World Youth Movement for Democracy

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Laura Helen Lively
USA

Rediscovering Democracy: A Citizen's Perspective

Citizens need to rediscover democracy in order to address common problems. Our democracy was designed for citizens to congregate, identify and weigh the approaches to issues important to the nation, and direct the government to act on publicly chosen solutions. The spirit of this collaboration has been lost. We need to create public spaces where citizens can remember and relearn the practices of democracy in order to decide together how to act on the obstacles facing our society today.

In the United States, we are experiencing a crisis of democracy. People's faith and trust in their elected officials has diminished, and citizens feel helpless to affect change. Citizens say they cannot rely on the government - which was created to allow them to participate in their own self-governance - to take action on public problems. They cite partisan politics, campaign contributions, lobbies, corruption, and lack of government accountability as to why they feel disconnected from the decision-making process and isolated from their fellow citizens.

Although citizens feel disenfranchised by their government, they lack the motivation to do something about public problems that affect them. To most, fulfilling their civic duty extends no further than voting and paying their taxes. This bare-minimum idea of citizenship must change if we are to act together on our own initiative and forge a comprehensive body politic for dealing with our problems in the future.

However, it is hard to act on public problems when you do not believe you can affect change. Many citizens, when asked if they believe they can make a difference, say they cannot-or that perhaps they can help change their local communities, but do not believe they can connect these efforts to national change.

I say the problem is not that democracy isn't working for the people, it's that people have forgotten how to make democracy work. In part, this problem may be attributed to our elected representatives' lack of accountability to citizens and the tendency towards the preservation of individual power, but the problem also lies in the citizen's lack of self-efficacy. Why do we expect that the government should solve all of our problems if democracy was designed for citizens to be the decision makers? Why do we lack faith in the principles on which our country was founded?

There is a pervasive hypocrisy that has formed in the United States regarding the prioritization of our rights over our responsibilities. We say, "We are citizens! This is not how democracy is supposed to work," yet we often do nothing to stand up to our government and we do not take responsibility when, as a result, our problems are left unsolved.

Despite today's complacent political culture, there are Americans who understand their civic responsibilities and who are trying to engage their fellow citizens in active democratic participation. They are beginning to see democracy in a new frame of mind-one that sees government as driven by the people-instead of by power, money, and special interests.

For almost a year, I have been working with the Kettering Foundation and the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (IISD) to assist in capacity-building projects in both the United States and around the world. What I have found is a renewed effort to stimulate knowledge and to empower people to solve their own problems by changing how they look at democracy, citizenship, and politics.

One democracy-building project I have worked with closely is the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network. On 18 U.S. campuses, the rapidly growing Network creates safe public spaces at high schools and universities for students to hold dialogues on racial, ethnic, and other strained human relationships. By meeting with a diverse group of students consistently over the period of a year, students' interactions with and perceptions of each other mature; through a five-stage process, they learn to trust and understand each other; under the careful guidance of student facilitators, they are empowered to act on their newfound relationships by sparking change on their campus.

These students are part of a youth movement to re-learn citizenship: they discuss their problems and potential solutions with each other (citizens) and present their decisions and requests for change to their deans (governments). They emerge from their experience with the problem-solving skills and capacity to affect change in their own communities after graduation - be it in graduate school, in the workplace, or in their neighborhoods. They are not just learning about the decision-making process - they are doing democracy.

These campus community efforts have inspired me to want to work for the democratic ideal-for the continual practice of identifying and upholding values that have been lost to our society. Working for the democratic ideal means just that - constant work. It takes effort and commitment to question why democracy isn't working as it should and to envision what an ideal society would look like.

Democracy requires people working together: it is, after all, of the people, so the people are those who must decide how to govern themselves. This can happen in a nation divided among races, ethnicities, religions and genders, but to do so we must interact and share our ideas with each other in settings where we can build productive relationships over time.

This is especially important because youth today face new challenges that require understanding of our goals and each other more than ever before. Our problems have become not just our problems anymore. They have become international problems. Today, we are facing global terrorism, war, and the reduction of political freedoms. If we do not work on democracy here at home, we will lose our legitimacy abroad because we will not have conducted ourselves according to our values.

Our foreign policy needs to reflect the kind of genuine collaboration that is the essence of democracy. The U.S. cannot solve all of the world's problems. We need a deeper understanding of all the factors involved in a problem before deciding to act - especially if those living in the other country will bear the brunt of our decisions. We need to offer our support, not our direction, as other societies learn their own forms of democracy.

Luckily, more and more Americans seem to be aware of our international image than ever before. Many have decided to act to reverse the negative perceptions of the U.S. in order to restore an image that reflects the values of the American people. Some do this at an individual level by reaching out to citizens in other countries when they travel abroad, engaging them in conversation and showing them that Americans can also listen. Others look to involve our international friends into group discussions about democracy and relations between our countries. I was part of one of these endeavors this past February as I traveled to Casablanca, Morocco for the ninth meeting of IISD's Arab-American-European Dialogue.

For three years, the same group of American and European diplomats, professors, and NGO leaders have met with Arab Islamists and democratic reformers to discuss the relations among the three regions. The meetings have evolved from shouting matches about the harm each side has done to the other to productive dialogues focused on the work participants can do together to promote democracy in the Arab region, respect each other's sovereignty, culture, and human rights, and to envision a ideal relationship among the countries of all parties involved.

