Every month in every neighborhood in Chicago, residents, teachers, school principals, and police officers gather to deliberate about how to improve their schools and make their streets safer. Residents of poor neighborhoods participate as much or more as those from wealthy ones. All voices are heard. Since the meetings began more than a dozen years ago, they have led not only to safer streets but also to surprising improvements in the city’s schools. Chicago’s police department and school system have become democratic urban institutions unlike any others in America.
Empowered Participation is the compelling chronicle of this unprecedented transformation. It is the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the ways in which participatory democracy can be used to effect social change. Using city-wide data and six neighborhood case studies, the book explores how determined Chicago residents, police officers, teachers, and community groups worked to banish crime and transform a failing city school system into a model for educational reform. The author’s conclusion: Properly designed and implemented institutions of participatory democratic governance can spark citizen involvement that in turn generates innovative problem-solving and public action. Their participation makes organizations more fair and effective.
Though the book focuses on Chicago’s municipal agencies, its lessons are applicable to many American cities. Its findings will prove useful not only in the fields of education and law enforcement, but also to sectors as diverse as environmental regulation, social service provision, and workforce development.
"A wonderful book: theoretically compelling, analytically insightful, empirically careful. It is a highly-skilled merger of arguments in democratic theory and applications in real world situations. It is well-written, clean, (almost) jargon-free and compelling."—Mark Carl Rom, Democracy & Society
"A judicious, thorough, and multifaceted study of important questions in democratic theory. It is well worth reading."—William Nelson, Ethics
"[This] book masterfully dissects terms and rebuts claims of the unfeasibility or inadequacy of public participation in policy."—Richard A. Couto, Perspectives on Politics
"Empowered Participation provides some much-needed empirical endeavor to a field that is mostly theoretical. . . . [It is] an important work which anyone interested in community organization, civic engagement, community policing, and democratic theory should read."—Patrick J. Carr, American Journal of Sociology
"Archon Fung makes an indispensable contribution to deliberative democratic theory."—Michael Rabinder, James, Political Theory
"With the clarity of a finely etched drawing and the sparkling craft of a careful researcher, Archon Fung rediscovers the best traditions of American self-government. He introduces us to democracy's heroes in community police beat meetings and school council sessions. Look to the streets, he urges in a book bristling with insight and inspiring stories, a book that should be required reading for every student, scholar and citizen of democracy."—Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School, and coauthor of The Miner's Canary
"For readers who like theory grounded in a careful examination of concrete experience, Empowered Participation is a definite treat. Author Archon Fung demonstrates that state and civil society are intertwined in multiple ways, and the details of that intertwining bear importantly on the health of local democracy. Fung displays a remarkable capacity to look at imperfect reforms, assess the gains from these reforms, and draw from these observations an appreciation of what is possible. His concept of accountable autonomy opens a window on how deliberative democracy can work even in unpromising circumstances. Democratic theory and urban politics both stand to profit from this important book."—Clarence Stone, George Washington University
"This well-written, briskly argued book represents a significant addition to the field of democratic theory. Fung uses convincing analysis and illuminating case studies to produce a work that will be widely discussed and cited."—Stephen Elkin, University of Maryland, author of Citizen Competence and Democracy
"Fung combines fine-grained analysis of case studies with well-developed theoretical interests in democratic empowerment and deliberation. His book is a very fine contribution to a new and exciting genre of democracy studies focused on institutional design."—Mark E. Warren, Georgetown University
