Learning From Athens

I appreciate Judith Brown’s posts about the idea of a district representative-council. Last night, while reading a town planning book on patterns found all over the world, I came across this research of how large a body of people can be represented most fairly. I found it inspiring. It was almost as though it were written expressly for us. I post it here as something to consider as we continue the discussion on how best to represent ourselves here and also think about future development in Middletown.

PATTERN #12: COMMUNITY OF 7000

Individuals have no effective voice in any community of more than 5000-10,000 persons.

People can only have a genuine effect on local government when the units of local government are autonomous … small enough to create the possibility of a link between the man in the street and his local officials and elected representatives.

This is an old idea. It was the model for Athenian democracy in the third and fourth centuries, B.C.; it was Jefferson’s plan for American democracy; it was the tack Confucius took in his book on government, The Great Digest.

For these people, the practice of exercising power over local matters was in itself an experience of intrinsic satisfaction. Sophocles wrote that life would be unbearable were it not for the freedom to initiate action in a small community. And it was considered that this experience was not only good in itself, but was the only way of governing that would not lead to corruption. Jefferson wanted to spread out the power not because “the people” were so bright and clever, but precisely because they were prone to error, and therefore it was dangerous to vest power in the hands of a few who would inevitably make big mistakes. “Break the country into wards” was his campaign slogan, so that mistakes will be manageable and people will get practice and improve.

Today the distance between people and the centers of power that govern them is vast – both psychologically and geographically. Milton Kotler, a Jeffersonian, has described the experience (1967):

The process of city administration is invisible to the citizen who sees little evidence of its human components but feels the sharp pain of taxation. With increasingly poor public service, his desires and needs are more insistently expressed. Yet his expressions of need seem to issue into thin air, for government does not appear attentive to his demands. This disjunction between citizens and government is the major political problem of city government, because it embodies the dynamics of civil disorder.

There are two ways in which the physical environment, as it is now ordered, promotes and sustains the separation between citizens and their government. First, the size of the political community is so large that its members are separated from its leaders simply by their number. Second, government is invisible, physically located out of the realm of most citizens’ daily lives. Unless these two conditions are altered, political alienation is not likely to be overcome.

1. The size of the political community…. Paul Goldman has proposed a rule of thumb that no citizen should be more than two friends away from the highest member of the local unit. Assume everyone knows about 12 people in his local community. Using this notion and Goodman’s rule, we can see that an optimum size for a political community would be 12 x 12 x 12 or about … 5500 persons.

2. The visible location for local government. Even when local branches of government are decentralized in function, they are often still centralized in space, hidden in vast municipal city-county buildings out of the realm of everyday life. These places are intimidating and alienating. What is needed is for every person to feel at home in the place of his local government with his ideas and complaints. A person must feel that it is a forum, that it is his indirectly, that he can call and talk to a person in charge of such and such, and see him personally in a day or two.

For this purpose, forums must be situated in highly visible and accessible places. They could, for instance, be located in the most active marketplace of each community of 5000 to 7000.

Therefore:

Decentralize city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of 5000 to 10,000 persons. As nearly as possible, use natural and geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities. Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that concern it closely: land use, housing, maintenance, streets, parks, police, schooling, welfare, neighborhood services.

Excerpted from A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander et al., 1977, pages 71-74.

More Thoughts on District Representation on the Council

Earlier this week, The Eye published a commentary by Middletown resident Judith Brown suggesting that the citizens of Middletown would be better served by Council members who represented specific districts of the city.

The piece elicited some thoughtful responses, and one or two which were less so. One thoughtful response came from mayoral candidate, and Council member Ron Klattenberg. Here is Judith's response to those responses. We welcome fair and thoughtful commentary on this, and anything we publish in the Middletown Eye.

Democatic Government and Citizen Participation: Mixing At-Large and District Representation in the Common Council
Judith C. Brown

Last week, I posted an item in favor of 4-year Common Council seats and of changing some seats to district respresentation. These would be necessary first steps toward making Middletown’s Common Council more democratic and responsive. I was very pleased that several people wrote in favor of these proposals and that Mayoral Candidate Ron Klattenberg entered the discussion. But while I appreciated that Mr. Klattenberg is in favor of 4-year terms, I was disappointed that he opposes district representation, primarily because he thinks there aren’t enough qualified or sufficiently interested people in Middletown to run for Council. This is blaming the victims for what appears to him to be public apathy. The blame should go instead to the obstacles that our local government places on running for office.

The major hurdle is the at-large electoral system, which requires more money and more access to political connections than running from a smaller district, where a candidate is known and knows the issues facing voters. These are the main reasons why people interested in running for local office either do not run or are forced, for all practical purposes, to run as part of a party slate which provides funding and the political networks for slate candidates, but which increases the barriers to entry for all other candidates. In effect, it is the at-large electoral system that results in slates whose members are preselected by a small handful of people who run the Democratic and Republican Town Committees. Basically, we, the voters, have given over our democratic rights to a handful of people who preselect our candidates. As a registered Democrat I say this with great sadness because our local system of government is no longer truly democratic. Turning 6 or 9 of our 12 council seats into district seats would enable many more citizens with an interest in civic affairs to run for office and, whether Democrats, Republicans, or some other affiliation, they would have a better chance of doing so successfully without having to depend on a small coterie of people to whom they are beholden for the support needed to run for local office and for reelection.

Replacing most at-large Council seats with district seats would not only increase the pool of candidates and the variety of independent viewpoints on the Council, it would provide a form of apprenticeship for the wider, at-large positions, for which candidates now exlusively compete. Also, Council members representing districts would be more responsive and accountable to their constituents than the at-large representation we have now because they are closer to their constituents and more familiar with their needs.

In support of a less democratic, entirely at-large city-council, Mr. Klattenberg cites the obligation of all council members to be responsive to the public regardless of where an issue is raised and the obligation of the public to bring issues of concern to the attention of the Council or other officials. In his opinion, the at-large form of representation works. Like many other citizens, I understand that responsive government is not a government that always agrees with my point of view. But as some of us know from our experience in dealing with our local officials, they are less responsive and less well-informed about issues that affect specific constituencies than they should be. This is why despite the public’s interest in local issues, some of our citizens give up voicing their concerns to Middletown officials. It is not a lack of responsibility on the part of the public that drives public behavior; it is frustration with the lack of responsiveness and transparency on the part of local government.

This is a town with a great university, a major hospital, and many large and small businesses and cultural institutions with intelligent, qualified, and public-minded citizens. I am confident that if we remove the obstacles to more responsive and more transparent government, Middletown citizens will cheerfully and willingly step up to running for office, bringing issues to the attention of officials, and addressing the challenges of our troubled times. First steps in that direction are turning 6 or 9 of our Common Council seats into district seats and turning all the seats into 4-year terms.