Democracy and Scarcity, Toward A Theory of Participatory Democracy - Botwinick and Bachrach

Democracy and Scarcity: Toward a Theory of Participatory Democracy
Author(s): Aryeh Botwinick and Peter Bachrach

Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique,
Vol. 4, No. 3, Politics and Scarcity (1983), pp. 361-373
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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DEMOCRACY AND SCARCITY
Toward a Theory of Participatory Democracy
ARYEH BOTWINICK
PETER BACHRACH
In contrast to the conditions prevailing in an era of abundance, during an age of scarcity a

whole new theorizing of the nature and role of participation in democratic theory seems
plausible-one that sees it as integral to the functioning of the democratic process. With
the private sphere no longer offering the satisfactions and opportunities that it did in the
past, a participatory conceptualization of democracy might offer the only hope for
stabilizing democratic values and institutions in an age when the traditional foundation
for democratic consensus (namely, material abundance) is being eroded by diminishing
resources. A "temporal politics" rooted in issues of personal development and human
dignity needs to replace a "spatial politics" absorbed in questions of acquisition.
The emergence of an era of scarcity is leading to a reconceptualization of

the bases of democratic politics and to an exploration of what alterna-
tive modes for organizing human society might lie hidden in the Western
past that could more effectively guide political efforts under conditions
of scarcity. We assume that the decline in economic growth will continue
indefinitely. Scarcities and increasing prices of non-renewable energy
sources, the depletion of such basic non-renewable resources as air and
water, and environmental constraints against excessive pollution that
militate against the fashioning of cheap technological substitutes for
depleted resources-these factors, taken together, provide vigorous
evidence of a declining GNP leading to zero growth.
The case for the emergence of worldwide scarcity seems irresistible.
All theorists of the future-from the most pessimistic to the most
optimistic-recognize the existence of limits to our planet's tolerance of
continual population and economic growth. Even if one accepts as the
most enduring constraint on limitless growth the tolerance of the eco-
sphere to absorb heat-which gives humankind a margin of safety of
about 250 years (Heilbroner, 1974)-it still follows that the pattern of
growth that has characterized the immediate past cannot extend into the
indefinite future. In fact, even many of the optimistic opponents of the
International Political Science Review, Vol. 4 No. 3 1983 361-373

X 1983 International Political Science Association
361
362 POLITICS AND SCARCITY
no-growth theorists see the limit as occurring much earlier-generally

sometime at the end of the twenty-first century (Hudson Institute, 1972:
19). Whichever scarcity time frame one chooses to adopt, more imme-
diate or long range, the implications seem clear. A fundamental revi-
sion of our basic political concepts and institutions will have to take
place in order to enable humans to survive and-however marginally-
flourish in a dramatically altered environment.
The revisions associated with a move within democratic societies
from representation to participation form the subject matter of this
essay. We will argue that, under conditions of abundance, public partic-
ipation in virtually all spheres of society was minimized, largely for two
reasons, one positive, the other negative. The positive reason had to do
with the potential for economic growth in the private sphere, which
could thus absorb nascent discontents within society, thereby giving
them a non-political outlet. The negative factor contributing to a non-
participatory reading of democratic theory and institutions had to do
with the destabilizing effects such participation was regarded as having
on the political system. The negative argument seemed plausible given
the abundance of the private sphere.
In contrast to the conditions prevailing in an era of abundance,
during an age of scarcity, a new theory of the nature and role of
participation seems plausible-one that sees it as integral to the func-
tioning of the democratic process. With the private sphere no longer
offering the satisfactions and opportunities that it once did, a participa-
tory concept of democracy might offer the only hope for stabilizing
democratic values and institutions in an age when the traditional foun-
dation for democratic consensus (namely, material abundance) is
eroding.
SPATIAL VERSUS TEMPORAL POLITICS
Among political theory concepts, Hobbesian and Platonic political

