Abstract
Civil society is laying claim to political representation in contemporary democracies, destabilizing long-standing ideas about democratic legitimacy. The participatory governance structures that have emerged alongside classic institutions of representative democracy encompass not only direct citizen participation but also political representation by civil society actors. Using original data from São Paulo, Brazil, we show that most of civil society actors that work for the urban poor claim political representation of their “constituency.” Theirs is more often than not an “assumed representation,” we suggest, because our data show that most lack formal members and do not select leaders through elections. Civil society actors (in contrast to political parties and labor unions) lack historically settled and politically sanctioned mechanisms to authorize and hold accountable their representation. This new layer of political representatives therefore faces a historic challenge—constructing novel notions of democratic legitimacy that can support their forms of representation. We examine what new notions of representations are emerging and trace the historic roots of the most widespread and promising that focus on remedying inequality in access to the state.
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Notes
Alongside São Paulo, we conducted the survey in Delhi and Mexico City. The survey, conducted as part of the project “Rights, Representation and the Poor: Comparing Large Developing Democracies,” found that in each cities a substantial majority of associations had no formal membership and that the represented had little or no role in selecting leaders. “Rights, Representation and the Poor” conducted citizen and association surveys in Delhi, Mexico City, and São Paulo. Our collaborator, John Harriss, was the lead investigator in Delhi with Neera Chandhoke. Comparative findings in English can be found in Harriss (2004, 2005), Gurza Lavalle et al. (2005a, b, c), Houtzager et al. (2003), Castello et al. (2007), Gurza Lavalle et al. (2005b, 2006), Gurza Lavalle and Castello 2008.
Cf. Skocpol (2003) on the US case.
Theorists such as Michels, Lipset, Przeworski, and others point out the that the democratic credentials of political parties and labor unions (or other types of membership organizations) have many shortcomings and more generally the weakness of elections as a mechanism that simultaneously authorizes and holds representatives accountable. On the latter point, see Przeworski et al. (1999).
See footnote 1 for papers on Delhi and Mexico, as well as comparative assessments.
The large body of work on participatory democracy includes, in addition to classic works such as Pateman (1970) and Macpherson (1978), that on empowered participation (Fung 2004; Fung and Wright 2003), deliberative democracy (Habermas 1995, 1998; for an overview, see the works in the edited volume Schattan and Nobre 2004, and approaches to civil society such as Keane (1988) and Cohen and Arato (1992), and in Latin America, Avritzer (1994, 2003), Olvera (2003), Panfichi (2003), and Costa (2002).
Even in the case of participatory budgeting in Brazil, which is considered a model for direct citizen participation, leaders of civil organizations make up a large share of delegates and become dominant in successive rounds of the process. In the PB of the cities of Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Santo André, and São Paulo, Wampler (2004: Table 3) for example shows that over half the delegates elected during the first round of the PB were leaders of civil organizations.
Parts of the literature on participatory democracy are beginning to address the question of representation (Hickey and Bracking 2005; Cornwall and Coelho 2007). For a review of the literature on civil society in Brazil, see Gurza Lavalle (2003a). For a critique of the narrow emphasis on citizen participation and civil society, see Houtzager et al. (2003). See Pinto (2004) for a similar critique of associative democracy and participation.
The literature on comparative democratization is vast but includes work on deepening democracy (Roberts 1998; Heller 2001; de Santos and Avritzer 2002), the crisis or reconfiguration of political representation (Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Roberts 2002, Hagopian 1998; Manin 1997; Przeworski et al. 1999; Novaro 2000; Miguel 2003a, b), social accountability (Arato 2002; Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2002), democratic transitions and consolidation (O’Donnell et al. 1986; Linz and Stepan 1996; Mainwaring and Scully 1995), and the quality of democracy (Diamond and Morlino 2005; O’Donnell 1993, 2005).
For an analysis of different indicators of the reconfiguration of representation, see Miguel (2003a) and Roberts (2002), in addition to Manin (1997: 193–234). Roberts and Wibbels (1999) provide an assessment of different types of factors that might explain this loss of centrality, including socioeconomic structural factors, political–institutional, and performance of the economy.
Relations between representatives and represented have been studied exhaustively in the USA, with a particular focus on the relation between legislative decision making and preferences of voters. In this paper, we consider a more recent set of studies on the reconfiguration of political representation, including those by Manin (1997), Przeworski et al. (1999), Novaro (2000), Miguel (2003a, b), Plotke (1997), Mansbridge (2003), Peruzzotti (2005), Castiglione and Warren (2006), Urbinati and Warren (2007), Urbinati (2006), and Saward 2006.
As shown by Burke’s (1792) defense of the extension of franchise to Catholics in Ireland, inclusion of interests by nondirectly authorized representatives lies at the core of virtual representation. For the relation between virtual and actual representation in Burke’s doctrine of representation, see Pitkin (1967: 168–188).
The notion that citizens themselves belong to distinct groups that are representable or, better yet, to distinct demos (demói) with the right of representation is assuming concrete form in the political processes of the European Union.
The democratic transition effectively began in 1979. The military left power in 1985, but the democratic constitution was approved in 1988, and the first directly elected president only took office in 1989.
The Constitution of 1988 mandates participatory governance councils in the areas of education, health, and social services. Each level of government has, furthermore, created a wealth of councils and other participatory institutions that differ considerably in legal status, composition, and mandate.
