On the Future Prospects of Political Participation -Theory and Practice

For those of us who became politically aware during the tumultuous years of the Seattle movement, it is difficult to witness contemporary socio-political trends without thinking thoroughly about the status of political participation as a form of civic activism. At a time when the idea of democracy is taken for granted and considered uncritically,  the meaning and sense of political participation remains a category shrouded in doubt and contradiction. With the ongoing legacy of Seattle in mind, then, it is my aim to offer a few clarifying thoughts on its prospects worldwide, in theory and then in practice. Indeed, what followed those protests in 1999 represented - and still represents, - an important point of departure that informs us on novel ways to intend activism and to experiment practices of mobilization on the ground. What, then, are the future prospects?

First, the theory. The motto back in 1999 was: Think Global and Act Local. Political participation and social mobilization were tied to a capacity to imagine activism beyond national borders and along new conceptual lines that escaped the homogeneity of reasoning based on ideological dogmas and grand narratives of linear development. The task here is to take this conceptual enterprise even further.

Sociologist Roland Robertson uses the term glocalization to refer to the global interconnectedness  that defines our age - something that is primarily social and collective as opposed to politico-financial in scope and therefore something apart from the ‘fundamentalism’ of the free-market economy (and its equal counterpart, religious fundamentalism). Political participation in the future will be framed around this idea of ‘global consciousness’. In this sense, one needs to find voice and even access to power operating on a common although heterogeneous ground with workers, students, immigrants, indigenous movements and the billions of subaltern figures worldwide where poverty and disenfranchisement are the hard facts of life. This ‘prospective’ conceptual standpoint that fosters a permeating sociality fits in with the variety of clearly-defined issues that the globalization from below movement has been tackling for quite some time  – namely, social justice, an end to wars of aggression and an ethical reform of the conduct of financial institutions and corporations. The subjective experience of each individual actor on the global stage must inform that of others going as far as creating a collective culture of mobilization – a fusion of prospects, a fusion of horizons.

 

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Secondly, the practice. In fact, the question remains whether, once rightly framed, political participation can translate into meaningful and effective mobilization. Recent history - the March 2003 anti-war marches that brought millions of people on the streets worldwide, - underlined the remarkable willingness of a large share of the public to voice their concern via active participation  but, at the same time, the inability to affect policy and halt the war-engine. The future prospects of political participation, therefore, will much depend upon moving on from the practical impasse of this contradiction.

We are moving towards the resolution of this impasse by raising the stakes of direct action as a proper form of civic mobilization. First, the expanding global Social Forums network serves as an alternative political laboratory where debate on a variety of issues occurs from the ground-up. These are the easily accessible resources that the public needs in order to understand how collective ideas are created and how in turn they can truly influence policy. Secondly, and more importantly, the recent scenario of social mobilization in France, with the protests against the implementation of the Contract Premiere Embauche (CPE), is an indication for the future. It showed how effective a mobilization can be - however it was framed by the mainstream media as mindless riots, - when alliances, even temporary ones, are forged among the public (students and workers of both the private and public sector) and especially when the scenario is in turn informed by an issue, working precariousness, that is far from being a solely national problem. Practice flows from theory.

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The ongoing theoretical and practical output of the Seattle movement, with its capacity to move from national to supranational issue, still informs the way we intend and actualize political participation. Thesocio-political power base that came of age during those protests in 1999, an heterogeneous global community in-the-making, profoundly reformulated the level and quality of the dialectic between institutional power (both practical and discursive) and the general public. The challenge remains to find a conjunction between prospective theories and prospective outcomes, keeping in mind that meaningful participation in the political and social sphere of the contemporary world remains the safest bulwark against the many threats to a truly ‘democratic’ process.

Jacopo Moroni

London, May 2006