thought-the latter inaugurating political theory in the ancient world
and the former constituting a dominant, paradigmatic formulation of
modernity-suggest the rudiments of two contrasting ideal types of
politics appropriate respectively to conditions of abundance and condi-
tions of scarcity. One might say that the Hobbesian organization of
society gives rise to a spatial politics and that the Platonic gives rise to a
temporal politics.
A spatial politics is necessarily absorbed in questions of acquisition,
regarding the sources of human conflict as primarily social, that is,
Botwinick, Bachrach / DEMOCRACY AND SCARCITY 363
rooted in such factors as the coexistence of large numbers of people

within a limited geographic area, the finiteness of resources, and the
assertions of multiple claims on those limited resources. By contrast,
temporal politics views the major sources of conflict in human life as
rooted in issues of personal development and human dignity, stemming
from the time-bound nature of human existence.
The fact that we humans live in time means that channeling and
mediating processes must always be invoked for humans to realize their
aims and projects in life. No matter how intense our feelings on a given
occasion, there is a radical non-immediacy attached to the context in
which we live because of the progressive, evolving nature of our time-
bound existence. The thoughts and feelings of any particular moment
are continually modified merely by the fact that we go on living, thereby
remaining susceptible to new intrusions of feeling and experiences that
alter the immediately urgent and permanent of a moment before. To live
is always to abstract from a broader context of thinking and feeling, the
outward contours and trajectory of which we are never able to grasp
completely, even on a conceptual level.
A temporal politics is concerned with reconciling our transitoriness
with our urge toward completeness so as to evolve a modus vivendi
between doing and being. Economic and social issues in a temporal
political setting would thus be addressed in a context stressing intraper-
sonal and interpersonal development that would be radically different
from typical intergroup relations prevailing under contemporary liber-
alism. Too often in modern liberal societies, the interactionist element
has been restricted to the group level, with elitist-structured groups
competing with each other-emphasizing a one-sided articulation of
interest at the expense of the overall development of their individual
members.
The organizing category of a temporal politics is justice-construed
as the optimal ordering of human energies and also as the optimal
ordering of relationships between humans to maximize the potential of
all. The organizing category of a spatial politics is political obligation-
which takes profitable individual interaction with the world for granted
and merely raises the question of how to justify the curbing of such an
irresistible individualism.
Parallel to the distinction between justice and political obligation, the
focus of a temporal politics is participation-as the dominant means of
overcoming the distances between individuals and of healing the arbi-
trariness of being. A spatial politics is centered on the concept of
representation, which enables relatively self-sufficient, spatially anchored

individuals to attain their diverse ends without forfeiting their freedom
or individuality. Let us examine how the traditional workings of liberal-
democratic society in a climate of abundance have affected the institu-
tional translation of a balance between representation and participa-
tion, and between political obligation and justice.
REPRESENTATION AND ABUNDANCE
An important underlying assumption of liberal political thought is

