world court thread / cj#913> Mark Douglas Whitaker: THREE STRATEGIES FOR

Dear cj & rn,

Below is Mark Whitaker's essay, THREE STRATEGIES FOR
DEGLOBALIZATION.

We've had a thread on cj regarding the "NEW CULTURE", started by Brian
Hill, who also contributes regularly to rn.  That thead is about what _may
be a resurgance of a communitarian (ie, noncompetitive, non-acquisitive,
cooperation-oriented) movement in the US - reminiscent of the sixties
hippie/communitarian movement.  I say "may", because there is some debate
about whether the resurgance is real, or whether Brian (and some others)
only _wish it was happening.  Personally, I'm still undecided on this
point.  I have immense respect for Brian, but I haven't seen enough
evidence to make up my own mind first-hand.

Mark's essay addresses not what _is happening, but rather what he believes
_needs to happen if a viable, stable, grass-roots kind of democracy is to
arise and prosper.

Mark has thought about these issues a lot, and he is a very perceptive
analyst.  I recommend the essay to you, and would welcome follow-up
discussion on either or both lists.  As I see it, this topic is of central
importance, and Mark is one of the few who has the insight and audacity to
approach it in a systematic way.

best regards,
rkm

BTW> I will be putting the formatted version on the CDR website, together
with a link to Mark's site.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 20:10:25 -0600
To: renaissance-network@cyberjournal.org, cj@cyberjournal.org
From: Mark Douglas Whitaker <mrkdwhit@wallet.com>
Subject: WWW: site and essay announcement: strategizing sustainability
  and democracy in the long run

Hello,

        I have web-posted an essay entitled "LOCAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL: THREE
UNIFIED STRATEGIES FOR SEPARATED POLITICAL PRESSURE:  MINIMIZING T.N.C.
HEGEMONY ON THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE, POLITICAL THEORY AND
PRACTICE," at http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/3strat.htm. It's an edited
version of my 1998 Lelio Basso Prize Competition entry. The late Lelio Basso
was an Italian socialist who felt that democratic procedures and
socioeconomic development had to go hand in hand. The Prize was established
in his honor after he died.

        The crux of the essay is theorizing ways to moderate the hegemony of
United States politically and economically, keeping in mind the dual tenets
of creating a 'sustainable democracy' organizationally speaking at the same
time we consider 'sustainable economics.' The politics of the United States
and the politics of the World Bank (marionetted in large part by United
States investments) are crucial areas to consider. I offer structural
additions to integrate local grass roots activity as well as ideas for
opening international capital markets based on existing economies of scale.

        The essay is part of a larger site I am establishing at:

        	http:www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/cdi1.htm.

        Comments welcome. Activity desired.

Regards,

Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison

============================================================================
From: http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/3strat.htm


        LOCAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL: THREE STRATEGIES FOR DEGLOBALIZATION

                         Mark Douglas Whitaker
                    University of Wisconsin-Madison


         THREE UNIFIED STRATEGIES FOR SEPARATED POLITICAL PRESSURE:

            MINIMIZING T.N.C. HEGEMONY ON THE POLITICS OF THE NATION-STATE,

            POLITICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

        --------------------------------------------------------------
        Sections:

            1.Introduction

            2.Present History

            3.LOCAL: CDI: Civic Democratic Institutions: Preparing and
            Maintaining Local Input in Nation-State Level Politics and
            Cultural Frames

            4.NATIONAL: Hanse Nationalism: Balancing Local and National
            Identities and Politics

            5.GLOBAL: "Affirmative Cooperatives:" Using Mutualized
            Economies of Scale for Developing a Separate Third World
            Financial Sector

            6.Conclusion: DeGlobalization: Notes for a Philosophy of
            Development, and Nation-State Democratic Security
        --------------------------------------------------------------


Introduction
^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is an essay on strategic response to globalization of capital into
transnational corporate forms (TNC's), based on what local, national, and
international organizations can do to align strategically their different
dimensions of politics to a separate yet simultaneous systemic press which
is long-term and short-term. This involves two major areas:

    (1) to moderate nation-state level politics;

    (2) to provide a means to let Third World nation-states have the
    ability to help themselves as a group by developing a capital market
    for themselves, breaking the developmental monopoly of
    international lending organizations like the World Bank.

The three areas detailed below have been thought out for their long term
systemic effects on the local, nation-state, and international levels; they
have many second-order effects which could make this essay easily a book
length work. Therefore, I will only introduce these strategies with a sense
of what they are 'designed' to accomplish. I stress 'designed' because of
the thought into the second-order effects (meaning how it affects and
facilitates grass roots, long-term participation in political and econmic
decision making, and creates sustainable structures for such political
processes. I call it creating a 'sustainable politics.' A sustainable
politics is a politics that avoids clientelistic relationships in its
operation.

Examples of clientelistic relatinships are lack of bank choices forcing
someone to work with existing structures or a lack of choices of political
representatives that works to the advantage of removing local political and
economic input and making local interests dependent on proxy-only
relationships to power.

