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Exploring the Wetlands

An Analogy to Explain the Concept of Organic Politics


In the article Democracy’s Organic Dimension, we refer to the relationship between organic and institutional politics. Organic practices seem to be foundational; they undergird institutional politics.

The word “foundation,” however, doesn’t capture what we believe is a dynamic rather than static relationship between politics at different levels.

So we have experimented with illustrating what supports and sustains institutional politics through a wetlands analogy. Wetlands are home to things that are organic, so the term fits. We can also use the analogy to make the point that what happens in the murky, formative depths of a wetland is prone to be overlooked and unappreciated from an institutional perspective.

For example, the swamps along the Gulf Coast were filled in by developers, and the barrier islands were destroyed when boat channels were dug through them. The consequences were disastrous. Marine life that bred in the swamps died off. And coastal cities were exposed to the full fury of hurricanes when the barrier islands eroded.

The natural or organic forms of politics play roles similar to swamps and barrier islands. They include informal gatherings, ad hoc associations, and the seeming innocuous banter that goes on when people mull over the meaning of their everyday experiences. These seem inconsequential when compared with what happens in elections, legislative bodies, and courts.

Yet mulling over the meaning of everyday experiences in grocery stores and coffee shops can be the wellspring of public deliberation. Connections made in informal gatherings are the basis for political networks, and ad hoc associations are the primitive structures that evolve into civic organizations.

We need to find a way to make the organic structures and functions as visible in the political ecology as environmentalists have done in the coastal ecology. Then we would have better indicators of the impact of the democratic practices we believe are essential.

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