculty members or educational ministries responsible for the fact that so many mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities. The predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human cooperation, especially of the cooperation of several bodies. . . .

A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be traced over many centuries and which are the most important controllable examples of a selection [in an organizational context]. The cardinal who is said to be the 'favorite' only rarely has a change to win out. The rule is rather that the Number Two cardinal or the Number Three wins out. The same holds for the President of the United States. [Weber, 1958]

Recall the the CDI individuals are not brought together out of organizational politics, and are more akin to a slow, private accumulation of votes over the first voting period of nine months. This crates a highly diverse body of recognized people unaffected by organizational winnowing to mediocre persons or persons who have been designed to 'fit' in the existing cultural system. The second tier of voting publicizes their relative standing to each other, and allows people to vote for people they had forgotten to vote for before, or in the particular case of the CDI, winnow out those they despise by voting against them.

Since the voter can vote for as many (for or against) as he or she pleases, the pressure to come up with one (mediocre and predictable) candidate) is minimized. The idea of the CDI is to develop intermediaries, those whose appearance is relatively unclouded by massive popularity or infamy, since these people will most likely have just as many people who would like to see them disappear as they would like to have them recognized further. With a roster of intermediaries, recognized as individuals and as a tacit group, the organizational politics can develop from there in a political process within which these intermediaries can decide upon what are the major concerns of their civic area without having a great deal of systemic input or state-connected people involved, thus more likely to speak their minds instead of upholding an image of what they feel they have to represent. The same principles of intentionally minimizing the social repercussions and thus allowing for greater citizen honesty of conscience were effective in the representative debates on the Constitution of the United States in the 1780's.

In the CDI, legitimacy comes from their personal vote totals, and no one is running against anyone else. After the individual recognition, the organizational politics develop off a very different and more complex systemic base than public power structures in society. The CDI designed with the external effect of it as much as the organizational qualities.

But what about the lump of centrists? Isn't that the definition of politically inert? Moderation? Doesn't that maintain the status quo?

I have had this argument before. Presently, we are not living in an epoch of centrist led status quo. We are living in an era of extremist led status quo--allowed due to co-opting of local cultural frames for uncultural interests. The present status quo is not actively maintained by centrists. It is maintained by the continuing successful appeals to extremists--from the age of Greek tyranny to the present 'wrapping oneself in the flag' of the Republicans and/or the Democrats. It would seem that centrism is intentionally and structurally avoided and deselected against in the present organization of the nation state, and unrepresentative political ecologies develop which maintain this process.

I have already found out that my definition of moderation is perhaps quite different than what it normatively represents in public speech--maintaining the status quo.

Personally, I consider the current status quo as a very radical polity indeed. It fails to deserve the term 'conservative' or 'moderate'. It is dangerous to allow it to continue 'unmoderated' by democratic input.

If there is one discourse switch I would feel be of great use is considering the existing status quo as a radical and one sided polity, capable of being maintained because of a lack of political mediation and moderation. Thus, 'moderation' in my sense is a sense of increasing complexity and less issuing out of ideological platforms, and more coming out of cultural networks and humanizing socialization which brings groups through the representatives of the CDI together socially on a local context. As I mention in the Appendix, the CDI is an 'introduction service' for generating local consensus and coalitional based political pressures.

It's a strategic and solvable problem I argue on how to keep these democratic channels from 'sealing' into formal ideological frameworks, which can be co-opted by external elites (out of the urban context of groups without representation). The complexity, the shifting quality, and a system of generating multiplex relationships in an urban context thus making it difficult for clientalistic elites to swoop in and take advantage of economic desperation or of desire for 'solutions' by ideological mimicry of 'local values' platforms. The CDI creates and holds effectively 'open' a process of coalitional politics.

Power wins and will always win. We have to find a way to join in its deliberations on a long term basis. We have to find a way to disrupt power by participating in it, thus pulling its dimensionality of relations to a more local level. But in disrupting power, on the other hand, we should respect that a society will only go so far before it will want 'normalcy.' Even if that normalcy was a prison, it was home. A great deal of power is always given to those who promise stability, and people will vote for any groups who want to promise it. So if we upset security issues, we will have lost. We have to walk between these two poles of disrupting power and respecting a society's desire for stability.

Everything strategically I propose takes that into account. The CDI assures that it will be utilized as an intermediary force structurally speaking. It affects a change in the interactions of how politics comes together on the local level, and thus, it is one step toward the 'moderation--'the democratization--of the radical neoliberal regime we presently face, held together by unrepresentative media structures warping our ability to communicate issues to ourselves and unrepresentative state power arrangements that preference artificial corporate citizens over human citizens.

So the CDI is both conservative and radical: conservative in the sense that it is coalitional and non-extremist and based on localism and community issues; and radical only in the sense that it actually asks local people to participate in democratic procedures.