This essay is a political analysis from a theoretical portrayal, drawing
from much comparative research on organizational development and political
process. It takes the following David Korten quotes quite seriously:

Without a theory, the assumptions underlying the organization's choice of
intervention are never made explicit. Therefore they cannot be tested
against experience, essentially eliminating the possibility of experience
based learning

.. . . [I]n the absence of a theory, the aspiring [actor] almost inevitably
becomes instead merely an assistance agency engaged in relieving the more
visible symptoms. . .through relief and welfare measures. . . .[his italics]

Without a theory, the organization can only proceed to scatter its
resources in response to immediately visible needs [or perceived needs]. .
.. Our present concern is with the threefold global crisis of poverty,
environmental destruction, and social disintegration. . . .The more we
focus our attention directly on the symptoms, rather than on transforming
the institutions and values that cause them, the more certain we can be
that the crisis will deepen for lack of appropriate action. Under the
circumstance, the need for a theory of the causes of the breakdown is of
more than academic relevance. [Korten, 1990]

By the above term "transforming the institutions' is taken to mean less
changing peoples minds as to changing the context of already existing
actions to be interrelated systemically into decision making processes.
This requires institutional changes and additions to a society, instead of
a reliance on clientelistic relationships.

Keeping this in mind, this essay is both a work of 'development' oriented
philosophy as much as it is political strategy. In my mind, these can be
combined in a unified developmental philosophy, which takes political
pressure into account since certain politics can have long term
developmental effects; thus, certain politics can be seen as having a
developmental character.

Visa versa, developmental effects have political effects as well. In
essence, I am arguing that one can consider political effects and the
facilitation of them (in a system of balances) a developmental philosophy.

The essay will deal with only three aspects of what I consider useful in
'working globalization over,' slowly and systematically, to aid a
globalized economy in integrating more moderating and local influences. As
I mentioned, it is based upon a theoretical analysis, of which I will go
into before commenting upon the three areas where I see beneficial social
change. The changes are less ideological and more sociostructural
strategies, taken from an appreciation of how institutions create their own
political ecology, and how political ecologies of actors are affected and
maintained by organizational forms. It is an exploration into how both
influence each other in a long term political process. These strategies can
be widely adopted for many different areas of the world, because they are
facilitation strategies of what is already 'out there' in the world. These
facilitation strategies merely integrate the existing feedback into
interrelated forms which create what I would call a 'sustainable politics'
of interrelated balance. Out of the six problematic areas (listed below)
that my own studies and researches are exploring presently, I am
considering only the first three of greatest importance, because upon them
I would argue, hinge the subsequent long term strategies. The first three
strategies are the ones that the essay considers. Although I have added
more, at this time of writing, the full six are:

    (1) Civic Democratic Institutions (CDI's): creating wider and
    more complex local cultural autonomy as a political
    mobilization force.

    (2) "Hanse Nationalism:" providing a means whereby urban interests
    are systemic power actors on the nation-state level.

    (3) "Affirmative" world financial cooperatives: an MAI response
    utilizing systemic elites and the huge economies of scale
    of the impoverished countries to generate an organization
    which will allow Third World countries to develop along their own
    lines instead of the World Bank's lines of development.

    (4) Rural Financial Structures, embedded in mutualized economies
    of scale, to provide for point (1) and for environmental
    security through political capacity for moderating
    feedback to urban politics and developmental processes.

    (5) Affirmative Democracy Structures, 'fiscal democracy' structures
    which are geared to community level priortization of
    urban governmental budgets--highly popularized
    in Brazil after their 1985 Constitutional change.

    (6) educational structural change.

Each build upon the others in an overall macro strategy which is designed
to meliorate globalized economic centralization and nation-state political
domination by TNC biased politics and the subsequent decline of feedback
from their respective populaces.

There are two 'flanks' to this strategy, those interior to the nation-state
and those exterior to the nation-state. The interior strategies (number 1
and 2) consist of institutionalizing and focusing local culture and
politics in an overall nation-state framework which requires nation-state
organizational structural facilitation as well. The exterior strategy
(number 3) is generally a bulwark to the TNC capital domination of the
'neocolonial' world (the ex-European colonial possessions which have
experience a shift in economic domination to TNC and World Bank derived
development strategies).

As a work of theorizing a 'sustainable politics,' though these ideas are
designed for strategic application to the world at large, the historical
examples and discussion will figure on the United States. This is for three
reasons. As a citizen of the United States, I am more familiar with the
cultural, historical and political milieu of this nation-state. Secondly,
with the central place the United States has in the globalized economy
(detailed below), any examination of the state of the world which fails to
take into account the role of the United States as military and economic
sovereign of the existing system will be very shallow. For these
rationales, my rhetoric will focusing on using the United States as the
running example, though I want it made clear that these ideas were
formulated with a more generalized and abstract level of analysis which
would be applicable to all nation-states potentially. Therefore, this is a
work of theory as much as it is of practice, through it's point is to
develop theory to the extent that it can aid in the formulation of
practice, instead of merely theory for theory's sake. Thirdly, granting the
United States centrality of TNC expansive globalization, political change
in the United States would have the most widely felt repercussions.