that men and women can best develop their capacities and personalities
in the private sphere, and that politics should be utilized only as a last
resort to maximize private gain. This assumption has unquestionably
become, for most citizens, the guiding principle of American life as well
as that of most other Western democracies. Within this context, Robert
Dahl is entirely correct: Most men and women are non-political (Dahl,
1961: 224-225, 279). Their energies are primarily absorbed in the per-
sonal pursuit of wealth, status, and self-esteem. Even when they are
"frustrated in their primary activities," they seldom turn to politics for
solutions (Dahl, 1961: 280). Their abdication from political life, how-
ever, in no way threatens the health of the democratic polity. The fact
that the comparatively few members of the political stratum are "rela-
tively rational political beings" in contrast to those belonging to the "less
calculating" apolitical strata explains why the political stratum is prim-
arily responsible for "perceiving a political solution" and the "formula-
tion of a political demand" (Dahl, 1961: 92). Moreover, the politically
passive "homo civicus" exercises power over political leaders indirectly
without engaging in political participation.
Most Americans believe in the "democratic creed" that has generated
a consensus of values binding both leaders and followers. As Tocque-
ville emphasized, this creed is not subject to an investigation of its
validity. In fact, that the origin and function of democratic ideology is
non-problematic is taken as positive evidence that the politically indif-
ferent do play an important political role. "The apolitical strata can be
said to 'govern' as much through the sharing of common values and
goals with members of the political stratum as by other means" (Dahl,
1961: 92). And by engaging minimally in politics-that is, by voting--
the apolitical strata activate the law of anticipated reaction. Leaders are
not expected to respond positively to any "mandate" of the electorate:
Their response is simply open ended within the bounds of what future
voters can be expected to tolerate (Dahl, 1961: 234). The overall effect,
then, is that elites are held within reasonable bounds without undue
curtailment of their creative and leadership abilities-all this with little
or no participation by the overwhelming majority of citizens.
The collapsing, by modern liberal theory, of the private person and
public citizen into one entity is aptly reflected in the definition of
political participation formulated by Sidney Verba and Norman Nie.
"Political participation," they state, "refers to those activities by private
citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection
of governmental personnel and/ or the actions they take" (Verba and
Nie, 1972: 2; emphasis added). Adhering to the sharp distinction Dahl
makes between homo civicus and homopoliticus, these authors concep-
tualize participation as a way in which "private citizens" can communi-
cate their concerns to government elites. In other words, in accordance
with our schema, they emasculate participation into a delineation of the
set of passive citizen arrangements that will enable a system of political
representation to function effectively. After explicitly rejecting the clas-
sical common interest view, Verba and Nie (1972: 11) assert:
A more modern view is that participation can lead to a better public policy
even if citizens bring their own narrow and selfish interests into politics.
Through such "selfish participation," the government is informed of these
interests and pressured to respond. In this way it produces public goods
more closely attuned to citizen needs than it would if there were no
participation.
In addition to conceptualizing participation "realistically"-as an

instrument for satisfying selfish interests-their assertion also strongly
implies that participation performs the crucial democratic function of
keeping the government responsive to the needs of citizens. This posi-
tion contradicts the underlying liberal assumption that most men and
women are basically non-political and that only rarely will they turn to
politics to resolve their problems (Dahl, 1961: 279). Yet, if a majority of
people are not interested in politics and do not voice their policy
preferences, it would appear that government policy outputs generally
will not be "closely attuned to citizen needs." To the extent that govern-
ment is responsive to the pressures of a relative few, should we not
conclude that this mode of participation functions undemocratically,
serving the needs of the few at the expense of the many?'
By opting for a representationist reading of participation-where
participation merely serves as a channel for communicating citizens'
private interests rather than as a forum that might eventually lead to a

transformation and redefinition of those interests-Verba and Nie also
smuggle an elitist premise into their concept of liberal participation.
Since the general public is characterized as fundamentally apolitical-
which explains why an articulation of preferences utilizing the machin-
ery of liberal representative government suffices-the process of liberal
participation, which requires a greater degree of assertiveness in defense
of one's selfish interests than is normally mobilized by the apolitical
public, will be restricted to those who have more of a stake in the
political system, usually, the most affluent. It is important to recognize
that even when liberal citizens participate and assert their selfish inter-
ests, they are passive because the whole system presupposes a static
conception of interest that is only externally affected by interaction with
others in terms of fashioning compromises that will accommodate the
pressures of multiple claimants on a finite body of resources rather than
internally affected, as it were, so as to be goaded by the process of
participation with others into a rearticulation of one's interest, namely,
one's fundamental good.
Since participation is construed as a means of maximizing private
gain, it follows that liberal participation must be regarded as a cost.
Thus, in Dahl's (1970: 46) words, "If the rewards do not exceed the costs,
it is foolish" for citizens "to participate at all." The cost-benefit criterion
reflects one of the major assumptions in both classical and modern
liberal thought: "that each individual," to quote John Dewey (1966:
157), "is of himself equipped with the intelligence needed, under the
operation of self-interest, to engage in political affairs" (emphasis
added; see also Macpherson, 1977: 86). This means that individuals
acquire firmly identifiable wants and objectives in the course of their
involvement in social and organizational activities, and that they are
able, if they find it to their advantage, to convert their wants in the social
sector into articulated preferences within the political sector.
Moreover, a second and corollary assumption basic to the liberal
paradigm is that the political system is class neutral and essentially open.
Any legitimate demand voiced by a group of citizens will have a fair
chance of being seriously considered as an issue in an appropriate
decision making arena (Dahl, 1956). With this assumption in place, the
analyst can focus on the process by which issues are either set aside or
converted into public policy.
If these two assumptions were actually operative, they would be
reflected within the political system by a predominance of lower-
income and working-class oriented issues. This inference seems reason-

