Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy

Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy:

International Initiatives and Perspectives

Edited by

Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky

 Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International Initiatives and Perspectives,
Edited by Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky

This book first published 2010

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2010 by Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-1722-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1722-6

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables and Figures .......................................................................... ix

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi

Prologue.................................................................................................... xiii

Introductory Essay....................................................................................... 1
Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy
Daniel Schugurensky

Part I: Learning Democracy in Educational Institutions

Chapter One............................................................................................... 20
Learning Democracy through Dialogue: Re-imagining the Potential
of Higher Education Institutes to Promote Social Change
Felix Bivens and Peter Taylor

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 34

Building Democracy: Implementing Restorative Justice Circles
in Brazilian Schools as a Non-Violent Conflict Resolution Strategy
Patrícia Krieger Grossi, Beatriz Gerhenson Aguinsky
and Márcio Lima Grossi

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 50

On Becoming an Active and Participatory Citizen: A Study
on Education and Political Socialization in Hong Kong
Shun Wing Ng

Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 66
Learning and Practicing Democracy: An analysis of Classroom
Discourse and Practice in Pakistani Secondary Schools
Karim Panah
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 87

The Transfer of Historico-Critical Skills in Quebec Classrooms:
From Social Studies Class to Political and Community Practice
David Lefrançois and Marc-André Éthier

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 105

Democratic Citizenship and Lifelong Learning
John Annette

Part II: Learning Democracy in Communities

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 120

From Objects to Subjects to Participants: Women and Gendered
Governance in Kerala’s Participatory Democracy
Manjula Bharathy

Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 137

Learning for Democracy: Reframing the Argument
Jim Crowther, Ian Martin and Mae Shaw

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 151

Citizen Engagement and Elections in Nigeria: Learning Democracy
through Transformative Theatre and Soccer
Tor Iorapuu

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 168

Citizen Learning in State-Sponsored Institutions: Accounting
for Variation in the British Columbia and Ontario Citizens’
Assemblies on Electoral Reform
Amy Lang

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 186

Workplace Democracy and Solidarity Development: An Empirical
Study of Venezuelan Cooperatives
Camila Piñeiro Harnecker

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 204

Learning Democratic Citizenship: Neighbourhoods as Key Places
for Practicing Participatory Democracy
Lake Sagaris
 Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy vii

Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 227

Democratic Practices and Transitional Spaces in a Public Art Project
Astrid Von Kotze

Part III: Learning Democracy in Participatory Budgeting

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 242

Learning Democracy through Participatory Budgeting: Who Learns
What and So What?
Josh Lerner

Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 252

Variations and Effects of Experimental Democracy
Alberto Ford

Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 269

Participatory Democracy and Political Learning: Lessons
from the Brazilian Experience
Lígia Helena Hahn Lüchmann

Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 286

Civic Learning and Political Engagement through Participatory
Budgeting: The Case of Guelph, Canada
Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky

Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 306

Schools of Democracy: How Ordinary Citizens Become Competent
in Participatory Budgeting Institutions in Europe
Julien Talpin

Postscript ................................................................................................. 323

Our Global Futures: Is Participatory Democracy an Answer?
Jenny Pearce

List of Contributors ................................................................................. 335

 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Figure 1.1
The ‘Community Inreach’ model: demonstrating the idea of inreach

Table 2.1
Teachers: current situation in relation to conflicts. Justice for the 21st Century
Project, Porto Alegre, 2007

Figure 2.1
Forms of common offences that were reported among students of the elementary
school in the Justice for the 21st Century Project

Table 2.2
Ways in which the school teachers solve conflicts in the classroom, according to
the elementary students: Project Justice for the 21st Century

Table 5.1
Summary of the research methods

Figure 11.1
The process of expansion of individuals’ interest in a participatory community

Figure 11.2
The process of development of social consciousness among communities that share
a space for democratic planning

Table 16.1
Education and income level of Santa Catarina PB Council members

Table 16.2
Interpersonal and institutional trust

Table 17.1
Participatory budgeting at the NSC: civic learning and change

Figure 18.1
The process of self-change
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank Nelson Rosales and Ravi Badri for
their conscientious editing work, as well as the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support of this project.
 PROLOGUE