PRESENT HISTORY
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is a short introduction to where I see we are presently. With the
increasingly unopposed neoliberal putsch of transnational corporations and
their respective nation-state governments which abet them, the world's
economy is in increasingly being conducted across international lines, even
for what once would have been a simple 'local' transaction. Transnational
corporations (TNC's) increased in number from 7,000 two decades ago to
37,000 presently (1995 figures). TNC's have two trillion dollars in
property values, and fully one-third of total private sector productive
assets are owned by TNC's worldwide. Remarkably, 30% of world trade is
merely parent-subsidiary transfers between branches of the same TNC, which
solidifies and embeds these paths as linkages of investment flows. This
characteristic of TNC world trade makes TNC oriented trade, overall, more
than the global total trade in goods and services.

Continuing the theme of the United States centrality in this globalizing
economy, the United States is simultaneously the world's largest foreign
investor as well as the largest site for foreign direct investment.
International direct investment (IDI) increased in the 1970's-80's by 10
times, three times faster than the increase in global merchandise exports,
and four times faster than industrial nation-state economies taken as a
single average. [Fry, 1995] It is far from surprising that this economic
dislocation and fluxing in the world could be related to a systemic level
of violence expanding as economics and politics are shorn into two,
something which the United States even is far from immune.

I feel it is required to anchor local politics to local institutional
structures to provide a meliorative balance to the neoliberal political
regime. The populations of (what was once known as) the First World have
seen themselves being more and more unrepresented, as, in the United
States, both the Democratic and the Republican Parties further are removed
to the political 'high-end' market players and corporate sponsorship. There
is a small window of opportunity while the globalized system is yet to be
'formalized' into structures which will by are definition be out of local
or even nation-state political control. I am thinking of the 'quietly
tabled administrative' agendas like the MAI, which moves to place TNC's on
a sovereign legal tier above nation-state political feedback and
nation-state law--a regime where democratic procedure is effectively
censored as 'obstruction.' The nation-state, our political feedback
capacity, is being dismantled.

 So, on the abstract level, what is required is a double flank
'pincer' movement which both pressures globalized capital (in the form
of TNC state bias) from the nation-state level and pressures on globalized
capital financial organizations on the international level.

Yet what structures could provide such systemic pressure? And remain in
place in the face of what would likely be a huge media propaganda blitz
which frames localized interests as misguided or undemocratically inclined?
This highlights the important realm that the media play, especially in the
United States, in forming political opinion through a process of selective
reporting. This is less to insinuate that thoughts are formed by media, yet
the media provide a structural channel through which only a portion of
nation-state news ever gets broadcast or printed, and out of that, the
'culture' of the nation-state only has a small inkling of ideas in which to
popularly mobilize around. Culture serves a 'functional' political aspect
for a society by assuring mobilization material for political movements,
and culture is crippled when frames of discourse which are shared are only
coming from systemic actors. The aspect of selective acting and reporting
has been well described by Crenson in his formulation of non-politics: the
ability of systemic or governmental actors merely to deign to respond
because it would highlight the conflict of systemic interest.[Crenson,
1971] Therefore, the message is merely dropped. This explains the
descending silence upon issues of whether this is a boon or a curse to
democratic procedure, as well as slick packages like 'fast-track' proposals
which are designed to enact formal TNC economics before local actors have
the funds, the ability, or the popularity to stop such actions.

So three major areas where I see that there should be a meliorative
pressure: (1) a manner to address media bias, since the media effects and
rarefies political control, (2) means to provide localized political
pressure which is sustainable on the level of globalized capital dominated
nation-state politics, (3) and a means to provide international pressure on
world financial organizations like the World Bank, which could be said to
be a virtual monopoly organization which sets the terms of development with
the greater part of the Third World being forced to go to such institutions
since there is little competition on that level of economic domination. All
of these could be summarized in one phrase: what is required is a mutually
interrelated means of action on many levels to provide a proactive response
to globalization of economics and assure the increased potential for
national self-destination. This translates into "how can we maintain/create
a democratic procedural system?" Procedures of political process are
important to identify because 'globalization' fails to happen by itself:
one of the secrets of 'market economics' is the role of the state in
underwriting much of the expense of this globalization, out of taxpayer
moneys. In the United States for example, tax moneys go to maintaining and
funding unprofitable private logging operations in national parks, pay for
international advertising budgets for United States TNC's, and assuring
that the TNC's are taxed relatively low compared to individuals, despite
corporate structures being legally considered individuals they fail to pay
the tax rates of individual citizens. In essence, the externalized costs of
globalization are being underwritten by the individual taxpayer. TNC's
'efficiency' rests highly on its ability for others to shoulder its
economic costs, which is a better definition of 'inefficiency.'

