This paper draws on my experience as a leader of West Mt. Airy Neighbors in the early 2000s as well as on my academic work on communitarian political thought. It was written for an International Conference on Deliberative Democracy held in Hangzhou, China in December 2004. It was published in Chinese translation in 2005 in a book edited by Bao-Gang He. An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2003.
Abstract
One of the oldest arguments in the history of political theory is that strong communities are only possible where people live a life in common. And one of the central themes of participatory democratic theory is that involved citizens are only possible where communities are strong. Together, these arguments lead to the conclusion that strong, democratic communities must be homogenous. Homogeneity is frequently thought to be a prerequisite for strong communities for a number of reasons. A commitment to the common good is not possible if there are tensions about where the common good lies. Where there is dispute and contention, the members of a community will not find that they live a life in common. And thus common goods will play a smaller part in their lives. They will find happiness in private life, either alone or with a few family members and friends. Civic engagement will be lacking or die out entirely.
These arguments raise two serious problems for those of us who want to encourage both strong communities and participatory democracy. The first is that, under modern circumstances of life, homogeneous communities are becoming ever more difficult to find or create. The freedoms found in liberal market economies and the economic incentives they create undermine homogeneity. Liberal market economies encourage geographic and social mobility of all kind. And, even where, a community is fairly homogeneous—in, say, a rural hinterland or an exclusive suburb—contemporary forms of communication bring people in touch with other people and ideas very different from those familiar to themselves.
The second problem is that homogeneity raises concerns for those of us who would like to secure liberal freedoms. And that is why most liberal theorists have been suspicious of the call for homogeneity. Liberals insist on tolerance for those who have views of the good life different from that of the majority. They welcome this diversity as a spurt to developments of all sorts: moral, religious, political and scientific. They are dubious about any efforts to reduce the multiplicity of points of view found in the liberal political community. While they know that diversity may undermine the pursuit of the common good, many liberals think this is an acceptable trade-off. For the tolerance of difference that is central to the liberal project. Indeed, many theorists argued that liberal politics works best when citizens are diverted from public to private and from politics to economics. When that happens, the contentiousness of politics is reduced. Political decisionmaking is then left in the hands of a few professionals who, while ultimately responsible to the judgment of the people, are free to act as they think is best for the whole community.
The tensions between strong communities and liberal ideals can never be entirely resolved. But, in this paper I suggest a number of ways in which that tension can be moderated. In the first part of the paper I examine some traditional solutions to this difficulty and show how they can be modified to suit contemporary circumstances. These solutions mainly rely on pluralism and decentralization as a means of creating more or less homogenous local communities.
In the second, and more original, part of the paper, I reverse direction. The common approach is ask what characteristics must be found in a place and time if people are to have one kind of political community or another. This is a perfectly legitimate question. But to ask that question alone might blind us to the way in which certain kinds of political institutions and practices can shape or transform a whole political community. The central claim of this part of my paper is that establishing democratic institutions and practices can not only foster diversity but create the kinds of diverse communities that are communitarian in nature. In other words, I challenge the assumption that homogeneity is required for strong communities or for participatory democracy. Contemporary conditions of life not only create the conditions under which diversity is impossible to avoid, they also create conditions under which diversity is welcomed by many citizens, especially those in the middle classes.
The frisson and excitement of diverse communities is, in many places in the US and Europe, spurring the redevelopment of older urban communities. Yet, a barrier to the creation of such communities is that political institutions have not been developed to manage the conflicts that diversity inevitably creates. Local democratic institutions and practices, I suggest, can provide an institutional framework within which conflicts of these kinds can be resolved. More importantly, they provide a forum in which the members of a diverse community can strengthen their ties to one another; appreciate one another; and thereby create the political and social unity that holds their community together. In other words, opportunities for democratic practices can, on my view, shape a diversity of people community into a new kind of a strong community.
In the third part of the paper, I provide a concrete example of this kind of community. This part of my paper is drawn from my own practical political work as a community activist in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mt. Airy is one of only ten fully racially integrated middle class communities in the United States. It is a community that was deliberately created forty years ago as an integrated community—in which half the residents are white and half black—by the organization I now head. And, for the last forty years, our organization has worked to create strength out of our diversity, primarily by encouraging broad participation and involvement in the resolution of community problems. While aspects of our community are distinct and unlikely to be replicated elsewhere, our experience suggests that diversity and democracy are, under the right institutional forms, are compatible with one another.