In October 2008, the Transformative Learning Centre of the Ontario

Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto) organized its
second international conference on citizenship learning and participatory
democracy. This conference, entitled Learning Democracy by Doing:
Alternative Practices in Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy,
welcomed close to 300 delegates from 5 continents. Over the course of 4
days, practitioners and scholars shared more than 150 papers in panel
discussions, roundtables and keynote addresses. The overwhelming
popularity of the conference spoke to a growing interest to make
democracy more relevant and connected to people’s everyday lives and to
connect citizenship education to the development of a critical, informed,
engaged and caring citizenry.
This book, Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International
Initiatives and Perspectives, brings together a selected collection of the
papers submitted to the conference. Some contributors are well-known
scholars, educators and activists who have many of years experience
working to make democracy more participatory in their own contexts.
Other contributors are emerging voices, sharing innovative perspectives
and practices from movements they are involved in, or actively supporting
through research and education.
As editors, our intention was that, as much as possible, we could
compile a volume on citizenship education and participatory democracy
that includes different perspectives, academic traditions, ideological
persuasions and geographical locations. The result of that effort is this
book with twenty articles (18 chapters, an introductory essay, and a
postscript) that deal with realities in institutions and communities in both
the global North and the global South.
The contributions of this book are organized in to three thematic
sections, according to three different spaces in which democracy is learned
or practiced: I) educational institutions, II) community organizations, and
III) co-governance (participatory budgeting).
In the introductory essay, Daniel Schugurensky explores some
connections between citizenship learning and participatory democracy,
argues that participatory education (PAREDU) can complement parallel
proposals like participatory economics (PARECON) and participatory
xiv Prologue

politics (PARPOLITY), and identifies six areas to consider in terms of

research and practice.
In Part I: Learning Democracy in Educational Institutions, the
different authors discuss the possibilities and challenges of learning
democracy in educational institutions, from primary schools to universities.
Felix Bivens and Peter Taylor, as well as John Annette, discuss British and
Canadian institutions of higher education as sites for democratic learning
and social change. Patricia Grossi, Beatriz Aguinsky and Mario Grossi
present the case of restorative justice circles used to create more
democratic spaces for conflict resolution in public schools in Brazil. The
next three chapters discuss the possibilities and challenges of learning
democratic skills, values and dispositions through public school curricula
in Hong Kong (Shun Wing Ng), Pakistan (Karim Panah) and Québec
(David Lefrançois and Marc-André Éthier).
Part II: Learning Democracy in Communities, includes examples of
participatory democracy experiments in seven different countries. Manjula
Bharathy discusses the gendering of democracy in the Kerala People’s
Plan in India. Jim Crowther, Ian Martin, and Mae Shaw, from Scotland,
present their ideas about democratic community education and present ten
propositions on democracy and on learning for democracy. Tor Iorapuu
describes how community groups used theatre and soccer as vehicles to
create spaces to learn about electoral practices and engage in participatory
democracy in Nigeria. Amy Lang examines the differences in civic
learning acquired by participants in the Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral
Reform (an innovative experiment of ‘randomocracy’) in two Canadian
provinces: British Columbia and Ontario. Camila Piñeiro Harnecker
distinguishes between the development of workers’ collective consciousness
and social consciousness in workplace democracies and analyzes them in a
study on Venezuelan cooperatives. Lake Sagaris examines instances of
democratic citizenship learning in a neighborhood organization in Santiago,
Chile. Finally, Astrid von Kotze shares the possibilities of public art
projects to create democratic links between deeply divided communities in
Durban, South Africa.
Part III: Learning Democracy in Participatory Budgeting, is devoted
entirely to the learning dimension of this innovative citizen-driven model
of resource allocations. As participatory budgeting process enters its third
decade, we chose to highlight examples from three continents where it is
being implemented at the municipal level. The section begins with an
introductory chapter by Josh Lerner that highlights the main exchanges
that took place at a roundtable discussion about participatory budgeting
during the Learning Democracy by Doing conference. In the second
 Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy xv

chapter, Alberto Ford draws on his experience as a researcher and

participant in both the participatory budgeting and neighborhood councils
in Rosario (Argentina) to reflect on the democratic learning and practices
that arise from these two different contexts. In the third chapter, Ligia
Lüchmann presents her research about democratic learning in ongoing
experiments with participatory budgeting in Santa Catarina, Brazil. In the
final two chapters, Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky, as well
as Julien Talpin, present research findings about democratic learning and
change through participatory budgeting experiments in Canada and Europe
respectively.
In the postscript of the book, Jenny Pearce discusses some of the
challenges faced by radical democrats and outlines three contemporary
political paradoxes that relate to the practice of participatory democracy.
Overall, the articles in this volume represent a wide variety of
viewpoints, as the authors come from varied geographical and disciplinary
locations. We see this book not as an isolated material, but as part of the
worldwide movement for deepening democracy and for an emancipatory
citizenship education. One of our modest contributions to this process
consists of bringing together the twin fields of participatory democracy
and citizenship education, and promoting connections that will hopefully
lead to improvements in theory, research and practice. While these two
fields are part of the same family and are naturally bound to meet and
connect, sometimes they act like those distant cousins who seldom talk to
each other. We hope you enjoy the book and that the reading inspires you
to continue or take up your own critiques, learning and participation in
democratic dialogues, debates, and spaces in your communities.

