A-propósito...(III)

Não tenho ilusões sobre a "tracção" daquilo que afirmo sobre a prática política, possa ter sobre os meus eventuais leitores. Em primeiro lugar, devido ao nível de demérito da minha expressão (o que reflecte, necessariamente, o grau de conhecimento, maturidade e aprofundamento do que digo). Em segundo lugar, devido ao facto da problemática da fraca participação cívica da população, nem ser considerada como um sério problema, no país e na região; existe, quanto muito, o lamento recorrente sobre os níveis de abstenção e, tudo aquilo, de politicamente correcto, que é, e possa ser dito, a nível de discurso, sobre este tópico. Considerar algo como um sério problema implica muito mais do que isso - implica tentar resolvê-lo: a não ser assim, em termos objectivos, o problema, de sério passa a ser irresolúvel, uma "constante da natureza", algo com que temos de viver.

Mas não é assim em todo o lado. O caso mais paradigmático é o dos EUA. Para já preocupam-se a sério (mesmo os políticos); depois, procuram soluções; finalmente, as coisas transformam-se, ainda que, algumas vezes, de modo não totalmente esperado. Porque será assim? Não tenho a certeza sobre a resposta (história, dimensão, ...) - poderá ter a ver, nomeadamente, com a dotação de capital social (ver aqui). Em todo o caso, é agradável para mim - ninguém gosta de se perceber, aos olhos dos outros, como um excêntrico [no sentido etimológico do termo] - quando encontro alguém a dizer coisas deste género: "...Skocpol pointed to institutional problems -- and in particular the declining interest of elites in organizing popular participation -- as the major explanation for "diminishing democracy...." - eu gosto deste Skocpol.

Este artigo da The American Prospect Can Partisanship Save Citizenship? The American Prospect, aborda a questão da importância da participação partidária pura e dura na reanimação da participação cívica e política dos cidadãos - isto cruza com aquilo que Pacheco Pereira diz (ver aqui) -, mas, ao mesmo tempo, dá conta da discussão académica sobre a temática, articulando-a com a vida política norte-americana, com o impacto das novas tecnologias e de novos meios de expressão pública (blogues, por exemplo). Tem pontos muito interessantes e merece ser lido - mesmo por aqueles que não querem que essa participação aconteça (podem encontrar mesmo ali factos e perspectivas que os levem a reforçar essa sua percepção [aqui, estou a ser irónico]).

Alguns excertos para balisar o seu conteúdo, e para futura referência:

"Public intellectuals don't agree on much. However, in recent years they seemed to nearly unanimously believe that American public life was in terrible shape. Political scientists debated whether voter turnout in national elections was merely stagnant or was actively declining. Sociologists suggested that television, overwork, and a breakdown in communal ties were undermining participation in both public and social life. There was chronic hand-wringing about the state of political debate, with civic activists proposing that America needed more deliberative dialogue among people with different points of view. ...

The movement to reinvigorate citizenship had roots in academia. Harvard's Robert Putnam identified the decline in political participation as a symptom of a broader collapse in civic organizations. In his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, he drew on survey data showing declines in membership in local organizations like the Elks lodges to argue that "social capital" -- the resources that enable trust and cooperation -- was drying up. ...

This academic movement to reverse civic decline had an unusual level of impact outside the ivory tower, because politicians were struggling with the same problems. Bill and Hillary Clinton invited many of the movement's key academic and civic figures to a series of meetings in the White House and at Camp David. ...

At roughly the same time, though, a promising young organizer-turned-politician from Chicago joined Robert Putnam's Saguaro Seminar, which brought together religious and civic leaders to explore ways to rebuild civic engagement in America. Today, when Barack Obama speaks about how citizens can transcend their political divisions to participate in projects of common purpose, he is drawing on the arguments and ideas from these intellectual debates of a decade ago. ...

None of the civic-decline academics, whether they focused on voter participation, social capital, or the quality of deliberation, saw much use for political parties or partisanship. ...

The civic declinists further worried that new technologies were hurting civic participation. While they had harsh words for television, they dismissed the Internet as an insufficient substitute for local groups. ...

Skocpol likewise failed to anticipate the current resurgence in participation, but unlike Putnam and Fishkin, she recognized the importance of political conflict. For Skocpol, a real participatory democracy would not involve citizens coming together to create spaces with a new common purpose. Instead, it would involve lively and vigorous contention between parties and organizations, each struggling to get as much recognition and distributional benefit as possible for its members. ...

