Think Local, Act Local, But…
“I don’t want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers that has forgotten its own past. I want to belong to a generation that has decided forcefully to defend its democracy.” -- Emmanuel Macron, President of France
it's now commonplace to observe that the city is the level of government best suited to solve the many problems of communities. Benjamin Barber's If Mayors Ruled the World explored this theme in depth. Newly released, The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism, from urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, provides a "roadmap" for a power shift from nation-states down to cities and regions and, from there, across to local networks of public, private, and civic leaders.
"Localism" certainly describes what the many cities we know that have aggressively pursued climate action are doing and pushing for. Much of the time, they strain against and work around policies and regulations from other levels of government. Their city-driven organizations look for ways to free them from domineering state/provincial and national governments.
But what if the problem that has to be solved is not how to cut GHG emissions, have better schools, reduce crime, or include immigrants in community life. What if the problem is a loss of faith in democracy? How can localism help with that?
Our friends Mike Hais, Doug Ross, and Morley Winograd argue in Healing American Democracy: Going Local that, in the U.S. context, the deep partisan, demographic, cultural, and economic divisions and national political stalemate, which erode confidence in democratic governance, will not be resolved by one side or the other winning an election or by bipartisan calls to "come together" as a nation. Instead, they offer a new civic parading: Constitutional Localism. in this framing, local governments should be empowered "to tackle a broad a range of civic challenges as they are willing and able to undertake." Shifting more public decision making to communities will allow Americans "to choose from among different social mores, life styles, political philosophies, and economic opportunities without sacrificing either self-government or membership in a great nation." This "return to community decision-making offers the opportunity to make democratic governance personal again."
But localism is not enough, they continue. Even as governance power would devolve to the local level, we have to be clear about what remains essential at the national level: "The Constitution, as it exists today or as amended in the future, must be recognized as establishing the framework for acceptable behavior by all levels of government for a system of localism to work. It is the only way we can ensure adherence to the 'American Ideal,' the set of principles of individual freedom and effective collective action that . . . have been the common bond that allowed a country of wide variation in its citizens' heritage and culture to unite as one democratic nation."
In short, this is a bottom-up framework for redistributing decision-making power to solve community problems--but one that does not give up on the 250-year-old national democratic project.