—Elizabeth Pinnington and Daniel Schugurensky

University of Toronto, August 2009
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

CITIZENSHIP LEARNING FOR AND THROUGH

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

DANIEL SCHUGURENSKY

Introduction
Traditionally, both in terms of research and practice, the fields of
participatory democracy and citizenship education have operated
independently of each other. With few exceptions, citizenship education
programs have not incorporated participatory democracy as a key
curriculum component, and participatory democracy experiments have not
considered the educational dimension as a central piece of the process.
However, in recent years there has been a growing interest in establishing
closer relationships between these two areas of human activity. This
chapter explores some of these relationships, and proposes an agenda for
research and practice.

Citizenship
Paraphrasing the Archbishop of York, who once said that the main
purpose of education is to produce citizens, Eleanor Roosevelt (1930)
argued that the true purpose of education is to produce good citizens
(italics added). Although formulated in different ways, this argument has
been repeated over and over by educators and non-educators alike, to the
point that today it is commonplace to say that one of the main purposes of
education is the advancement of citizenship. However, there is no single
agreed-upon definition of what a citizen is or what a good citizen does.
This is largely due to the fact that citizenship is a dynamic, contextual,
contested and multidimensional concept. It is dynamic because its
meanings and characteristics have changed throughout history. It is
contextual because, at any given time, it has different interpretations and
2 Introductory Essay

applications in different societies. It is contested because, even in the same

time and the same society, there are disagreements about what citizenship
is and what it should be. Lastly, the term citizenship is multidimensional,
because it connotes at least four different dimensions: status (membership),
identity (feelings of belonging), civic virtues (dispositions, values and
behaviors) and agency (engagement, political efficacy and power).
In his influential analysis of the connections between inequality,
citizenship rights and capitalism, T.H. Marshall (1950) conceptualized
citizenship as a status bestowed on those who are full members of a
political community, and noted while in principle those who possess the
status are equal, in reality the fulfillment of citizenship depends on a
person's access to civil, political and social rights. This is due, he argued,
to the contradiction between citizenship and the capitalist class system.
Hence, in considering the notion of citizenship as status it is relevant to
distinguish between ideal and real citizenship, which brings our attention
to the difference between formal and substantive democracy. In other
words, formal equality is meaningless if it is contradicted by economic,
social, political and cultural inequalities. Hence the importance of
considering the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion operating in a
particular social context, and of igniting political-pedagogical projects that
redouble efforts to narrow the gap between formal and substantive
democracy.
While status refers to rights and duties, identity refers to issues of
belonging and meaning. Whereas status is about being a member of a
community, identity is about feeling like a member of that particular
community. The distinction between status and identity is particularly
evident in multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural and multi-religious
states, and particularly in nation-states that are multi-nation states. In these
cases, identity is rooted in factors like a common history, language,
religion, values, traditions and culture, which seldom coincide with the
artificial territory of a nation-state. The difference between citizenship as
status and identity is clear in the cases of nation-states that were built after
a process of conquest and colonization, usually by displacing, dominating
or eliminating groups that lived there. Another example of a mismatch
between status and identity can be observed among people with
internationalist inclinations who are legally citizens of their nation-states
but define themselves as citizens of the world, even if 'planetary
citizenship' is not yet a legal condition.
Citizenship as civic virtues alludes to the values, attitudes and
behaviors that are expected of ‘good citizens’. In the same way that there
is no universal agreement on the good society, the abstract notion of the
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 3