able since, owing to their relative poverty, these groups would stand to
benefit the most by becoming active participants in the political process.
We know from Verba and Nie (1972: 338) and other studies, however,
that the reverse is true: Those who participate the most and benefit the
most by participating come from upper-SES groups. This constitutes
prima facie evidence that one or another assumption is untrue.
In neither of their studies on participation do Verba and Nie consider
this possibility. Instead, they attempt to explain the discrepancy
between the ostensible neutrality of the participatory system and the
unequal way it is used on the ground that the underclasses are politically
disadvantaged primarily because of deprivation growing out of their
position in a socioeconomic system characterized by inequality (Verba
and Nie, 1972: 335; Verba et al., 1978: 309).
They are quite right in identifying social deprivation as a principal
cause of the lower classes having been unable to take advantage of the
participatory system; but they are wrong, in our view, to separate for
purposes of analysis the political and socioeconomic systems. It is worth
quoting Verba and Nie at length (1972: 342) on this point:
Participation, looked at generally, does not necessarily help one social

group rather than another. . . . It [the system] could work so that
lower-status citizens were more effective politically and used that political
effectiveness to improve their social and economic circumstances....
Participation remains a powerful social force for increasing or decreasing
inequality. It depends on who takes advantage of it.
In taking considerable pains to remove the participatory system as a

causal factor in perpetuating non-participation and social inequality,
Verba and Nie do not consider the role the system actually plays in the
American political system. They fail to see that the system, in being
congenital to the needs of one class and more or less irrelevant to those
of another, not only helps those who are better off, but also legitimates
the silence of those who are worse off.
The imperviousness of traditional liberal democratic theory to the
linkage between the cultivation of a capacity to participate and an actual
right to participate might again be due to the effects of actual or
potential abundance. The utility and proper structure of a participatory
system have slipped from theoretical view because the whole mechanism
of participation as a promoter of individual economic and social goals
could be largely bypassed in a climate of abundance.
More elitist-oriented liberals, such as Herbert McCloskey, James

Prothro, and William Kornhauser, emphasize the sharp contrast
between lower-class individuals who lack the opportunity to become
politically educated and the political elites who, because of their politi-
cal involvement, acquire the skills intelligently to "adopt opinions, to
take stands on issues, and to evaluate ideas and events" (McCloskey,
quoted in Fermia, 1979: 375). Juxtaposition of intelligent elites with
politically uneducated (and therefore apolitical) masses provides for
them a justification for rule by elites. Intent on making their case, they
completely miss the implications of their argument. The disparity
between the political education of elites and that of the masses justifies
the reform and expansion of the participatory system so as to provide all
citizens an opportunity to acquire a political education (see Fermia,
1979: Bachrach, 1967: 45-46).
We might say that both economic elites and the masses have been
victimized by conditions of abundance into the pursuit of false values.
The underclass has been led by the prospect of imminent realization of
its economic goals to clamor for economic betterment divorced from a
participatory framework that might extend these economic goals to
encompass the realization of human values of a less transparently
material sort. The elite have been misled by the prospects of abundance
into believing that the largely material payoffs that the system affords
are the highest rewards to be reaped from collective social action.
Abundance has corrupted the have-nots into sharing the ideology of the
haves, and it has corrupted the haves into believing that the very
dichotomization of society into haves and have-nots exhausts the range
of relevant political options.
PARTICIPATION AND SCARCITY
In contrast to the political values that prevailed during an era of

