Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Summary: In thinking about ways people can participate more directly in representative democracy, I realize there are plenty of options people should be aware of yet they don’t opt for nearly as often as they could. In spite of all the means for political participation that may not pan out to be as accessible or as effective as they’re touted to be, there still appear plenty of options for greater political participation, like letter-writing campaigns, there aren’t obviously good reasons for why most people don’t more frequently employ them. One common argument I see for why people don’t participate more in democracy more is because they’re systemically suppressed or discouraging from doing so. While this is doubtless the case in some instances, there are many countries where lots of people have no barriers to greater political participation than they currently exhibit a desire for. Any feedback on insights into this topic from the social sciences would be much appreciated.
I’ve often come across organizations, websites, articles, and blog posts explaining how there are plenty of activities virtually any citizen can engage in that are oft-overlooked, yet are much more effective than people give them credit for. One of them is writing a letter to one’s local political representatives. When a bunch of constituents each write a letter to their parliamentary representative when they almost never do, it sends a clear signal to their representative this is an issue they’re unusually caring and passionate about. If many political representatives experience this, as part of a grassroots campaign, then they will more confidently air their concerns with new legislation that is about to be passed, either to have a bill blocked, altered, or amended before passage into law. And so in this way, citizens are able to directly influence their representatives’ take on new laws outside of elections.
Of course, it’s possible something like letter-writing campaigns could become ineffective if too many people started doing it. Part of what can make letter-writing campaigns effective forms of political advocacy is because they send such a strong signal to our representatives this a respective issue is one voters care deeply about. That signal would be a lot weaker if letter-writing campaigns became trivial, by everyone doing them all the time, for every issue. It’s not normal for the average person to contact their representatives about every bill they’re voting on, and so if tons of people started doing it all the time, it would cheapen the act, and lead political representatives to believe (at least much of the time) that letter-writing campaigns aren’t worth taking seriously. This seems like it has happened with online petitions. I remember several years ago when online petitions first became popular, it seemed lots more people believed they had the power to be a game-changer for democratic participation than do now. I haven’t tracked how effective online petitions can be, but I know there are a lot more people know who see them as a joke.
Yet it doesn’t seem likely in the near future letter-writing campaigns, or if they turned out to not be so effective, other common means of democratic political participation outside of elections will be exhausted to the point of uselessness. Nonetheless, I don’t see means of democratic political participation outside of elections emphasized as nearly as much as they could be. There are plenty of practical reasons we don’t end up all participating in our democracy as much as we’d wish, such as like how as all kinds of different people, the electorate lead all kinds of different lives that make it hard to find a form of political participation that suits everyone. It’s so hard to get people to get out to vote in some countries, a lot of people suggest making a federal holiday out of election days, just so everyone can get out and vote. Even still, I don’t know if either I’m missing out on where or the best grassroots political activity is happening right now, or it’s just not happening as much as it could.
If there is an abundance of options for greater political participation citizens in countries like Canada and the United States, like more referenda, more grassroots advocacy like letter-writing campaigns, or whatnot, and so many people are in favour of them, I don’t understand why there aren’t more of them. If these options are so desirable, and across all of them our representative democracy would look a lot more like a direct democracy, I don’t understand why we wouldn’t go the distance, and set up a system of infrastructure for more permanent and public direct democracy. On the other hand, sometimes I think if most of the time people could but don’t employ the means of a more direct democracy so readily available to them, maybe there is something about our lives that makes it unrealistic, and unlike many who advocate for direct democracy, it’s a political system people already glean wouldn’t make us better off.
I know there may be lots of leftists reading this who may bristle at the idea the more republican models of government much of the world lives under today are nothing but systems of oppression keeping all of us from living more free, directly democratic lives. What I am saying is not that I’m opposed to direct democracy, or at least not its ideals. I’m saying I don’t understand why if there are already plenty of options for people to participate in democracy more directly than we do now, we haven’t already taken them up and created more direct democracies in societies around the world. It’s possible in our idealism those of us who’d wish for a more direct democracy are ignorant of a social or human reality that makes direct democracy much less desirable or feasible than we think. Right now I’m only at the beginning of exploring possibilities on my own for what are easy ways politics can easily be made much more accessible to the public, so I haven’t explored the literature on this subject. Yet these are problems I’ve always had with the fact for all the ways many people clamour for greater representation in democracy, they so often neglect the options for it already freely available to them.
IdeaSyncretic 