... it is based on party politics, coupled with and accelerated by new opportunities provided by the Internet. Skocpol's claim that "conflict and competition have always been the mother's milk of American democracy" tells part of the story. Just as social-movement theorists might have predicted, the major innovations came from outsiders, like members of MoveOn.org, who wanted to challenge the system. ...

... In his book The Argument, Matt Bai writes that MoveOn's members were typically ordinary suburbanites who have been "isolated for too long, entirely disconnected from each other and despondent over the rise of Republican extremism." Thus, MoveOn built exactly the kind of dense local networks Putnam dreamed of and connected them to national debates as Skocpol hoped. ...

The lasting impact of the Obama campaign's volunteering model will be to create a new paradigm of party competition in which each party builds mechanisms that increase grass-roots participation to avoid falling behind the other. If parties and interest groups need high levels of participation among their supporters to win political battles, then we can expect participation to thrive in American politics as it never would have if it were based on civic good works alone. ...

Technology and partisanship aren't only increasing participation. They're also leading to a burgeoning of public debate, albeit not the kind that Fishkin and other academics imagined. Political blogs don't fit well with deliberation theory. ...

They are rough, raucous, and vigorously partisan. Yet they have been far more successful than any deliberative experiment in encouraging wide-scale political participation and involving large numbers of people in real and lively democratic debate. .... Even so, debates between political bloggers tend to be structured in certain ways. Most substantive argument occurs within partisan boundaries rather than across them. ... Research suggests both that bloggers tend overwhelmingly to link to other bloggers who share their partisan views, and that readers tend overwhelmingly to read blogs that reflect their political affiliations. ...

Yet this likely reflects the enduring realities of politics more than any particular failure of blogs. As Jack Knight and James Johnson argue in their forthcoming book, Politics, Institutions and Justification, deliberation can neither magically smooth away deep-rooted political differences nor replace voting and elections in large-scale democratic systems. In a country like the United States, where people's interests and political viewpoints often differ starkly from each other, argument and persuasion are unlikely to transcend partisan affiliations. Political discussions of issues where people strongly disagree are less likely to result in consensus than in winners and losers. ....

On this more realistic standard, blogs play an important and often valuable role in shaping democratic arguments between the left and the right. "Netroots" blogs, such as DailyKos and FireDogLake, which are oriented toward partisan politics, have reshaped internal debates about how Democrats should respond to the Republican Party. ...

Even if these blogs are not systematically ideological, they have helped rebuild a more vigorous Democratic Party that is less abashed about its philosophical liberalism. These blogs may have also helped encourage Democrats to get involved in politics. Statistical evidence suggests that readers of left-wing blogs are more likely to participate in politics than either nonreaders or readers of right-wing blogs (even if the direction of causation is uncertain). The same is not true of broadly based deliberation; if anything, the evidence suggests that deliberation across party lines actively hurts political participation. ...

Moreover, while some politicians in the 1990s hoped for a more engaged citizenry, this level of participation also holds those same politicians accountable in new ways. ...

That said, however, there remains a tremendous inequality in participation and political knowledge. While millions of Americans are engaged as never before as volunteers and debaters, millions more lack the time, the passion, or the patience for such intense engagement. We may be moving toward two economies of political information, one in which voters are intensely involved and informed, and the other in which they are not and are perhaps turned off by the strong opinions and intimidating voices of the well-informed. ...

This isn't merely an academic point -- it has implications for national politics. Obama's political project faces a dilemma that goes back to his own roots in the civic movement. Despite his efforts to build consensus with moderates and conservatives, his campaign's organizational innovations depended on and may be helping cement the politics of partisan division. As Obama shifts focus from electoral politics to administration, he is trying to take online structures that were built around decentralized partisan participation and reorient them to a less partisan national agenda. Evidence suggests that people who are strongly engaged in politics and hence likely to volunteer for campaigns are strongly partisan and tightly clumped around the ideological poles (they are strongly liberal or strongly conservative). ...

...By rebuilding the Democratic Party around a model that is friendlier to decentralized online participation, Obama is both making it easier for Democratic activists to organize in protest against overly "moderate" decisions, and forcing Republicans to adopt similar organizing techniques in order to win elections. ...

This may be a headache for the new administration. It isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself. Political conflict between parties with clearly diverging political platforms has its own pathologies, just as does the bipartisan-consensus politics it is replacing. However, it has the decided advantage of giving voters real choices. It should not be surprising that people are more inclined to participate in politics when they strongly identify with one political party and believe that it is important for that party to win elections, even if it cuts against a persistent anti-partisan bias in American political thought. For generations now, public intellectuals have been asking for more participation in American politics. Like it or not, they're getting their wish.