good citizen may evoke different traits, images and role models. For some,
the main civic virtues of a good citizen are patriotism, obedience, diligence
and religiosity. Others emphasize philanthropy, compassion, empathy,
respect, tolerance, solidarity, and individual responsibility, while for others
civic virtues relate to knowledge of social reality, critical analytical skills,
interest for the common good, civic participation, and inclination towards
social justice. The ideal of a ‘good citizen’ promoted by the state varies
according to historical, ideological and political contexts. For instance, at
the beginning of the twentieth century, the Handbook for New Canadians
emphasized that the good citizen loves God, the Empire and Canada,
works hard, is brave, is clean, and is every inch a Man (Fitzpatrick 1919).
Today, Canadian textbooks portray a good citizen as an informed, critical,
purposeful, active and caring person who values freedom, respects cultural
differences, and is committed to democracy, peace and social justice
(Evans, et al. 2000, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2004).
Citizenship as agency invokes the idea of citizens as social actors, and
hence to their capacity of exerting power. Ruth Lister (1998) distinguishes
between being a citizen and acting as a citizen. Being a citizen is about
enjoying the rights necessary for agency and social and political
participation, and acting as a citizen involves fulfilling the full potential of
that status. The exercise of citizenship, individual or collective, does not
occur in a vacuum, but in concrete social relations mediated by power. To
some extent, power structures determine what citizens can and cannot do,
or feel allowed to do. As Marx noted, people have the power to make their
own history, albeit not as they please, under circumstances not chosen by
themselves. Following this dialectical approach, Freire (1995) cautioned
against both voluntarism and determinism. Voluntarism is a kind of
idealism that attributes to the will of the individual the power to change all
things. Determinism is a sort of mechanic structuralism that
underestimates the role of agents in historical processes. The notion of
agency, then, recognizes that social action occurs in a context marked by a
constant interplay of domination and contestation, of control structures and
liberating forces, of limits and possibilities. It also calls our attention to the
intensity and types of citizen action.
In relation to intensity, while it is possible to talk in general terms
about 'passive' and 'active' citizenship, in real life these should be understood
as end points of a continuum rather than as dichotomous categories. In
relation to types of citizen action, different conceptions of the good citizen
promoted by schools have different expectations for action. For instance,
responsible citizens are expected to avoid littering, pick up litter made by
others, give blood, recycle, volunteer, pay taxes, exercise, stay out of debt
4 Introductory Essay

and the like. Participatory citizens are expected to take active part in the
civic affairs and social life of the community, and assume leading roles in
neighbourhood associations, school councils, or political parties. Justice-
oriented citizens are expected to be able to critically analyze structures of
inequality, consider collective strategies to challenge injustice and,
whenever possible, address root causes of social problems (Westheimer
and Khane 2004).
The first two models promote actions that develop character and service,
and encourage charity and volunteerism. These are necessary but not
sufficient conditions for building a democratic and just society, as this also
requires critical understandings of unequal social structures and engaging
in emancipatory political struggles. Citizenship as agency, then, has to do
with the willingness to ask difficult questions, with the confidence that
one's agency can influence changes (political efficacy) and with the
collective capacity to address injustices and build a better society.

Citizenship Education
Citizenship education programs may address simultaneously the four
dimensions of citizenship, but frequently emphasize one of them.
Traditional programs that focus on citizenship as status often emphasize
formal membership to a nation-state and the teaching of ‘civics.’ These
programs concentrate on facts about national history and geography,
government institutions and the law, and tend to promote the ‘official
story’ of a nation's development, instilling uncritical patriotism, naturalizing
unequal social relations and exalting certain national heroes. Frequently,
these programs conflate formal and real membership, as well as political
and economic democracy, as if they were one and the same. In the
margins, however, there are other programs that contrast the official
perspective with the one of oppressed peoples. These programs also
question taken-for-granted rules of inclusion and exclusion, interpret the
law in the context of social dynamics of power and struggles, and promote
the fulfillment of citizenships rights within a human rights framework.
Programs emphasizing citizenship as identity tend to stress nation
building and the assimilation of minority groups to the dominant group.
Often, this has meant the mainstreaming and 'malestreaming' of curriculum
content, and the elevation of the hegemonic language, religion and culture
to the pedestal of civilization. In some countries, the metaphor of the
'melting pot' is used to justify an educational policy of forced assimilation
(e.g. residential schools for indigenous peoples). Other programs, however,
promote the development of diversified curricula, and the development of
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 5

multicultural and intercultural education. Although there is some overlap

between multicultural and intercultural education, a few differences can be
noted. While multicultural education usually consists of knowing about
other groups that coexist in the same territory, intercultural education
promotes mutual recognition and equitable relations. Whereas multicultural
education tends to take a superficial and uncritical approach (focusing on
the 3Fs of folklore, food and festivities and the 3Ds of dance, dress and
diet), intercultural education aims at encouraging deeper analyses and
interactions, challenging discrimination and advancing social justice.
Intercultural education tries to address the difficult balance between
fostering equality while respecting difference, and is often inspired by
related approaches like critical multiculturalism and anti-racist education
(May 1994, Kanpol and McLaren 1995, Sabariego 2002). Other citizenship
education programs strive at developing a planetary consciousness and an
identity as world citizens. These programs are usually known as 'global
education', and are often connected to peace education and environmental
education approaches.
Programs that focus on the development of civic virtues (often known
as 'moral education') tend to emphasize a set of values and dispositions. In
each context, the particular selection of values promoted by a particular
program will depend on a variety of social, institutional and personal
factors. Two main approaches tend to prevail in the pedagogy of values
and beliefs: character education and values clarification. Character
education programs tend to instill a set of values and dispositions through
exhortations and inducements. In theory, these programs claim to teach
respect, responsibility and autonomy, but in practice they often use a
pedagogy of indoctrination that fosters blind patriotism, uncritical
obedience to authority, industriousness, faith in the status quo and the like
(Kohn 1997). Values clarification programs aim at helping learners
develop their own values by examining ethical dilemmas and examining
different perspectives. In this approach there are no right or wrong set of
values: any value is valid as long as it is a personal value. This approach
has been criticized for proposing to examine values in a valueless vacuum,
which runs the risk of falling in an extreme moral relativism in which all
values are acceptable, even if they are based on racist, sexist or
homophobic attitudes (Leming 1997, Howe and Covell 2005).
In between these two approaches, several models can be found. One of
them is the cognitive development approach proposed by Kohlberg (1985),
who argued that educators should be allowed to promote certain values,
but that a democratic structure is needed to limit the power of the instructor
to indoctrinate students. The most common approach in educational
6 Introductory Essay