abundance, the nurturing of a genuinely participatory focus for politics
offers a unique opportunity for resolving the crisis of scarcity. From a
theoretical, comparative historical perspective, the possibilities that
become most alluring in an age of scarcity are either greater collectiviza-
tion in the direction of authoritarian socialism-with government arbi-
trarily controlling more and more phases of the acquisitive and distribu-
tive processes-or greater collectivization in a fascist direction-with
radical national unity purchased at the cost of racial or religious scape-
goats. The option that seems least plausible in a context of scarcity is the
preservation of liberal democracy. It is at this juncture that a radical

participatory reorientation of society might offer the most promising
strategy for maintaining some key values of liberal democracy in a
drastically transformed economic setting.
During the period when the doctrines of liberalism were fashioned
and institutionalized, they had limited opportunity to become actual-
ized in a pristine form because of the historical convergence of liberalism
with capitalism. The radical individualism that lies at the core of liberal-
ism quickly assumed a spurious "ideological" reality behind which the
dynamic of capitalism could work itself out. Efforts to disengage the
valuational kernel of liberalism from a fully elaborated network of
capitalistic practices and institutions have generally failed, as an advanc-
ing capitalism devised new strategies to coopt protest movements and
have them contribute new personnel and ideas to its own expansive
dynamic. It may well be that liberal individualism will have a chance to
come into its own and influence events as an unalloyed historical entity
only when its link with capitalism is severed by circumstances of
scarcity.
With the emergence of scarcity, we shall need a rehabilitation of the
classic priorities of the political theories of Aristotle and Rousseau-
which exemplify temporal politics-where the stress falls on participa-
tion itself as meeting an important human need. To rearticulate the
coherence and integrity of a self in a radically transformed external
environment, we may need to design new forums in which mutual
involvement with others can take place. Not efficacy as leading to
participation, but participation itself as leading to a sense of efficacy and
self-worth is the classic political route we shall need to retraverse in an
age of scarcity.
The process and method of participation may have to be invoked in
an era of scarcity, not only to confer a sense of efficacy and self-worth,
but also to ward off a most dangerous prospect-that humans might
cease to be history-making creatures altogether. With an entrenchment
of worldwide scarcities, we may see the trajectory of modernization
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries move the other way.
Instead of modernization being equivalent to the establishment of the
desiderata of a spatial politics, modernization may become synonymous,
in an age of scarcity, with the successful negotiation of the transition
from a spatial to a temporal politics entirely unrelated to the prospects
of economic growth. Not reindustrialization, but deindustrialization
and the establishment of stable patterns of living centering on a dimin-
ished resource base could become the watchwords of the day.
In such a context, participation might loom as important for the

preservation of that residuum of human identity that would allow
humans to continue to function as history-making creatures even in an
age of scarcity. Western individuals have been history-making creatures
since the Renaissance, because the conquering of external worlds-the
presence of an apparently unlimited field of action-has ensured that
the distance between who humans are-what they perceive themselves
to be from moment to moment-and what they do to live out their lives
in time continued to widen, thereby goading men and women to fashion
ever more grandiose structures in the world, to forge a permanent
coincidence between being and doing.
With the shrinkage of an external sphere of action in an age of
scarcity, the essential tension between being and doing that forms the
precondition of humans' identity as history-making creatures might
collapse. In an important sense, if humans do not make history, they no
longer have a history. One can argue that humans can only understand
what they themselves have fashioned (Collingwood, 1946). The genera-
tion of the tension between being and doing essential for humans to
function as history-making-and therefore also as historically reflec-
ting-creatures might be sapped by a restructuring of the external
environment in the direction of scarcity. Humankind would be poised
on the threshold of returning to a state of metaphysical thinghood, and
of losing human identity.
To ward off the prospect of what, from our current perspective, must
appear as a horrible mutation in human identity and consciousness-
signaling nothing less than the end of humankind as well as the superces-
sion of history-the creation of participatory networks throughout
society will be specifically crucial. Creating the infrastructure of a
temporal politics would help foster the notion that humans could go
on doing-investing their energies in creative ways-even where the
prospects of material advance had been removed. A participatory praxis
would help lend substance to the notion of a human world outside of a
context of material investment and technological improvement. We
could perhaps lay claim to our humanity just by virtue of willing it into
existence through participatory involvements with others, divorced
from concerted, exploitative interaction with the world.
HOW DO WE GET THERE FROM HERE?
Any movement from representation to participation in a temporal

