Hannah Arendt’s Democracy: Action, the Social and Democratic Participation Today by Tyler J. Shymkiw B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2010 Research Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Political Science Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences  Tyler J. Shymkiw 2011 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2011 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for “Fair Dealing.” Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL Name: Tyler Shymkiw Degree: Master of Political Science Title of Thesis: Hannah Arendt’s Democracy: Action, the Social and Democratic Participation Today Examining Committee: Chair: Anthony Perl Professor, Department of Political Science-SFU ___________________________________________ David Laycock Senior Supervisor Professor, Department of Political Science-SFU ___________________________________________ Genevieve Fuji Johnson Supervisor Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science-SFU ___________________________________________ Laurent Dobuzinskis External Examiner Associate Professor, Department of Political Science-SFU Date Defended/Approved: ___________________________________________ ii Declaration of Partial Copyright Licence The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the “Institutional Repository” link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission. Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. While licensing SFU to permit the above uses, the author retains copyright in the thesis, project or extended essays, including the right to change the work for subsequent purposes, including editing and publishing the work in whole or in part, and licensing other parties, as the author may desire. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. Simon Fraser University Library Burnaby, BC, Canada Last revision: Spring 09 ABSTRACT The goal of this project is to examine what Hannah Arendt’s insights on the nature of democratic participation reveal about contemporary participatory innovations. The analysis is centered on Arendt’s conception of Action, and the unique ontological arrangement of society she sees as a necessary precondition to it. I will examine four of the most prominent participatory mechanisms being discussed today: accountable autonomy, mini-publics, participatory budgeting, and popular assemblies. My hope is to illustrate that Arendt’s unique views bring a different perspective to the radical democratic tradition. Directly channelling Arendt’s principal insights on participation, I develop a set of criteria to examine and evaluate these mechanisms. On this basis I argue that Arendt’s insights provide a unique and valuable perspective on contemporary democratic innovations. The emphasis on the opportunity for Action in Arendt’s framework leads to strikingly different insights than the traditional concerns of contemporary democratic theorists. Keywords: Hannah Arendt; political participation; mini-public; accountable autonomy; popular assembly; participatory budgeting. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. David Laycock who has constantly supported me, who has long helped me navigate the waters of academia, and who inspired my foray into democratic theory. I would also like to thank Dr. Genevieve Fuji Johnson, who first introduced me to political theory and whose dedication to critical thinking has left a lasting mark on my worldview. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Mark Warren for introducing me to Hannah Arendt, without which this project would never have been born. I thank you all with my deepest appreciation. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval ......................................................................................................................... ii Abstract ......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 I. THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION ................................................ 3 II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................ 14 A. Plurality ................................................................................................................. 14 B. Spontaneous Speech ........................................................................................... 19 C. Permanence ......................................................................................................... 21 D. Application ............................................................................................................ 23 III. PARTICIPATORY MECHANISMS ........................................................................... 24 A. Accountable Autonomy ......................................................................................... 24 B. Mini-publics........................................................................................................... 32 C. Participatory Budgeting ........................................................................................ 41 D. Popular Assemblies .............................................................................................. 46 IV. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 54 References ................................................................................................................... 