The political control of the state is crucial in fostering this novel
globalized economic epoch. In such states, we have seen increasing
ecological degradation and political malaise mixed with increasing levels
of endemic violence. Yet is it to pressure on the state that we can look
for 'solutions,' yet with a twist on the strategic 'point' of mobilizing in
the first place. In the history of the United States, I would argue, the
increasing centralization of government is less a sole product of state-led
drives, and a mutual process which involves continuing pressure from the
grass roots for considering 'regulatory saviors' as a solution (whether
that idea is their own or sold to them is outside the scope of this essay).
My point is that in a strategic sense a nation-state's (or any state's)
citizenry looks to the national level government for solutions for local
problems, and this contributes ironically to their own decentralizing, slow
removal from systemic power. So in light of this, I would add that there
should be some mechanism for assuring that such frames of 'government
regulatory salvation' are appropriately challenged when posed that more
'regulation' will solve something. I say appropriately challenged. This
will be addressed momentarily. This is less a call for complete rejection
of state regulation and more a sense that these ideas are appropriately
weighed for the pro's and con's.

Most of my sense of what may be challenging to some in what I am
describing, is that I am simultaneously having to describe my epistemology
as I go along. Most of those who write and speak, I would venture, are
relying on existing tropes, memes, frames, and teleological suppositions
within their audience and playing off of that. It's already to an extent
'out of the can.' Instead, I am having to package the epistemology,
distribute it around the audience, and then speak. The following is an
experiment in rhetoric as well as historical sociology, because I am having
to deal with existing interpretations. Therefore, I will be defining terms
as I go along.

This leads into a short historical lesson which deals with patterns I see
in world history--what I would call a systemic drift in power relations in
a society. I will be only dealing with one aspect of this in this essay, an
aspect which relates to the essay's drive to strategies for grass roots
interests. In this essay's sense, the basic definition would be the
increasing centralization of political structure and economic structure,
which is dually abetted from grass roots pressure (ironically) as much as
systemic actors desires for more economic wealth, political power or status
prestige. Culturally and crucially, it relies on government level groups
being able to effectually 'co-op' rebellious discourse with a successful
government level solution to dampen upset with the state or some private
actor with more state intercession exchanged for public quiescence. As it
is a political process, there are any number of 'outcome' scenarios,
variations on a theme, though a particularly 'bad scenario' (depending, as
always (and unfortunately), on one's point of view) would be if the
centralization is carried to a great extent the society itself may come
apart through the sheering of all sense of status markings of legitimacy
for the state level government, where the government is seen as
unremediable, and people withdraw and become actively embedded in more
local issues and interests, effectively attempting to blot out of their
thoughts the issues of government. The United States seems to be well on
its way to this outcome.

Unfortunately, politically speaking, this drive for centralization from
both the state and the grass roots rarely leads to anything save a
clientalistic relationship between the impoverished and the elites of
government which soon decays socially, leaving ironically an
organizationally stronger government structure (which was facilitated by
the impoverished) in the hands of those who use it for their own ends--in a
sort of internal colonialization. As the cycles continue, strategies of
organizational mobilization possibilities decline systemically for the
grass roots as they ratchet up past successes or suffer repression. The
problem for this from a democratic procedural standpoint, is that the grass
roots is systemically contributing to their removal from systemic power.

The same pressures for a world government from the base as well as
externalized elites lining up to take advantage of the situation is
beginning to occur, and I worry about the long term ramifications when the
informal clientelism of the elites and their pressure groups decays leaving
a stronger, more centralized, more removed and remote governmental level
organization. On this scale, government would be effectively out of local
and even nation-state political input. Because after the elites ride to
power on a potential ticket of a 'world government for everyone' the same
ebbing away will occur, and people find they have helped construct
something which local politics are unable to touch systemically by
definition. If you split up typologically what this 'world government'
would look like, the centerpiece institutions, like the World Bank and the
international financial sector, are the economic side. The United Nations
can be considered the 'representative' side. Of course each of them are
very particular in their systemic interests, and the degree of
representativeness or of "appropriateness" of them are just discourses
which say that they "promise" to be these things, out to deflect opposition
and centralize power. State legitimacy is always constructed and maintained
in a political process through cultural discourses, where legitimacy is
bought with, sadly, what amounts to grass roots supported co-option and
externalization of them in a politcal process that relies on clientelistic
relationships with power.

Much of my research goes into discussing and creating a typology for
systemic shifts of power relations in societies. With the tabling of ideas
like the MAI, the connections between the base pressured discourse/co-oped
discourse government side and the economic side are being merged, just like
they were in the smaller sense on the nation-state level. Two examples of
this systemic drift created from the overall full input of a rarefacting
political ecology are the United States in the early 1900-1930's era, as
well as Britain in the latter 1800's when the 'nouveaux riches' of the
capitalist industrialists joined in power with the British aristocracy. I
would go further and add that the political and economic consolidation of
feudalism, whether one traces that to the last centuries of Rome or to the
1100-1300 C. E. period, occurred with the selfsame systemic drift of the
entire political ecology. Economic dislocation and environmental
degradation can abet this yet it is far from the only means whereby this
political ecology wide phenomenon will occur.