institutions is to avoid open discussions about controversial issues among

participants. Many instructors fear conflict, and hence tend to implement a
'safe curriculum' that reduces risks. Others, however, believe that the best
way to nurture civic virtues is to welcome controversial topics and hard
questions, as well as to encourage participants to ‘not to get along’ and
make their differences explicit. This implies recognizing the plurality of
viewpoints among participants and to facilitate a respectful dialogue
among them (McLaughlin 2004, Hughes and Sears 2004, Hess 2009).
Programs that focus on citizenship as agency tend to promote the
development of an active, engaged, and committed citizenry. Instead of
conceiving learners only as economic producers and consumers, these
programs also conceive of them as active citizens who can become
'masters of their own destiny' (Coady 1939). This implies a citizenship
education that goes beyond the segmented model of education for
leadership and for followership in which the elites are groomed to rule and
make decisions while the masses are trained to follow orders and to be
political spectators (I. Lister 1998). An education for active citizenship,
thus, aims at nurturing citizens as political subjects. This means that,
among other things, they are informed about the issues of the day, have a
critical understanding of those issues, and are ready to propose alternatives
and to influence decisions when needed through individual and collective
action (M. Mayo 2005, P. Mayo 2004). It also aims at nurturing
community development initiatives that foster self-reliance, empowerment,
grassroots democracy and social transformation. This tradition of
citizenship education for social action can be found, among other places,
in Highlander’s Citizenship Schools (deeply connected to the civil rights
movement of the 1950s) and in popular education initiatives, particularly
in the global south.1
Drawing on these traditions, citizenship building and citizenship
education are intrinsically connected to social action and to the twin
1
Popular education is characterized by four main features: 1) a rejection of the
neutrality of education, which implies a recognition of the relations between
knowledge and power and between structure and agency, and the acknowledgment
that education can play a role to reinforce but also to challenge oppressive social
relations and seek social justice; 2) an explicit political commitment to work with
the poor and the most marginalized sectors of society, and to assist social
movements in fostering progressive social and economic change; 3) a participatory
and dialogical pedagogy that focuses on the collective, departs from people’s daily
lived experiences and promotes an integration of popular and systematized
(scientific) knowledge, and 4) a constant attempt to relate education and social
action, linking critical reflection with participatory research, mobilization and
organization strategies (Schugurensky 2000).
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 7

project of widening and deepening democracy. As a political-pedagogical

project, citizenship education should provide not only information about
democracy but also opportunities to experience it. As Dewey noted, if
knowledge is conceived as something external to experience, human
beings are deprived of the capacity to direct their societies and control the
institutions that affect their lives. He also astutely observed that
experiences can be “miseducative” when they have the effect of arresting
or distorting the growth of further experience, and hence argued that the
central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind
of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent
experiences (Dewey 1938, 25).
Educators can contribute to this by designing spaces and processes that
nurture –not inhibit– citizenship learning, as well as by facilitating
reflection over practice. Indeed, while learning something without putting
it into practice reduces long-lasting changes in knowledge, belief systems
and dispositions, to experience something without the opportunity to make
meaning of it (through critical reflection in social interaction) limits the
potential to create self-aware and proactive citizens (Wenger 1998,
Merrifield 2001) and to improve the quality of the next experience.
Citizenship education is usually associated with educational
institutions, where it is often implemented as a subject matter, but
sometimes as cross-curricular approaches, as extracurricular programs or
as a broader institutional project that shapes most activities (see Part 1).
Although schools are important sites of citizenship learning, the
acquisition of (and reflection on) citizenship knowledge, skills, attitudes
and values constitutes a complex process that spans from cradle to grave,
and includes a broad variety of settings. For instance, the family, media,
community associations, workplaces and social movements are powerful
socialization agencies for the development of citizenship values and
political competencies (see Part 2). The ‘cradle to grave’ metaphor may
suggest a chronological sequence, but lifelong citizenship learning is
seldom a continuous, uninterrupted and linear accumulation of learning
experiences. It is a messy complex of learning experiences that
complement and contradict each other, challenging some of our prior
assumptions and creating significant tensions in our consciousness
(Mezirow 2000).