political context needs to be approached from two opposing perspec-
tives-that of working-class people demanding greater control over

their lives and that of the ruling elites relinquishing a measure of their
economic and political power. To deal with the working class first: A
radicalizing of public consciousness is not likely to occur in a context of
elitist theoretical innovation unmediated by actual changes in the world.
Machiavelli might have been the first modern theorist to be aware of the
structural detour that needs to be taken to close the gap between
consciousness and action with his highly paradoxical notion of oppor-
tunita. The following is Machiavelli's (1961: 50-51) formulation in The
Prince:
And when we come to examine their actions and lives, they do not seem to
have had from fortune anything other than opportunity. Fortune, as it
were, provided the matter but they gave it its form; without opportunity
their prowess would have been extinguished, and without such prowess
the opportunity would have come in vain.
Thus for the Israelites to be ready to follow Moses, in order to escape from
servitude, it was necessary for him to find them, in Egypt, enslaved and
oppressed by the Egyptians. For Romulus to become king of Rome and
founder of his country, he had to have left Alba and been exposed to die
when he was born.... The opportunities given them enabled these men to
succeed, and their own exceptional prowess enabled them to seize their
opportunities; in consequence their countries were renowned and enjoyed
great prosperity.
Machiavelli's highly paradoxical notion of opportunity-identifying

it with danger and adversity-suggests how it might be possible to
realize a program of radical participatory politics in an age of scarcity.
With the shrinkage of resources, the masses will know on a visceral level
what radically inclined theorists have been telling them for some time,
namely, that the theoretical priorities of liberalism (such as its concern
with "political obligation" over "justice" and its emphasis on scarcity)
constitute a veiled opportunity for bringing political action into har-
mony with political consciousness, by facilitating through the spreading
of participatory networks across society a fundamental reordering of
power relations within society.
In trying to meet workers' intensified demands for a greater share in
decision making, corporate managers acting out of expediency might
acquiesce in these demands in exchange for being allowed to continue to
share in corporate profits. It would be the task of democratic theory to
alert workers to the genuinely democratic opportunity lurking in man-
agement's frantic search for solutions to keep workers' demands at bay,
and to legitimize a concerted effort by workers to convert management's
ostensible yielding of a certain measure of its prerogatives into a genuine

sharing of management's power with workers.
It is not impossible that the eventual outcome of a class struggle of
this kind-in which democratic ideas would be instrumental as a major
source of citizen commitment and direction-would be to transform
existing centers of corporate power into public and democratic institu-
tions. Such a democratic transformation in industry would provide the
base and impetus for the emergence of a participatory democratic
society.
The nearly total participatory environment that we would like to see
created-encompassing all levels of human organization from the
workplace and social networks to education and government-furnishes,
we think, the best strategy for ensuring the survival of liberal individual-
ist values in a social and economic setting that, on the surface, appears
grossly inhospitable to them. If the cultivation of individuality, diver-
sity, and freedom of expression can no longer be supported, even in a
partial and distorted way, by a shrinking resource base, they can per-
haps be nurtured by a participatory praxis that teaches human beings
the value of these notions through doing-by actualizing them in a
participatory framework and thereby developing allegiance toward
them. The result of this would be, in some sense, the emergence of a true
liberalism after the historical era of liberalism is over.
NOTE
1. One could argue that the basic needs of the many are sufficiently met to free them
from political involvement. The validity of this assertion is a matter of conjecture. What
we do know and what is germane to the issue at hand is that the many are relatively less
well off, measured materially and in power terms, than the upper-income strata who are
invariably involved politically.
REFERENCES
BACHRACH, P. (1967) Theory of Democratic Elitism. Boston: Little, Brown.

