Scale-Sensitive Socioeconomic Democratisation

Description

This paper tries to re-appropriate the progressive spirit of democracy in an age and on a conti-nent where rhetorical and ideological use and misuse are widespread, undertaking three paral-lel efforts: First, by defining democracy in a broad sense, it will be freed from its identification with a specific political order of majority rule via parliament dominant in Western societies. Democracy is not understood as a state of order, but an ongoing process of popular rule (demo-kratie), enlarging capabilities and freedoms of all members of a society. To talk about democratisation instead of democracy clarifies this open and dynamic element and stresses the need to experiment with democratic innovations in a variety of societal fields, from media and schools to fabrics, city-regions and the planet. Consequently, second, the notion of democracy will be extended to domains beyond the po-litical, as defined in Western societies. The resulting socio-economic democracy includes adequate forms of deliberation and participation, majority rule and joint decision making in political and socioeconomic development. Cooperative, self-managed, participatory modes of organisation in the field of politics, but also in business, culture and education form part of this type of democratisation. Socio-economic democratisation challenges the conventional understanding of democracy as territorially-bound decision making without denying its crucial contributions to emancipation. Third, the spatial transformations of the last decades have eroded the national power container which institutionalised democracy in the 20th century. Linking sovereignty, membership, rights and obligations to the clearly delimited national territory created citizens as political subjects, entitled with civic, but also social rights. While non-citizens were excluded from this privileged status, it permitted a degree of internal equality hitherto unknown in class societies.

Period	6 Apr 2009 → 8 Apr 2009
Event title	RSA-conference: Understanding and Shaping Regions: Spatial, Social and Economic Futures
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	International