Notice I am continuously saying that this is a political process, meaning
it is feasibly 'up for grabs.' Yet I would argue that this quality of
'openness' of outcomes is unrelated to the 'openness' of the political
process to different methods of approach at the time, since I am arguing
that the systemic drift occurs out of the increasing rarefaction of the set
of strategies of political possibility for the impoverished, as they
further and further contribute to the agglomeration of political and
economic power. This is ironically the very path which leads them to
further look to such governmental organizations for addressing their equity
and social justice concerns, when they are contributing to social
stratification of those concerns in a systemic sense. The systemic drift is
the rarefaction of whole sets of strategies and capacities of a society,
effectively centralizing the interests of state expansion drives with the
clientelism of the impoverished. I would argue that the political potential
of the impoverished making a successful push for political representation
wanes while simultaneously this waning of their influence makes they call
upon the centralization of government services more and more. This I tend
to describe less as a cause/effect relationship and more as a
self-reiterating process of feedback potentials. In other words, the waning
political potentiality of local grass roots strength contributes to their
increasingly dependent relationship on government. Looking at this from a
strategic sense, the problematic point becomes this: elite co-option of
cultural frames of grass roots action contributes to this by dampening any
call for structural changes in the systemic political systems which
continuously abetted and helped to foster this in the first place. So, a
means to effectively secure local cultural action of framing and of
discourse of what the 'issues' are from a local instead of a disassociated
elite view is important, from which they can decide for themselves (within
the nation-state) what they wish--with minimal (or at least recognizable)
externalized input attempts to influence the direction and terms of the
debate. I would posit that the nascent capitalistic systemic elites'
discourse when it pressed for state power was exactly the same. In both the
United States and France, the greater part of the rural population
ironically wanted a completely different outcome than what they got, and
the government got elites with different policy interests than which they
had rebelled for in the first place. [LeFebvre, 1989; Gross, 1990] The
French population wanted the king to aid them against the economic
dislocation and 'commercialization' occurring in the rural areas which was
increasingly impoverishing (and starving) them. The rurals of both future
nation-states (most of the population) wanted a more circumscribed life and
they rebelled in the name of what they hoped would be a regime which would
defend these ideas, if they rebelled for anything at all.

It is important to recall that these ideas for systemic change are less
'just harmless and unconnected suggestions' which float in and out randomly
in a culture, and more that they are proposed by certain groups and
represent certain interests attempts to influence the debate's framing of
goals, intentions, oppositions, and friendships. Political ideas are firmly
grounded in a sense in the history of past ideas and relationships, in the
culture at large [Billig, 1995], as much as they are dependent upon how the
multifarious interpretations and counter moves of other groups react to
them in the present moment. [Oliver, 1984]. Many ideas are tabled by
systemic actors and organizations looking for political influences.

To understand the systemic drift is to then proffer means to meliorate and
decentralize the process of the rarefying of political pressure, by
detailing strategies which would 'hold open' a plurality of mechanisms for
achieving political pressure, instead of increasingly having to rely on the
clientelism of the gatekeepers of the increasingly rarefied and solitary
path to get the state's attention. In other words, 'first dimensional
power' relationships [Lukes, 1974] are something which any 'sustainable
politics' should move to minimize, on the level of 'methods' of achieving
power. When there is a wider array of methods to achieve political and
cultural power, first-dimensional 'gatekeeper' power dependencies are
reduced and externalized groups and interests have more potential for
pressuring the state, and in these situations systemic drift is forestalled
and held in abeyance. With such a plurality of political methods I would
argue, the political ecology could avoid the increasing 'feudalization'
which I see in this systemic drift--the elision of the political and the
economical systems being tied to a centralized government and the
increasing centralization and thinness of mobilizing cultural frames and
systemic actors. I will address this concern first in the interior realm of
the nation-state, addressing a strategic solution for voicing localized
cultural frames, followed by a discussion of nation-state level changes of
processes which can keep this feedback going.


(1) CDI: Civic Democratic Institutions:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Preparing and Maintaining Local Input in Nation-State Level Politics and
Cultural Frames Cultural discourses are inherently political, which is
shown in much of the political sociology of culture literature [Mellucci,
1995; Billig, 1995; Nash, 1989; Levine and Mainwaring, 1989; Navarro,
1989]. It can either make or break a successful mobilization to have a
widely shared sense a fortiori of activities and interpretations of the
world. Especially in nation-states, political parties tend to be the
reifying structures with the widest participation, and thus these
nation-state political parties both aid in defining nation-state culture,
as well as prescribing it to suit systemic interests in the aforementioned
systemic drift which leaves local areas shortchanged culturally speaking.
Crenson's understanding of non-politics is readily witnessed in the
selectivity of these national-political parties in discussing local issues.
The CDI aids in local area formulation of their own political cultural
frames and discourses, based on their community interests which are created
out of their local political processes.

