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Democracy’s Organic Dimension

Organic, citizen-based democracy is the foundation for democratic institutions

Perhaps Kettering’s most important insight is that democracy exists at two levels. The more obvious one is at the institutional level, which includes elections, lawmaking, and the delivery of services.

Underneath, there is an organic foundation of ad hoc associations and civic organizations. This other level is at the foundation of the institutional system, and that is where political democracy is rooted.

We believe that what we are seeing is fundamental to self-government. So we have sometimes compared this level of politics to the wetlands in our physical environment.

Politics at the foundation of democracy has different characteristics than politics at the institutional level. At the institutional level, citizens are defined by their relationship to government. They are voters, taxpayers, and school board members.

At the organic level, citizens are defined by their relationship to other citizens. They are the people who join with others to create a neighborhood watch, to organize a campaign to protect the environment, or to conduct rescue operations after a hurricane.

It turns out that citizens working at the organic level of democracy are also the people most likely to vote for representatives in government. So the two levels are interdependent, not two different kinds of democracy.

Despite the distinction between organic and institutional politics, the same processes go on in both, whether formally or informally; problems are given names, frameworks are put forward for structuring decision making, difficult choices are made, resources are identified and committed, actions are organized, and results are evaluated.

Yet everything that is done organically is different:

  • Citizens are defined by their relationships with other citizens rather than with the state.
  • The relationships in organic politics are not the same as those of family and friends, and they are unlike those in institutional politics, such as those based on patronage or party loyalty. They are pragmatic or work related. They form when disaster strikes and people coalesce in order to rescue and restore, when they build houses for the homeless, or when they assist the police in watching for drug dealers in their neighborhoods.
  • The names people give to problems reflect the things they hold dear and their basic concerns—their highest hopes and deepest fears as human beings. These names are different from those that people use when they are acting as professionals and politicians. For example, citizens want to feel that they are safe in their homes, and the feeling of security is less quantifiable but more compelling than the statistics professionals use to describe crime.
  • The knowledge needed to decide what to do about these problems is created in the cauldron of making collective decisions. It is formed by the interaction of people with people and by the contrast of experience with experience. That is different from the way scholarly knowledge is created, which is through rigorously disciplined science.
  • Decisions are based on the recognition that concerns are interrelated rather than just being opposed, as is assumed in majority voting. Organic decision making has qualities associated with public deliberation; that is, deliberation involves carefully weighing possible actions against what people consider most valuable, which also has to be determined in a specific context. Legislative decision making can be deliberative, but it is more often based on negotiation and bargaining.
  • The resources needed to implement decisions come from citizens’ innate abilities, abilities that are magnified when people join in collective efforts. Citizens’ resources are often intangible, such as commitment and political will. These are different from the resources of institutions, which tend to be material and technical.
  • In organic politics, the citizenry acts in various ways that are loosely coordinated by a shared sense of direction. Actions taken by institutions are usually uniform and directed by a single plan or central agency.
  • The commitment of resources to action is enforced by covenants or the promises people make to one another. Institutional commitments are enforced by legal contracts.
  • Power in organic democracy comes from the ability of citizens to make things through their collective efforts and from the relationships forged in these efforts, rather than from institutional authority.
  • Change comes about through collective learning and the innovation it generates, rather than from modifications of law and policy.

Organic democracy also has its own structures: not boardroom tables but kitchen tables, not assemblies like legislative bodies but common gatherings, once in post office lobbies but now on the Internet. Ad hoc groups and alliances form, fall away as a project is completed, but reappear when another task is at hand.

When seen from an institutional perspective, what happens in the democratic wetlands appears insignificant or inconsequential. Our research suggests that making use of the organic qualities of democracy and giving more attention to what happens at the roots of democracy would help combat some of the fundamental problems of modern systems.

At the organic level of democracy, collective efforts are made to deal with problems that can’t be solved unless the citizenry acts. This collective action requires a particular kind of decision making because the problems aren’t just technical; they have a moral dimension. Protecting the health of the American people is an example; citizens have an important role to play, and issues like the care of the terminally ill raise all kinds of moral questions.

Such problems grow out of a discrepancy between what is happening and what people want to happen. What makes these problems especially difficult are disagreements about what should be happening. There aren’t any experts who can tell citizens what should be; they have to exercise the best judgment they can.

And the best way to make sound judgments is by weighing possible causes of action against the various things people consider valuable or believe should be. That is deliberation in a nutshell.

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