59 v INTRODUCTION Contemporary democracies in the developed world, especially the United States, find themselves locked in an increasingly bitter, vitriolic, and hardened polarization between egalitarianism and the economic sovereignty of the individual (Baldassarri & Gelman 2008; Dunlap & McCright 2008; Bafumi & Shapiro 2009). The somewhat remarkable rebirth of the classical liberal position, especially in America, has left politics divided between a Lockean vision of limited government and a hobbled leftist tradition. It is in the face of this widening ideological divide, the resulting decline in functional discourse and bipartisanship, and growing measurable cynicism on the part of the public that democratic theory has found a revival in pushing possible new frontiers for renewing citizen participation in democratic systems. This effort is an earnest attempt to establish more effective and legitimate policy outcomes by involving citizens in decision making through a variety of often innovative and at times historically nostalgic mechanisms. These are centered on objectives that can be placed into two primary categories. The first is the utilitarian objective of achieving more effective policy outcomes. The second is the normative objective of ensuring democracy is inclusive, responsive, and representative of the citizens that comprise it. Beyond these two orientations in democratic theory, a broader theoretical re-examination has been focused on identifying the authentically political (Kateb 2000). Max Weber argues the authentically political is “deciding for others, commanding them, wielding power over them, and affecting the course of events” 1 (Kateb 2000, 132). Carl Schmitt alternatively takes the political as the struggle against the enemy, not by individuals, but by sovereign societies (Kateb 2000). Arendt can be placed in the same tradition, but she holds her unique concept of political participation called Action, as authentic politics. With nostalgic fervour, Arendt praises participatory democracy, from 5th century Greece and revolutionary America, because it created conditions of human plurality and an arena for the practice of political Action. For Arendt, it is action that is the paramount aspect of politics. In this paper I apply Arendt’s unique understanding of political participation to recent proposals for innovation in democratic participation. I will examine four participatory mechanisms: accountable autonomy, mini-publics, participatory budgeting, and popular assemblies. My hope here is to illustrate that Arendt’s unique views bring a different perspective to the radical democratic tradition. My method in doing this is quite simple. I develop a set of criteria to examine these mechanisms by directly channelling Arendt’s principal insights. The purpose of these criteria is to shed a useful, perhaps distinctive, but unquestionably demanding light on proposals and practices of contemporary democratic participation. These criteria are not intended to be synthetic criteria directly improving on any others used in democratic theory; they are meant to be as true to Arendt’s insights in The Human Condition (1998) as possible. I pursue this goal in four sections. Section I lays out the problem of democratic participation as presented in Arendt’s The Human Condition. Section II outlines the Arendtian diagnosis and develops a theoretical framework with 2 which to examine contemporary participatory mechanisms. Section III applies this framework to the primary mechanisms of democratic participation that are most discussed by contemporary thinkers. Section IV offers a brief conclusion, rounds out the analysis, and looks at the path forward. I. THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION Through her collected writings, Arendt is engaging in a massive attempt to reexamine the broad context of how, and key questions in relation to which, we think about politics today. For Arendt, part of the foundational problem can be traced through the western canon as far back as Plato. Specifically, it is the use of politics as a means, rather than as an end unto itself. According to Arendt, this is a practice at least as old as Plato’s Republic, and one that is taken to new heights by most moderns. For Arendt, politics has an intrinsic rather than instrumental value, and properly formulated is an end itself. Creating the Political for Arendt means creating conditions for debate and dialogue in which participants are equal to one another as participatory citizens. Arendt seeks to make us “think what we are doing“ (Arendt 1998, 4) through an examination of the traditional vita activa, which refers to a life devoted to public-private matters. Arendt links the vita activa’s genealogical origin with the Aristotelian term bios politikos which described the political life as one of three ways of life in which man1 might choose freedom from a life of necessity and the related relationships originating from that. This ruled out the ways of life 1 I adopt Arendt’s non-gender specific usage of the terms ‘man’ and ‘men’ in this paper. These terms are not meant to carry with them any exclusionary meaning. 3 in which one was primarily concerned with keeping oneself alive, a way of life which Arendt characterizes in terms of the category of Labor. It also ruled out the ways of life in which one was primarily concerned with what Arendt develops into the category of Work, namely the “working life of the free craftsman and the acquisitive life of the merchant“ (Arendt 1998, 12). These two categories, while occupying a large part of The Human Condition, are only relevant to this analysis as those activities that Arendt believes have outgrown their proper place in the vita activa. Praxis, or as Arendt further develops it, Action, is the highest and final category of the vita activa and the primary concern of this paper. It is perhaps Arendt’s most conceptually intricate category, corresponding to the condition of plurality and all political life. Arendt’s inquiry contains with it a rejection of the Socratic tradition trumpeting contemplation (theōria) as the highest activity and likewise the reversal of the hierarchy of activities within that tradition by Marx and Nietzsche. That rejection is however not based on the rejection of the underlying truth or experience of the contemplative life (vita contempativa) or life of the mind. Rather, it is because Arendt (1998) feels the “enormous weight of contemplation in the traditional hierarchy has blurred the distinctions and articulations within the vita activa itself“ (17). In other words the fascination with the Platonic ideal of the contemplative life has blurred and disregarded the phenomenological categories within a political life. As such, she embarks to rediscover these aspects of the vita activa. The necessity of Action to the human condition is found in that it is both the only enduring mark of our individuality as human beings as well its place as 4