The Civic Democratic Institution form (CDI) is a structure for defensibly
maintaining and registering local sentiment in a form of a 'living poll,'
if you will, recognizing any individuals who are admired or culturally
trusted in a degree in social relations. The Appendix One of this essay is
a copy of a web-published document (at www.sit.wisc.edu/~mrkdwhit/cdi3.htm)
describing the functions, features, and structures of the CDI.

One of the rationales of for creating the CDI was to embed organizationally
different groups together in some degree (in my first thoughts) in an urban
context, because I was initially worried about increasing social
bifurcations in not only this country but worldwide. And following from
this sociopolitical isolation comes what I saw as a contributing factor for
the nation-state failing its ability to address democratic and equity
issues successfully because it was so divided. Bonacich's arguments for the
systemic effects of divided labor markets comes close to my observations,
[Bonacich, 1972] about the importance of social cultural forms of 'split
labor markets' facilitating or debilitating particular political cultures.
I wanted to stir up the pot a bit--yet only in a way that the people
themselves could keep the stirring continuing, as well as in a way that
would lead to moderation in politics instead of reactionary politics.

Throughout the description of the CDI in this essay, I will be
using urban sites as the primary examples of where this would be useful.
Because of the degree of sociospatial separation as well as 'ethnically'
split labor markets, people thus lack of ability to organize a localized
coalitional politics in a wider sense in an urban context. People exist
in different networks sociospatially in an urban context. [Fischer, 1975]
Thus the CDI would be most useful in urban areas, though it is in rural
areas, because of their multiplexity of network connection, where it may
have a lower 'critical mass' to be seen as useful. [Marwell and Oliver,
1984]

I should explain two terms at this point: multiplex and simplex
relationships. Multiplex relationships are most likely to be found in rural
areas, where particular individuals may share many different overlapping
roles with other people in the vicinity. For example, a father-son-daughter
business, in which they attend the same religious organization as most of
the people who employ their services, who may be indeed the very people who
loaned them the money to start the business. This is one complex example of
a 'multiplex' social environment--where individual relationships may be
more likely to carry many different roles, than, say, in an urban context.
Simplex relationships occur readily in an urban context. In urban sites,
the population density allows for great organizational growth and the
potential of individuals social relationships to become very splayed in
urban space and very compartmentalized. More choice results in
relationships which are simplex--and people are more likely to have only
one level of relationship, like for instance a cab driver and his or her
fare, or an economic exchange at a fast food restaurant. Multiplex and
simplex relationships make it easier to comprehend what the CDI designs to
do: make urban simplex relationships more multiplex in character, which
provides for less 'critical mass' required to achieve unified cultural and
political pressures. The CDI acts as an 'introduction service' for
urbanites, separated by the innately splaying sociospatial networks of
urban areas and organizational life, and out of which a more complex
cultural milieu is recognized. With the increasingly complexity of the
urban culture comes less likelihood to be swayed by external solutions to
their problems. With a more multiplex coalitional structure which the CDI
aims to facilitate, community organizations become local systemic actors.
>From this localized context, they can network with other cities for wider
nation-state level politics. This is discussed in the next section.

The CDI conception is so webbed into social feedback effects it's rather
germane to discuss it in terms of what it does, than what it 'is.' The CDI
'grounds' coalition building into existing cultural networks. It uses
existing thoughts and feelings towards other citizens, pools them together
and delivers a tally to the people of whom they find representative or
admire, as a group. This brings local politics into integration with local
cultural forms, and makes state elites work to maintain their power by
reducing first-dimensional power relationships culturally speaking. Instead
of local actors working to get the state's or a political party's
attention, the latter groups have to acquiesce more when there is a
stronger and more vocal local cultural milieu which is less dependent and
more resistant to external ideas about what is 'good policy.' The CDI
balances out the highly unequal systemic power which occurs between a
low-input, simplex urban politics and powerful nation-state political
parties. The CDI creates a mobilizing forum on the local level which is
designed to embed local groups in a long term process of coalition building
as a social institutional process. This process is tailor made to the local
cite because the actors which are recognized are selected for several
traits on the organizational level of the CDI. The CDI makes sure they are

    (1) popular amongst various groups instead of merely their own
    'political machine,'

    (2) with a cultural sense of creating an intermediary and facilitating
    role in cultural sense, instead of creating an ideological reactionary
    influence,

    (3) and in addition, the CDI makes sure they are personally motivated
    to fulfill this role without any incentives besides the status recognition
    which becomes a symbolic rallying frame for them being framed in a social
    and political capacity by the CDI recognition.