This I have defined as a moderating influence, considering the present status quo a radical and extremist view which only exists because of lack of systemic power to challenge it. The sociopolitical effect of the CDI is to dismantle sociospatial distance between social networks, to help generate solidarity and coalitional consensus building structures in society. Ideologies of a more general urban interest can develop due to the CDI holding 'open' the channel of local coalition building for politics in the wider political ecology, instead of the factionalism and clientelism we witness and are told to consider 'democratic.'

Merely to look at the structure of the CDI misses the point, because I am looking at its effect on informal networks, socialization, ideological creation--instead of just the formal structure of the CDI. I am looking at the wider social effects of the CDI's recognition process on political formation.

And best of all, no one has to force people to do anything. This is optional. Research on incentives say that incentives for action (especially political action) attracts a population sample which may be more interested in their own individual benefit and may be even opposed to the politics per se which the private incentive was designed to get them involved in in the first place. The CDI makes sure that the 'cream of the crop' is selected--those that want to participate, and who are motivated themselves (instead of motivated by solely private incentives).

. . . .In the text of the CDI (Appendix One) I mention that this would be useful for facilitating coalitions and networking in both rural and urban areas. So I see a role for the CDI in 'both' areas, through they are interrelated in the same political economy despite being to some extent separate cultural arenas. Possibly due to denser and more multiplex relationships in rural areas, the critical mass [Marwell and Oliver, 1984] to introduce the CDI would be inherently easier for people to achieve.

As many in political sociology would express, cultural frames of discourse are highly important as bases for politics in all societies. In a sense what is cultural is profoundly related to the interaction with the structural. [Billig, 1995; Nash, 1989], because it provides formal network mobilization material against the structural when the time is sensed to be opportune. The CDI is a structure for facilitating local and nation-state political coalitional building from a different systemic level--a sited consensus politics which can develop into a localized systemic power. Developing a vocabulary to define structures as having externalized political ecology effects, and particular political ecologies as perpetuating particular structures is one area where we require more research.

To summarize, the CDI uses existing cultural networks to build political coalitions, and it brings people together to make their own bridges between each other. It embeds politics into culture, instead of political machines serving us what out 'culture' is. And the CDI makes sure through a double blind and double round voting system that people with political machines are dampened as a factor and held back. They are either swamped by the inability to keep up their advertising throughout the long nine months it takes to accumulate voting totals in the first round, or since it is so easy to vote against anyone who attempts to machine together their candidacy of huge campaigns will be deselected as a waste of money since people can veto this person without having to wait for someone else appearing to vote 'for.'

It gives the veto effectively to the people directly, instead of the people depending on a champion to oppose the other (perhaps previous?) champion they elected or recognized. In other words, all the advertising and machine politics in the world is marginalized, since the CDI allows people who lack a candidate or a political machine, merely to vote against a person they want to see ousted from popularity. This is what they wanted to do anyway--just see that this person doesn't win. The present strategy which the system selects for is forcing them to back someone else equally powerful. Is that a check on power, if you have to have recourse to it to deal with power? Better to put the veto into the people's hands for cultural issues. And it is harder for local leaders to sell out, since they are part of local group networks.

The CDI moves to give people veto against what they consider empty promises and lies without depending upon a 'false challenger' to express their opposition, as well as simultaneously networking people in a forum whom the citizenry has recognized as capable of a intermediary role.

It devolves ideological politics to a more sociospatially cultural network orientation in society which can hold much more complexity.

Furthermore, the CDI tends to instill more of a faith in democratic procedure than national political machines, multimillion dollar ad campaigns, and their corporate sponsors (both Democrat and Republican) can afford to purchase for themselves. It develops an ideological politics more recognizably localized which considers local citizens as a political force, instead of merely a market for distantly derived political platforms.

The CDI moves to claim cultural discourses for local areas, and in a sense, it is an institutional 'third space' [Soja, 1997] form which makes the city culturally capable of reproducing itself closer to the era of pre-capitalism. Pre-capitalism, the city itself was much more of a 'third space' by definition. It was a group of people before the rich and the poor began to stratify sociospatially in the city and communicate only within the system of worksites. The CDI vivifies urban culture and urban politics by socially developing an urban discourse which moderates the sociospatial network separation of capitalism in the city. The postmodern culture is highly related to this political frustration and lack of cultural integration I would posit. These in turn effect capacities for mobilizing for equity issues.

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See the related information about the particularly ecological application of the CDI in facilitating watershed based checks and balances with the other formal institutional design issues, in "Article I." of the Constitution of Sustainability or in the explanation about the Constitution of Sustainability in Bioregional Letter #20 that is described on the page of the list of bioregional letters.

contact:
mrkdwhit@wallet.com
mwhitake@ssc.wisc.edu

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