Enter Participatory Democracy

During the last few decades, in many parts of the world, it is possible to
observe high levels of dissatisfaction with the dynamics of representative
8 Introductory Essay

democracy. This is expressed, among other things, in low voting turnouts

and distrust of politicians. For instance, a study by the Commonwealth
Foundation (1999) in over forty countries found a high level of citizens’
disillusionment with their governments and with their political
representatives, based on concerns about corruption, lack of responsiveness
to the needs of the poor, and the limited opportunities for participation. In
Argentina, at the turn of the twenty first century, people took to the streets
under the slogan ‘all politicians should leave’. A few years later, one of the
largest surveys on this topic that included 50,000 people from 68 countries
(BBC-Gallup 2005) revealed that two thirds of people worldwide feel
unrepresented by their governments, less than half feel that elections in
their country are free and fair, and only 13% trust politicians (making them
the least trusted group, below military, religious and business leaders).
Around the same time, 61% of people in the UK reported that they felt
they could not influence public bodies (Take Part Network 2006).
Moreover, representative democracy, with its adversarial nature and a
political culture based on leveraging power relations, leaves little room for
constructive dialogue and problem-solving. This, among other reasons,
puts many women off from running for office. In Canada, for instance,
only one in five members of the Parliament are women.
The dissatisfaction with this model of ‘thin democracy’ premised on
passive citizenship, elections regulated by marketing strategies, and
political institutions influenced by money has led to calls for a ‘thick
democracy’ that is premised on societal wellbeing, human rights and
participation. Indeed, the aforementioned research of the Commonwealth
Foundation found that citizens want to see a society in which they can
participate, first in terms of equal rights and justice, and second in
responsive and inclusive governance. Indeed, participants observed that a
good society is one in which they can participate in public spheres to make
their own contribution toward the public good, and one in which they are
heard and consulted on a regular basis and not only at the time of an
election. In short, people want more than a ballot box: “they are asking for
participation and inclusion in the decisions taken and policies made by
public agencies and officials” (ibid, 38).
This has led to the emergence of a movement known as “deepening
democracy” or “living democracy” (Fung and Wright 2003, Lappe 2006)
and to an explosion of participatory democracy experiments around the
world. The Power Inquiry distinguished six broad categories of democratic
experiments: electoral, consultative, deliberative, co-governance, direct
democracy, and e-democracy innovations (Smith 2005). After assessing 57
such innovations using several criteria (e.g. inclusiveness, form of
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 9

involvement, decision-making power, scale and transferability, resource

implications, three exceptional innovations in terms of increasing and
deepening participation were identified: participatory budgeting (see Part
3), citizens’ assemblies on electoral reform (see chapter 10), and citizen
initiatives and popular referenda (widely used in Switzerland). The
evidence from these and other participatory democracy experiments
suggest that ordinary citizens (alone or in collaboration with professional
politicians and technical experts) have the capacity and skills to discuss
and make sound recommendations on complex public policy issues
(Murillo and Pizano 2003, Smith 2005, Annette 2009). This requires,
among other things, good access to information, equality among
participants, and opportunities to deliberate in a safe space.
Indeed, for democratic innovations to be successful and overcome
some of the potential risks associated with these initiatives (co-optation,
clientelism, tokenism, parochialism, exclusion, internal inequalities, etc.),
certain enabling conditions and structures need to be present. Appropriate
institutional arrangements are crucial because citizen participation cannot
occur in a vacuum and good democratic processes do not happen by
chance. They need an inclusive environment that encourages openness,
dialogue, diversity of viewpoints, tolerance and broad analyses, all based
on equitable criteria, clear links between deliberation, decision-making
and implementation, and justice-oriented public policies. These
institutional arrangements are aligned with recent international approaches
to “good governance,” which include eight features: participation, rule of
law, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability, transparency,
responsiveness, consensus orientation, and equity and inclusiveness
(United Nations 2007). The challenge, however, lies in improving the
interface between good governance and a mobilized civil society,
combining the best of the technocratic approach, with its emphasis on
institutional design, and the communitarian approach, with emphasis on
grassroots democracy (Heller 2001, Gaventa 2004).
In this regard, it is helpful to look at the ‘real utopias’ approach, which
is based on three principles, three design properties, and one primary
background condition for successful empowered participatory governance
(Fung and Wright 2003). The three principles are practical orientation
(addressing a specific area of public concern), bottom-up participation
(empowered involvement of ordinary citizens and officials) and
deliberative solution generation (orientation towards solving problems).
The three features of institutional design are devolution (transferring
decision-making and implementation power to local action units),
coordination (local units are linked to each other and to different
10 Introductory Essay