The CDI aims at popularizing local political coalitional development as a
cultural process, within cultural networks. The CDI has nothing to do with
changing government structure, or changing voting law, etc. These winnowing
aspects of the CDI are effected by its dual-tier voting structure, and the
turnover period of one CDI is short enough (one year) to allow for issues
to develop as soon as they become widely pertinent, instead of growing
unobserved and unaddressed by government and exploding into violent
conflict. The CDI voting mechanism is described in Appendix One, and I turn
the reader to examine it further there. Other CDI-like forms (or forums, in
this case) in operation around the world are the Cuban political
'affirmative' political structure of localized political input, and the
fiscal budgetary 'affirmative democracy' of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande du
Sul, Brazil. [Navarro, 1997]. Including the CDI in this group, they have
several uniting features:

    (1) a mix of direct and representative features, to create a middle
    ground;

    (2) they attempt to get around political party formation which
    divides a populace on a local level by an integrationist
    and coalitional input form of operation,

    (3) by a means to institutionalize coalition building as a political
    means of integrating community level cultural organizations
    with local government level structures 'culturally,'
    thus minimizing sociospatial separation amongst different networks.

Though I mentioned in point (2) that they attempt to get around ideological
conceptions, I mean in the sense, that they are structured to be
deliberative political arenas instead of combative public factions (which I
would argue exist only when they are left out of the deliberative process
in some sense, in the past).

If the political theorist Goodnow and his ideas had been successful instead
of had been co-opted in the Progressive Era of the United States (circa
1900), urban politics might have been quite different. His ideas of an
urban administrative structure which moved to integrate local political
input into urban governmental structure in a deliberative and consular
sense would have been cut of the same cloth as the abovementioned three.
[Frisch, 1982] The CDI 'holds open' the possibility for effective
democratic structures, which ideological and identity politics normatively
closes and separates, leading to a further debilitation of the political
democratic process, as systemically those unconnected with the government
structure face only their small groups of identity or ideological adherents
as their audiences against the state.

I was particularly interested in the 'whipping' cultural effects of
unrepresentative political victories due to the lack of other candidates or
discrimination, etc. There are two major choices in situations like these:
wait, and in the next election elect someone else; or, if there is nothing
resembling a group willing to challenge, just sitting back and being
frustrated. The first option, I would argue is less based on issues
therefore and more capable of being based on a cycle of revenge. This can
easily be manipulated to get people into power who merely have to say "I'm
the exact opposite of so-and-so, and will do the exactly opposite of
so-and-so,' and with little other strategic choice for the individual
voter, they generally vote in droves for this challenging candidate. And
what occurs generally once this 'challenger' candidate gets into power? It
becomes obvious that they have merely used the public's lack of choice of
other venues of reaction for their own ends. Generally they do nothing
different, and the cycle of the 'false challenger' begins again--becuase of
a lack of political method choice. One is forced to vote 'for' someone when
one actually would rather more directly like to vote 'against' a particular
person. The CDI integrates this, described below, in a 'voter veto.'

The second option: the disgruntled frustration, of saying to hell with it
all, has been the option of most of the United States population for many
years. This is related to a lack of recognized leaders. This is not related
I would argue to a sense that there are no leaders. There are. Yet many
potential leaders realize that the game as it is is a losing one.

There ar two intents of the CDI: one is symbolical, and the other is
deliberative. The symbolical is described first. The CDI moves to make
these leaders visible in the background without having them to do anything.
It just recognizes them, and moves to recognize them with a facilitations
role, which is 'seen' as actively taking on a social frame of recognition,
taking on a status symbol which becomes a potential rallying point. The CDI
'election' has shown symbolically to the people at large that these people
already have an informal 'party' following. This is the symbolic intent of
the CDI.

The deliberative intent of the CDI is recognizing these individuals in
addition as a cultural 'forum' group. Their recognition is both individual
and civic. The CDI is nothing like a governmental structure, it is a
cultural body of admired citizens--the whole spectrum.

Dealing with the symbolic context once more, it is the spectrum only of
those who are 'widely' admired. In other words, the CDI attempts to
disfranchise machine politics structural hold on cultural creation. That's
a mouthful, so I will restate. I am saying that political parties tend to
develop identities for nation-states, for cities, for people as individuals
because they are the social status system as much as the nation-state
political participants. And in time, a simulacrum develops where the
'culture' becomes the feedback which the political actors have selectively
listened to, since everyone else who is ignored either goes hoarse, or just
shuts up. Either way, a system develops between what official culture is
and what politics is. Both reinforce each other. The CDI aims to include
local systemic power in this official cultural capacity of discourse. The
CDI moves to create a way to sustain a coalitional based recognition system
which is wider that what the political status quo would allow for their
conceptions of what the 'culture' is. In other words, the CDI wants to
widen the cultural recognition, which would move the political structures
to adapt over time. The CDI wants to 'hold open' the cultural coalitional
'channel' of discourse as an option.