COLLINGWOOD, R. G. (1946) The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DAHL, R. (1970) After the Revolution? New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
--- (1961) Who Governs? New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
--- (1956) A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
DEWEY, J. (1966) Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon.
FERMIA, J. V. (1979) "Elites, participation and the democratic creed." Pol. Studies 28
(March).
HEILBRONER, R. L. (1974) An Inquiry into the Human Prospect. New York: Norton.
Hudson Institute (1972) Synoptic Context One: The Prospects for Mankind and a Year
2000 Ideology. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: Author.
MACHIAVELLI, N. (1961) The Prince (G. Bull, trans.). Baltimore: Penguin.
MacPHERSON, C. B. (1977) The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press.
VERBA, S. and N. NIE (1972) Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social
Equality. New York: Harper & Row.
---and J.-O. KIM (1978) Participation and Political Equality. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Univ. Press.
Aryeh Botwinick is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University, and

author of Ethics, Politics, and Epistemology: A Study in the Unity of Hume's Thought
(1980), Wittgenstein and Historical Understanding (1981) and Epic Political Theorists
and the Conceptualization of the State: An Essay in Political Philosophy (1982). He has
written a number of articles on the political theoretical implications of scarcity, and is
working with Peter Bachrach on a book entitled Democracy and Scarcity: Towards a
Theory of Participatory Democracy.
Peter Bachrach is Professor of Political Science at Temple University and author of

Theory of Democratic Elitism (1967), Power and Poverty (1970, with Morton Baratz),
and the following articles relevant to democracy and scarcity: "Corporate Authority and
Democratic Theory," in David Spitz (ed.) Political Theory and Social Change (1967);
"Participation and Democratic Theory," in Roland Pennock and John Chapman (eds.)
Nomos Volume on Participation; and, "Class Struggle and Democracy," Democracy,
October 1982. He is working with Aryeh Botwinick on a book entitled Democracy and
Scarcity: Towards a Theory of Participatory Democracy.

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Democracy and Scarcity: Toward a Theory of Participatory Democracy

Author(s): Aryeh Botwinick and Peter Bachrach

In contrast to the conditions prevailing in an era of abundance, during an age of scarcity a

The emergence of an era of scarcity is leading to a reconceptualization of

International Political Science Review, Vol. 4 No. 3 1983 361-373

no-growth theorists see the limit as occurring much earlier-generally

SPATIAL VERSUS TEMPORAL POLITICS

Among political theory concepts, Hobbesian and Platonic political

rooted in such factors as the coexistence of large numbers of people

representation, which enables relatively self-sufficient, spatially anchored

REPRESENTATION AND ABUNDANCE

An important underlying assumption of liberal political thought is

In addition to conceptualizing participation "realistically"-as an

private interests rather than as a forum that might eventually lead to a

income and working-class oriented issues. This inference seems reason-

Participation, looked at generally, does not necessarily help one social

In taking considerable pains to remove the participatory system as a

More elitist-oriented liberals, such as Herbert McCloskey, James

PARTICIPATION AND SCARCITY

In contrast to the political values that prevailed during an era of

preservation of liberal democracy. It is at this juncture that a radical

In such a context, participation might loom as important for the

HOW DO WE GET THERE FROM HERE?

Any movement from representation to participation in a temporal

tives-that of working-class people demanding greater control over

Machiavelli's highly paradoxical notion of opportunity-identifying

ostensible yielding of a certain measure of its prerogatives into a genuine

BACHRACH, P. (1967) Theory of Democratic Elitism. Boston: Little, Brown.

Aryeh Botwinick is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University, and

Peter Bachrach is Professor of Political Science at Temple University and author of

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