Over the three days I spent in Casablanca, I observed a remarkable democratic transition. It was the first dialogue attended by three Iraqi parliamentarians who represented both Shi'a and Sunni parties - people whose lives would be in danger if they were to meet together in Baghdad. They welcomed the opportunity to discuss the problems between their parties and the obstacles to Iraqi reconciliation. As they could not speak frankly to each other at home, the dialogue provided a safe space for them to do so.

After venting their frustrations with American policy in Iraq to the group, the Iraqis' attitude began to change in the dialogue setting. They learned that the first step to improving relationships was to listen. In just three days, their attitude towards the group had completely reversed-by learning that we would respect them and their opinions, they began to respect the group and each other. They began to contribute more to the dialogue rather than hinder it, and they even apologized for earlier outbursts.  

Democracy is reflected in the human relationships formed during the course of this meeting. After all, democracy is the form of government that best reflects the human race's potential to respect freedom, human life and equality for all groups in society (especially for those who are underrepresented). It is conceivable, therefore, that it would manifest itself in a room where positive human foundations were being built.

Seeing democratic values and discourse in action made me very hopeful for democracy's future. From a U.S. point of view, I did not know what to expect from the Arab participants. I was pleased to find out that despite the violence, the devastation, and the hopelessness portrayed by the media, there existed people in the Arab world who were passionate about bringing reform to their countries. It became clear to me from meeting these people that Islamic values are compatible with democratic values, and that with their efforts democracy could prevail in the region-although it may not look exactly like our own.  

The Arab participants' determination shook my sense of citizenship. These were people who had more faith and conviction in democracy than my fellow citizens did. They were angry: they knew something was wrong with their relationship to government, they identified what it was, and they felt compelled to act collectively to change the system. It made me wonder again why, as a nation, Americans have become so complacent.

I think that many Americans are lulled into a sense of security by our elected officials and a media that intends to preserve the status quo instead of recognizing certain truths: that the pursuit of individual power and special interests are hurting our democracy. However, many citizens are beginning to see cracks in our social fabric as a result of this misleading information. It has become apparent that our political freedoms, such as rights to privacy, have been infringed upon and our political responsibilities, such as collective problem solving, have been forgotten.

Democracy is not just elections and other institutionalized governing mechanisms. It is also not just having a civil society that promotes values conducive to a collective respect for the rule of law (although this is very important!) It is not something that you can put in place and then sit back to watch it work; it requires constant upkeep from each citizen.

This upkeep involves a process of creative re-evaluation of who we are as a nation and where we are going. Democracy is an ideal approach for how citizens can more equally and effectively participate in their own future. In this sense, democracy can only ever exist in the future because there is no consensus among citizens as to what a democratic ideal actually looks like. Nor will there ever be a consensus. It is in both the convictions citizens have in democracy and the contradictions existing among their ideals that will allow us to move towards a deeper level of understanding of each other and of how democracy should work. We may only accomplish this by talking together, taking into consideration each other's ideals, struggling with these contradictions and deepening the collective understanding of our civic roles.

There are steps we can take to allow for this creative process. If the opportunity for this type of democratic dialogue became a national priority, I would include the following in my vision of an ideal society:

  • Respect for human rights and the rule of law
  • A political culture in which every citizen feels responsible for and engages in solving his or her own problems and the public's problems;
  • An environment of trust that allows citizens to feel safe to express themselves because others respect their identity;
  • A citizen's sense of ownership in the system of government, whether they are part of the minority or the majority;
  • A recognition of the sanctity of both rights and responsibilities

Education is the most powerful way to instill future generations with a vision of values and ethics that Americans seek to live by. Unless the practices of citizenship are learned in early education, future generations will not be equipped with the mind set that will allow them to fully explore the possibilities of democracy.

One way for teachers and schools to do this is to redefine terms such as "politics" and "democracy" as things that not just governments, but also citizens participate in. By changing our definition of "politics" and removing the negative connotations that are associated with individual power, money, and special interests, we can create a special kind of power that can come from the citizen and the relationships he or she forms-the power to influence and affect change. If we look at power in this way, politics becomes something that average Americans can take part in and the instrument through which they can participate in their own collective decision-making.

It is important to realize, however, that the practices of citizenship and democracy cannot be learned solely in the classroom - they must also be learned by doing. If schools were to create spaces on campus for students to work through these questions and concepts together, students would be able to learn democratic practices through their own initiatives. One way for schools to do this would be for them to encourage dialogue on campus. This is especially effective at the university level, where the chance to meet people from different backgrounds increases as a result of admissions-based diversity initiatives.

Dialogue is a key component for human understanding as it focuses on the relationships behind society's problems. Youth participation in dialogues will yield students who break down social barriers on campus, graduates who will be prepared to deal with conflictual professional relationships beyond the microcosm of university life, and citizens who will know how to listen and include all points of view while making their decisions together.

None of the steps toward democracy is easy, as they require our constant effort and commitment. Our success will depend on our diligence and our faith in each other. However, it is my belief that our generation is up to the challenge. We can nurture this form of working democracy. As a society, we can move closer towards refining and implementing our democratic ideals by actively participating in our own process of change.