The greater São Paulo metropolitan region is made up of 37 cluster municipalities and according to census data in 2000 had a population of 16.4 million.
Alongside participatory budgeting, Brazil is known for the array of participatory governance councils that are mandated by the Constitution of 1988 in the areas of health, education, and social services. Cities such as São Paulo have further created an array of municipal councils, such as those on housing and gender, along with a range of more consultative arrangements. For discussion of these and other experiences, see Avritzer (2003), Heller (2001), de Santos (1998), de Santos and Avritzer (2002), Lubambo et al. (2006), and Dagnino and Tatagiba (2007).
One of the most ambitious case study projects was the Ford Foundation “Civil Society and Governance Project.” The Latin America findings are published in Dagnino (2002), Olvera (2003), Panfichi (2003), and more recently Dagnino et al. (2006). But see also, Fung and Wright (2003) and de Santos and Avritzer (2002).
The most common methodology in quantitative analyses of civil organizations has nonetheless been the use of lists or directories drawn up by governmental or civil organizations. For Latin America, see Landim (1996).
Our snowball began with interviews in four low-income districts, Sacoma, São Lucas, Vila Maria, and Grajau, that differed in the presence of progressive political parties and composition of the working classes (which correlates strongly with the level of urban infrastructure and government presence).
We asked whether the interviewee’s organization had relevant “formal or informal ties to …” various types of actors that we listed in successive batteries of questions (religious, parties, neighborhood associations, and so forth). The criterion for relevance was the importance of that relation for the working of associations interviewed. São Paulo civil organizations’ relational sample fits in to the small-world model developed by Watts et al. (1999), that is networks present high clustering and low average distances, and nodes in any pair are connected a few “steps” from each other, being part at the same time of relatively dense groups. See Gurza Lavalle and Bueno (2009).
We also asked “What criteria are used to define who can benefit from your work and who cannot?” , “Who is your organisation accountable to?” And about the participation of members of the public in different types of activities the organization conducts: planning of programs or activities, executing programs or activities, and public demonstrations or mobilization.
We created the specified concept advocacy NGOS after finding that over 40% of our sample identified itself as an NGO, despite marked differences in activities, organizational structures, and relations to members/beneficiaries. Actors clearly use the label NGO for the purposes of public self-representation.
The remaining organizations are with or for “other organizations” or the residual category “other.”
The four types of activities are: (1) participation in new arenas of representation within the executive, such as participatory governance councils for health and education and the municipal-level participatory budget; (2) mediating demands to government agency or departments; (3) influencing policy through electoral means, defined here as supporting political candidate; and (4) influencing policy through the legislature, defined here as making demands on the municipal assembly.
The proximity argument is constructed from diverse elements and from their multiple possible combinations: emancipation or the commitment to enhancing the ability of members of its public to organize themselves, hence encouraging their agency; empathy or a profound commitment to the beneficiary by affinity, solidarity, and real identification with their problems and needs; openness or the disposition to garner and stimulate direct participation and the opinions of their public in the planning and direction of the work of the organization. Finally, the last component is recognition, which makes the organization say it acts as a representative, not because it believes it is a representative per se but because it deduces this status from the fact that their public frequently seeks them out and praised their work. Although it does not necessarily coincide with the public authority and there is not a locus specified or suggested, clearly there is an implicit locus in the logic of this argument, since favoring the protagonism, demand-making, and problem-solving capacity of the beneficiary points to an assumed interlocutor.
Not only are there numerous criticisms of the inability of parties to eliminate the representation deficit of contemporary democracies (Chalmers et al 1997; Friedman and Hochstetler 2002; Roberts 2002), but there are convincing arguments about the structural weaknesses of political representation in representative government, resulting from the fusion of roles of representation and government in the same individuals and in the same institutions (Sartori 1962; Manin et al. 1999).
Perhaps not surprisingly then, organizations that made this argument scored the worst on activities in which representation is likely to occur—40% did not carry out any or only one activity in which representation is likely to occur.
The dominant notion today—membership and elected leadership—emerged from the medieval practices of representing the interests of private landlords before the monarch through an extend period of political conflictt. The membership argument in particular draws on both nineteenth century ideas of political association and the labor-based representation that became prominent in the twentieth century. The identity argument first appeared in the debates between those who favored majoritarian or proportional representation in parliament and then reappeared in the 1960s as part of the politics of difference (Gurza Lavalle et al. 2006).
The prominent exception is the election of a PT mayor in Porto Alegre, who would initiate the participatory budgeting experiment.
Already under military rule, various groups experimented with citizen participation in local popular councils in urban areas, in small government health and development projects in rural and smaller urban centers, and in a variety of Church programs.
Dobrowolsky and Jenson (2002) analyzed a similar connection, although with a negative tendency, in the case of political representation carried out by gender organizations in Canada. This connection was also the motive for analysis in the work published in Chalmers et al. (1997) and in Houtzager (2003) as well as in other work referred to in footnote 3.
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Acknowledgment
The authors owe a debt of gratitude to Graziella Castello for the multiple roles she has played in research for this article and wish to thank the reviewers for particularly valuable comments.
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Houtzager, P.P., Gurza Lavalle, A. Civil Society’s Claims to Political Representation in Brazil. St Comp Int Dev 45, 1–29 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-009-9059-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-009-9059-7