Continuing this, what about the racists, the fascists, extremists, etc.?
Wouldn't they get equal voice? Extremists would have to pass the litmus
test of the second round of voting, where the longer term of nine months
voting meshes with the published tallies. These tallies allow people to
vote against the people they hate, instead of indirectly finding someone
else to vote for (who is only there mobilizing and capitalizing upon the
widely shared opposition to this other person). The CDI just says that
voting can cut both ways--both for or against these recognitions. This
creates a nice, wide group of centrists, who don't lean either way.
Centrists? Yet doesn't that edit out of cultural recognition anyone
interested in change? No. A quote from Max Weber may be opportune at this
point, concerning external social selection pressures within organizations
which lead to the 'organizational cream of the crop' being the least
definitive elements possible as to satisfy more constituencies.

The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not alone
or even predominately owning to the "human, all too human" factors, which
naturally occur in the process of . . .selection [in an organizational
context]. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of faculty
members or educational ministries responsible for the fact that so many
mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities. The
predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human cooperation,
especially of the cooperation of several bodies. . . .

A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be traced
over many centuries and which are the most important controllable examples
of a selection [in an organizational context]. The cardinal who is said to
be the 'favorite' only rarely has a change to win out. The rule is rather
that the Number Two cardinal or the Number Three wins out. The same holds
for the President of the United States. [Weber, 1958]

Recall the the CDI individuals are not brought together out of
organizational politics, and are more akin to a slow, private accumulation
of votes over the first voting period of nine months. This crates a highly
diverse body of recognized people unaffected by organizational winnowing to
mediocre persons or persons who have been designed to 'fit' in the existing
cultural system. The second tier of voting publicizes their relative
standing to each other, and allows people to vote for people they had
forgotten to vote for before, or in the particular case of the CDI, winnow
out those they despise by voting against them. Since the voter can vote for
as many (for or against) as he or she pleases, the pressure to come up with
one (mediocre and predictable) candiate) is minimized. The idea of the CDI
is to develop intermediaries, those whose appearance is relatively
unclouded by massive popularity or infamy, since these people will most
likely have just as many people who would like to see them disappear as
they would like to have them recognized further. With a roster of
intermediaries, recognized as individuals and as a tacit group, the
organizational politics can develop from there in a political process
within which these intermediaries can decide upon what are the major
concerns of their civic area without having a great deal of systemic input
or state-connected people involved, thus more likely to speak their minds
instead of upholding an image of what they feel they have to represent. The
same principles of intentionally minimizing the social repercussions and
thus allowing for greater citizen honesty of conscience were effective in
the representative debates on the Constitution of the United States in the
1780's.

In the CDI, legitimacy comes from their personal vote totals, and no one is
running against anyone else. After the individual recognition, the
organizational politics develop off a very different and more complex
systemic base than public power structures in society. The CDI designed
with the external effect of it as much as the organizational qualities. But
what about the lump of centrists? Isn't that the definition of politically
inert? Moderation? Doesn't that maintain the status quo?

I have had this argument before. Presently, we are not living in an epoch
of centrist led status quo. We are living in an era of extremist led status
quo--allowed due to co-opting of local cultural frames for uncultural
interests. The present status quo is not actively maintained by centrists.
It is maintained by the continuing successful appeals to extremists--from
the age of Greek tyranny to the present 'wrapping oneself in the flag' of
the Republicans. It would seem that centrism is intentionally and
structurally avoided and deselected against in the present organization of
the nation state, and unrepresentative political ecologies develop which
maintain this process.

I have already found out that my definition of moderation is perhaps quite
different than what it normatively represents in public speech--maintaining
the status quo. Personally, I consider the status quo as a very radical
polity indeed. It fails to deserve the term 'conservative' or 'moderate'.
It is dangerous to allow it to continue 'unmoderated' by democratic input.
If there is one discourse switch I would feel be of great use is
considering the existing status quo as a radical and one sided polity,
capable of being maintained because of a lack of political mediation and
moderation. Thus, 'moderation' in my sense is a sense of increasing
complexity and less issuing out of ideological platforms, and more coming
out of cultural networks and humanizing socialization which brings groups
through the representatives of the CDI together socially on a local
context. As I mention in the Appendix, the CDI is an 'introduction service'
for generating local consensus and coalitional based political pressures.

It's a strategic and solvable problem I argue on how to keep these
democratic channels from 'sealing' into formal ideological frameworks,
which can be co-opted by external elites (out of the urban context of
groups without representation). The complexity, the shifting quality, and a
system of generating multiplex relationships in an urban context thus
making it difficult for clientalistic elites to swoop in and take advantage
of economic desperation or of desire for 'solutions' by ideological mimicry
of 'local values' platforms. The CDI creates and holds effectively 'open' a
process of coalitional politics.

Power wins and will always win. We have to find a way to join in its
deliberations on a long term basis. We have to find a way to disrupt power
by participating in it, thus pulling its dimensionality of relations to a