government levels in order to allocate resources, solve problems, and

transfer innovations and learning) and state centrality (democratization of
administrative bureaucracies charged with solving those problems). The
background condition is a rough equality of power among participants for
the purpose of deliberative decision. I would argue that another
background condition is a government that is responsive to its citizens and
has the political will to share power with them.
Fung and Wright argue that the presence of these features allow
participatory democracy experiments to solve pressing social problems
effectively, to generate more fairness and equity in their communities, and
to produce broad, deep and meaningful civic participation. To these three
important impacts I would like to add a fourth one, known in the literature
as ‘the educative effect.’

The Educative Effect: The Pedagogical Dimension

of Participatory Democracy
Historically, references to the educational impact of participation can
be found in many authors including Aristotle, J.J. Rousseau, Machiavelli,
J.S. Mills, G.D.H. Cole, Kaufman2 and Pateman. However, we still have
little empirical evidence of the nature and extent of the ‘educative effect’
because research on this is still in its infancy (Mansbridge 1999, Merrifield
2001). Fortunately, a growing number of studies are exploring this
connection. Using different methodological approaches and tools, these
studies are shedding more light on the subjective dimension of participatory
democracy.
For instance, in a meta-study, Berry et al. (1993) concluded that when
participatory democracy provides opportunities for meaningful involvement
in politics where ordinary citizens make decisions about the allocation of
goods and services in their neighborhoods, they become more
knowledgeable, more tolerant, more efficacious, and more confident in
government. In a study on Mozambique, Marshall (1993) found that direct
democracy practices in village meetings helped participants to think
together about the transforming of their circumstances and themselves. In
a study on women who participated in the management of neighbourhood
centers in Australia, Foley (1999) found that participants acquired a great

2
Arnold Kaufman (1960), who coined the term ‘participatory democracy’, argued
that its main justifying function is not the extent to which it protects or stabilizes a
community, its contribution to the development of human powers of thought,
feeling and action.
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 11

variety of instrumental and political skills (from budgeting and accounting

to collective planning and decision-making) but also important values and
worldviews. In a study on public land management meetings in three rural
communities in the Midwest US, Halvorsen (2003) found that high quality
participation positively transformed participant beliefs. Among other
things, participants became more tolerant of different opinions, valued the
inclusion of diverse viewpoints in meetings, and increased their
expectations of government accountability. Our own studies on participatory
budgeting in Porto Alegre, Montevideo, Rosario, Toronto and Guelph, and
on cooperatives in Canada, Argentina and Venezuela, confirm those
findings. We explored four main areas of learning and change (knowledge,
skills, values and attitudes, and practices) and found that all participants
experience at least some learning and change (in some cases significant
learning and changes) as a result of their participation (e.g. Schugurensky
2004, Schugurensky, Mundel and Duguid 2006, Lerner and Schugurensky
2007, Pinnington and Schugurensky in Chapter 17).
These findings confirm the old dictum that one of the most effective
ways to learn democracy is by doing it. Thus, it can be claimed that
participatory democracy not only contributes to the construction of more
transparent, efficient, equitable and democratic ways of governing, but
also provides a privileged learning site for learning the competencies and
values of citizenship. Through participation in deliberation and decision-
making (and in collectively elaborating fair and workable criteria for
making decisions), citizens develop not only a variety of civic virtues
(solidarity, tolerance, openness, responsibility, respect, etc.), but also
social, cultural and political capital (understood as the capacity for self-
governance and for influencing political decisions). Moreover, certain
types of participatory democracy (like participatory budgeting or workers’
cooperatives) constitute for many people an entry point to political life and
a democratic space to develop a more horizontal political culture.

