Is Real Power Sharing Possible?
A BETTER WAY DISCUSSES WITH HENRY TAM, AUTHOR OF TIME TO SAVE DEMOCRACY, WHAT IT TAKES FOR GENUINE POWER SHARING TO BE SECURED FOR COMMUNITIES.
Q: Some people say that the call for communities to work together through power sharing is unrealistic. What would be your response?
HT: It would only be unrealistic if people weren’t prepared to make it happen. I’m not saying it’s easy, but there are ways to nurture cooperative community interactions to produce more inclusive power dynamics. We just need to give them a chance.
Q: So what will it take to create the conditions for people to share and exercise power effectively?
HT: Based on extensive research findings and expert analyses from around the world, I would suggest that a number of things need to happen in parallel. First, you need to cultivate a sense of mutual responsibility. Members of communities should recognise that they are interdependent; and they cannot expect others to look out for them if they are not prepared to look out for others. Secondly, in order to reach informed agreement about what should be done or avoided, you need to embed cooperative enquiry into how people learn, review, and ascertain what merit their belief. Thirdly, you need to facilitate diverse forms of citizen participation so people can have a wide range of meaningful opportunities to consider issues and options, and add their reasoned assessment to the decision-making process.
Q: Let’s take your first point about mutual responsibility. What exactly is that supposed to entail? And if people don’t feel they should act responsibly towards others in their community, can anything change their attitudes?
HT: In many communities in the UK and elsewhere, attempts to get people to share power have failed because fearing that others would undermine them, some had pre-emptively sought to advance their own agenda at others’ expense. But such barriers can be overcome, if efforts are put into promoting a sense of mutual recognition of people’s readiness to cooperate with others, just as they would wish others to cooperate with them.
This simple Golden Rule – the oldest piece of moral advice in all cultures – can be sustained by a variety of tried and tested methods. We can remind people of the common threats they face, and involve them in devising shared missions to tackle them. Everything from dangerous infectious diseases to climate chaos and job insecurity, there are plenty of challenges to unite people. We can take a firm stand against all forms of prejudice and discrimination, so that divisive moves to fuel distrust and hate can be blocked off. Countless community-based familiarisation techniques have proven to be very effective in bringing people together constructively and exposing the lies about irrelevant differences. Sharing food and having common leisure pursuits, for example, have often helped to overcome unfounded suspicion. And we should do more to ensure the terms of membership of belonging to the community in question – the associated rights and responsibilities – are transparently applied and consistently upheld. Not taking such steps have all too often allowed negative perception of minority and migrant groups to become entrenched.
Q: But there’s no guarantee that people would see others without distortion, or recognise problems when ignorance or propaganda might displace them with pseudo threats to divert public attention. Mutual responsibility is a nice goal, but not always easy to achieve.
HT: That is why we need the second strand – cooperative enquiry – to be taken forward in parallel. Of course, people can overlook relevant facts, get misled, or become too distracted or confused to see the implications of what are put before them. We must acknowledge this rather than fall for some romanticised notion that every individual will always know what they should believe. At the same time, there is no need to concede that objective reasoning is impossible. What is required is the development of rational learning support and evidence-assessment infrastructure to facilitate cooperation in open and critical enquiries.
We have seen such development in formal teacher training, empirical scientific research, and impartial judicial deliberation. They are indispensable to discovering, reviewing, and revising what society should accept as true at any given time. And they need to be extended to and strengthened for education at every level so people understand how warranted beliefs are established through on-going investigation and revisable in the light of new evidence; for all decision-making bodies so that provisional assumptions can be scrutinised in the light of new facts; and for every form of communication so that false and misleading claims can be detected and halted.
Q: Are you suggesting we censor what one side or the other might decry as lies? Shouldn’t we stay clear of censorship? In any case, who has the right to say what is true and what is a lie?
HT: We would never have responsible power sharing if we give in to the ‘anything goes’ mantra. Democracy in the US and the UK have been subverted by the likes of Trump in large part because many people have fallen for the myth that anyone’s assertion is as good (or as bad) as that of anyone else’s. To believe that is to jettison reason and objectivity, and leave everyone to emotional manipulation while facts and expertise are airbrushed out of reality. We must not forget that society, indeed any decent form of human co-existence, is only possible if people can objectively differentiate reliable claims from ignorant or deceptive statements.
And that is why we have laws and systems to stop people making false claims about medical cures; prevent verbal incitement to hateful attacks; rule out lying about evidence in court testimony; act against attempts to deceive the public about safety levels; and countless other issues. Arbitrary censorship is unacceptable, but impartial adjudication is essential.
Q: In addition to enhancing people’s sense of mutual responsibility, and improving the conditions for cooperative enquiry, you also mentioned citizen participation – which to many people may sound like a call for direct democracy, for every decision to be made by everyone. Is that feasible, or even desirable?
HT: In general, everyone affected by any important decision should be involved in shaping that decision. But we should remember that it makes sense for decisions to be left to as small and local a group as possible so long as that group has the capacity to make and implement that decision without it impacting on others beyond the group. But where the necessary capacity or impact scope means that many more others will need to be involved, then at some point the decision will have to be handed to a body entrusted by all concerned. Contrary to the views of those with anarchist leanings who insist that everyone must be involved directly in every conceivable decision, or those with authoritarian inclinations who maintain that an elite few must take all decisions, the only sensible path is that which follows subsidiarity.
Q: Suppose decisions are allocated to the appropriate levels, how do you see citizen participation working to secure responsible power sharing?
HT: I would urge everyone to take on board the findings and advice produced by experienced facilitators of participatory decision-making. You cannot just get a group of people into a room – especially when there is a lack of clarity over the issues or a tense atmosphere filled with frustration – and expect them to reach an informed and reasoned consensus. Techniques for supporting deliberation and managing emotional tension must be brought to bear.
Then there is the wider issue of parity of influence, when differences in wealth or social status could give the have-lots an effective veto over what the have-littles may need. In this context, a universal basic income is not just an economic issue, but a critical factor for democratic collaboration. Where decisions have to be given to a representative body (at a city, national, or international level), those who have the power to make the key decisions on behalf of those they represent must be subject to effective and transparent accountability arrangements so they must seek the views of people and recognise that their retention of powers is dependent on their being able to give a satisfactory account to those affected by their decisions.
Q: What you set out may strike some people as asking a lot to be done to bring about power sharing. Do you think that might put them off trying to bring it about?
HT: We should not see power distribution in society as a simple either/or – total oppression or perfect power sharing. It’s a continuum that runs from over-concentration of power in just a few towards more inclusive arrangements for all. And what matters is that we make concerted efforts to get ever closer, every day, from one end to the other. Who knows how long it will take to complete the journey, if ever. Let’s make sure we’re moving in the right direction.
Henry Tam is a specialist in democratic development. His published works include Time to Save Democracy , Whose Government is it? , and Communitarianism: a new agenda for politics and citizenship, which was nominated by New York University Press for the 2000 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
He taught at the University of Cambridge (where he was the Director of the Forum for Youth Participation & Democracy in the Faculty of Education), and the Civil Service College. He was formerly Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London. He has advised a wide range of political leaders in his capacity as a senior civil servant (in charge of policy areas such as civil renewal, crime reduction, community empowerment, correctional services, and race equality); and as a local authority chief officer.
