Less Voting, More Democracy: Grassroots Consensus Seeking and the Green Party

Grassroots Democracy means more people formally voting for stuff more often -- or so I have been told by a number of Greens pushing for more "democracy" in Green Party functions.

Any hint of representational democracy -- where a selected representative reports to and votes the desires of a larger group -- is rejected as somehow anti-democratic.

Interestingly, this idea of more voters and more voting is, to my way of thinking, actually antithetical to the consensus building paradigm. More important, it does not in any way assure anything like Grassroots Democracy, while directly increasing the complexity and cost of taking a group decision.

If we look at two different formulations of this particular key value we can see that Green Grassroots Democracy can be achieved by methods other than more voting -- indeed, might best be achieved by governmental (or party) consesnus building, even over complex mathematical formula to achieve something like proportional representation after yet another vote.


GPUS Grassroots Democracy

The following version comes from the Green Party US website (emphasis added):
"GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives and not be subject to the will of another. Therefore, we will work to increase public participation at every level of government and to ensure that our public representatives are fully accountable to the people who elect them. We will also work to create new types of political organizations which expand the process of participatory democracy by directly including citizens in the decision-making process."

The California "question" version of the 10 KV from the Green Party of California website expresses essentially the same sentiment:

Grassroots Democracy: How can we develop systems that allow and encourage us to control the decisions that affect our lives? How can we ensure that representatives will be fully accountable to the people who elected them? How can we develop planning mechanisms that would allow citizens to develop and implement their own preferences for policies and spending priorities? How can we encourage and assist the "mediating institutions"--family, neighborhood organization, church group, voluntary association, ethnic club--to recover some of the functions now performed by the government? How can we relearn the best insights from American traditions of civic vitality, voluntary action and community responsibility?

More Voting Does NOT Mean More Democracy

Neither version of this Key Value says anything about more direct voting. Indeed, both versions are silent as to process, seeking only the same outcome: The empowerment of individuals to have -- and feel that they have -- a direct effect on the decisions that affect their lives.

That is, Grassroots Democracy is focused on facilitating meaningful input by the average person, not just input by elected officials or other leaders. But there is nothing in the concept about more direct voting.

Simple public meetings and other informal input can go a long way to achieving this goal.

Early public input, at the start of a decision making process -- at the "brainstorming" level -- are important. Additional, later meetings at the start of decision making processes as the viable options are identified, and again as options are weighed and winnowed down, go a long way to providing this input for example.

Transparency of decision making details, and leaders committed to truly listening and making decisions based on what is heard finish the process. An effective, widespread outreach and stakeholder input process may not result in decisions that everyone likes 100%, but it can approximate a consensus process with a group the size of a small city.

Or even a county-wide group of registered Greens.

More than a few municipal governments, and particularly one of the governments I am most familiar with, the City of Pasadena, has gone a long way to implement this version of Grassroots Democracy. It is very effective, and even when people here disagree with decisions, most feel listened to and acknowledged.

It is not uncommon, even, for the opinion of dissenters to be noted by the majority, and an effort to accommodate such concerns made both before and after a decision is taken.

It is both puzzling to me and perhaps understandable that this mediation-based Municipal model has not seen more use by Green Party groups. It is understandable, perhaps, given the generalized lack of experience in actual governance of most Greens. Puzzling because it fits the description of Grassroots Democracy quite well -- and is subject to varying degrees of depth of outreach depending on the size of the group and the importance of the decision.

Rather than attempt to create more opportunities for direct voting -- such as additional plenaries, or congresses or regional meetings-- the GP should work to (1) train GP activists in the mediative, consensus seeking model and (2) implement small scale, truly representational democracy. We Greens should take a lesson from current models of progressive government that are working now, making them even more flexible for use in GP settings.