A Participatory Triad:
PARECON, PARPOLITICS, PAREDU
We are entering the second decade of the twenty first century, but our
democracies and our education systems are organized around institutions
that were designed in the nineteenth century. Representative democracy is
still needed –there is no doubt about it, just for reasons of scale– but it can
be complemented with participatory democracy processes. Likewise, the
hierarchical and bureaucratic features of the educational system (designed
for the demands of the industrial revolution) could be softened and
12 Introductory Essay

eventually replaced with a more participatory and democratic model. The

two main economic and social systems of the twentieth century (capitalism
and centrally planned socialism) failed in realizing a more democratic and
just society, and in generating the conditions for full human development
to occur among the majorities of this planet.
Two decades ago, Albert and Hahnel (1991) proposed a democratization
of the economic sphere through a model known as PARECON, or
participatory economics, that is inspired by co-operatives and the social
economy. In this model, based on values of equity, solidarity, diversity,
workers' self-management and efficiency, the production, consumption
and allocation of resources are guided by participatory decision-making.
To complement PARECON with a political vision, Shalom (2004)
proposed a model called PARPOLITY, or Participatory Politics, which is
based on freedom, self-management, justice, solidarity and tolerance, and
calls for a system of participatory democracy in which every person can
have the opportunity to influence a decision proportionate to the degree to
which she or he is affected by that decision. To complement PARECON
and PARPOLITY with an educational dimension, I would like to suggest
that we need to develop a model that we could tentatively call PAREDU,
or participatory education, whose first goal would be to expand and
improve the connections between citizenship education and participatory
democracy.

Six areas for research and practice for PAREDU

Traditionally, both in terms of research and practice, the fields of
participatory democracy and citizenship education have operated
independently of each other. With few exceptions, citizenship education
programs have not incorporated participatory democracy as a key
curriculum component, and participatory democracy experiments have not
considered the educational dimension as a central piece of the process.
However, there is growing interest in establishing closer relationships
between these two areas of human endeavor. We can identify at least six
areas that deserve attention for better understanding and strengthening
connections between participatory democracy and citizenship learning:
democratic educational institutions, pre-service capacity building, in-
service capacity building, informal education, internal exchanges, and
external exchanges.
Educational institutions and programs constitute formidable spaces to
nurture citizens oriented towards the common good, willing to resolve
differences through dialogue and able to develop self-governed structures.
 Citizenship Learning For and Through Participatory Democracy 13

Currently, there are approximately 200 democratic schools that operate

according to democratic principles, including participatory democracy and
sometimes implement participatory budgeting. Additionally, there are
many programs in higher education and in the non-formal sector that aim
to foster democratic practices and active citizenship. Pre-service capacity
building consists of educational activities that prepare participants to
engage effectively in democratic deliberation and decision-making, and
range from self-directed materials to workshops. Sometimes, like in the
Venezuelan communal councils, educational materials include self-
evaluations. Other times, like the Ontario Citizen Assembly for Electoral
Reform, the learning stage is incorporated as the first phase of the process
itself. In-service capacity building usually consists of short courses,
workshops and information sessions for participants already engaged in
the process. Less frequently, it includes mentoring of newer generations of
participants by older ones.
Informal education refers to the deliberate arrangement of situations to
nurture certain informal learning experiences. It does not have teachers,
facilitators, curriculum materials or textbooks, but has a design and a
pedagogical intention developed a priori by someone who is not the
learner (e.g. the participatory budget bus tour in Porto Alegre or the
caravans of citizenship of the children’s participatory budget in Barra
Mansa). Internal exchanges refer to the learning about participatory
democracy structures and processes shared among members of the same
community of interest or institutional system (e.g. within health,
education, housing, recreation, municipalities, workplaces, etc.), especially
within the same geographic community. External exchanges refer to the
sharing of experiences among different geographic communities and/or
sectors in order to learn from each other, be it face-to-face or online.
In closing, the aim of PAREDU is to promote a positive mutual
reinforcement between citizenship learning and participatory democracy.
The better the quality of the democratic process, the better the quality of
the learning experience, and the better equipped citizens are with the
basics of democratic processes, and the more oriented they are to the
values and principles of democracy, the greater likelihood that the process
is increasingly more fair, inclusive, transparent, and enjoyable.
To cultivate this ‘virtuous circle’ of reciprocal relations between
citizenship education and participatory democracy, PAREDU has to
nurture ‘schools of citizenship’ in both formal and non-formal educational
settings, as well as in other associational spaces. Over time, this can lead
to the development of an archipelago of democratic learning communities.
This can make a significant contribution to the ‘deepening democracy’
14 Introductory Essay

project, because the more active and participatory citizens become, the
more democratic the processes are likely to be in those communities. In
other words, participatory democracy nurtures citizenship learning, and
citizenship learning enhances participatory democracy processes. By
nourishing the existing reciprocal relation between citizenship learning
and participatory democracy through a variety of educational and
institutional interventions we can help to develop both more democratic
citizens and healthier democracies. Of course, this process does not occur
overnight, and it is full of obstacles, difficulties and distortions, but this is
not a reason to give up because, as Dewey noted, the cure for the problems
of democracy is more, not less, democracy.

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