The everyday democracy project is an effort to understand the everyday practices that make up a democracy. Its an ethnographic exploration of how people envision democracy, how people interact with strangers to make democracies more just and equitable, and how democracy is used to promote or inhibit increased equity and justice.
We are trying to connect the everyday practices of democratic citizenship to the real and often conflicted inequalities that exist in our society - to see if deepening democracy in our everyday realities has the potential for increasing equity and justice.
We started with this definition of deepening democracy:
Deepening democracy is both the process and practice that enables and sustains inclusive and representative decision making, toward the goal of making governmental decisions and outcomes fair, representative, transparent, accountable, and equitable. It is a practice that empowers and contributes to human and community development; ensuring citizen participation in social, economic, and political life.
We argue that democratic practices can be utilized to work against situations where the majority rule produces unjust outcomes and can be activated to advocate for just outcomes and an engaged citizenry. In this sense, we take the work of deepening democracy to be guided by a normative framework for increasing justice and equity, particularly for marginalized people and groups.
Across the world, examples of deepening democracy as a practice include:
· participatory governance and budgeting
· public education and school governance
· environmental management
· worker participation
· counter narratives, activism, and forms of contentious politics
Deepening democracy is a practice and process of engagement, at all scales, that promotes bottom-up accountability, equity, and transparency within decision-making, but also enables the development of a stronger democratic public, one which not only holds government accountable to fair and just practices and outcomes, but also that deepens civic engagement and democratic trust within and between groups of citizens.
