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The phrase "bottom-up democracy" is used in several senses:
(1) "Grassroots" sorts of contexts -- this is what many of the Google hits may be. People use this phrase in a variety of contexts, mainly in the sense of "grassroots activism" within an existing system, or a concern with local issues, etc. Each use is slightly different, and usually doesn't refer to a specific "chain of representatives" government structure. Most of the Chomsky references seem to be a variation on this - Chomsky criticizes the United States for trying to impose democracy in Iraq from the "top down", as opposed to letting it develop from the "bottom up", or for opposing Chávez in Venezuela.
(2) Some, for example, Fred E. Foldvary and Roberto Flores, use the phrase "bottom-up democracy" to refer to a specific "chain of representatives" concept. In this sense, it is equivalent to delegative democracy. According to this view, bottom-up democracy is a conceivable or possible type of representative democracy which combines direct democracy with the function of representation. For such a system to work, the unit of social organization must be small enough to enable all present to engage in meaningful interaction. Examples of such workable units are primitive tribes and agricultural villages. The tribal chiefs and village "elders" were elected through direct democratic assemblies. These chiefs were nominated and elected by those assembled. Sometimes these chiefs or elders were chosen despite their wishes, but acquiesed to the will of the majority. Such was the case in the Russian mir, or peasant community, before the Russian Revolution. Such was also the case in the Mexican villages. For example, Emiliano Zapata was elected as a village elder through such a direct democratic assembly. In 1905, this procedure of electing a representative or delegate was introduced in industrial factories by Russian workers in St. Petersburg, and the councils of such delegates were called soviets. The Russian word mir (мир), besides its direct meanings of peace and world, had some other meanings related to social organization in Imperial Russia. ...
Photo of Emiliano Zapata (right) and his brother Eufemio Zapata Emiliano Zapata Salazar (August 8, 1879 – April 10, 1919) was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio DÃaz that broke out in 1910. ...
A soviet (Russian: ÑовеÌÑ‚) originally was a workers local council in late Imperial Russia. ...
In general, the chief, elder, or delegate is elected in a direct democracy, and then this person acts as a representative of his group in a higher level council or confederation. Such was the case with the Iroquois Confederecy: "The Iroquois have a representative government known as the Grand Council. Each tribe sends chiefs to act as respresentatives and make decisions for the whole nation." Quoted from Iroquois. Such was also the case with the soviets in Russia in 1917, when they formed a government. The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power, Five Nations, or Six Nations) is a group of First Nations/Native Americans. ...
To make the idea clearer, imagine that each block of an American city assembles in a town hall, a school auditorium, or right on the street and nominates and elects a delegate. These delegates then meet and elect an alderman. Aldermen, in turn, nominate and elect a mayor. This would be an example of bottom-up democracy -- combining direct democracy in electing a delegate who, in turn, acts as a representative (representative democracy) to elect government officials.
Fred E. Foldvary on bottom-up democracy
Fred E. Foldvary, in The Science of Economics, [Chapter 15: Governance and Public Choice], writes: "A city or county is divided into townships and then into districts of about 500 persons. Each district elects a local council. Each council then elects a representative to the township board, representing about a dozen districts. The townships then elect delegates to a city or county council. These elect the members of the state legislature, which in turn elects members to the federal congress or parliament. At the bottom level, the districts are small enough for the voters to know the candidates personally, so there are no media campaigns and appeals to image. Special interests would find it difficult to sway the elections. Bottom-up democracy is an alternative to the top-down systems that have been an improvement over dictatorships but have let to the rule of special interests and a top-heavy government."
Roberto Flores on bottom-up democracy In the section, 7. Participatory Democracy: Bottom-Up Democracy, in From U.S. Centered Multiculturalism To Global Intercultural Educational Equality: The Role of Reforms and Autonomy, Flores writes: "Gonzalez Casanova known as the father of socialism in Mexico, suggests that the Zapatista method of bottom-up democracy is not only a counter-hegemonic response but also the antithesis of neoliberalism as well as an example of governing from the bottom by the bottom."
Soviet democracy Russia -- after the 1905 Revolution-- developed a bottom-up democracy based on the unit of a soviet, a workers' council. See Soviet democracy. In Alan Moorehead's [The Russian Revolution] (1958), the following passages describe the origin of soviets: "The other event concerns Trotsky. Directly the strike got under way in October, 1905, he came back secretly to Petrograd and joined in the work of organizing a general strike committee which was to act as a headquarters for the workers. Delegates, each representing five hundred men, were elected in the factories and sent to a central council or Soviet, and this Soviet now controlled the strike in Petrograd. It distributed arms and supplies, took charge of policy, issued its orders in the form of printed bulletins, arranged for guards and demonstrations, and acted, in fact, in much the same way as an army headquarters acts in the field. The idea of a Soviet was not new -- Axelrod and others had canvassed it some time before -- but this was the first actual experiment in giving the workers a central direction in an emergency, and although it only lasted a few weeks it set a pattern which was to be followed in 1917. A workers council is a council, or deliberative body, composed of working class or proletarian members. ...
Soviet democracy is a form of democracy in which workers elect representatives in the organs of power called soviets (councils). ...
A similar body was set up in Moscow, but the Petrograd Soviet was the important one, and it was very largely controlled by the Mensheviks. Its first two presidents, Zubrovsky and Khrustalev-Nosar, followed more or less along the Menshevik line, and Trotsky shared the practical leadership with Parvus. The Bolsheviks in Petrograd tried at first to boycott the Soviet -- Lenin, whether at home or abroad, had no love for any organization which he could not control -- but finally they came in when they saw which way the wind was blowing."
These councils nominated and elected delegates who represented them in higher councils, until one reached the supreme council -- the supreme soviet. The soviet system, however, was betrayed by Lenin after the 1917 October Revolution, who in January 1918 convened and then dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly when it was realized that the Bolshevik party did not have a majority. This betrayal was, in fact, a coup. This gave rise to the Russian Civil War and a top-down dictatorship by Lenin. The Supreme Soviet (Russian: , Verhovniy Sovet, literally the Supreme Council) comprised the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union in the interim of the sessions of the Congress of Soviets, and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments. ...
The Russian Constituent Assembly (Ð’ÑероÑÑийÑкое Учредительное Собрание, Vserossiyskoye Uchreditelnoye Sobranie) was a democratically elected constitutional body convened in Russia after the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II. It met for 13 hours, 4 p. ...
The Russian Civil War was fought from 1918 to 1922. ...
Chomsky's Anarchism as a form of bottom-up democracy According to Noam Chomsky, the variety of anarchism which he favors is Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (b. ...
". . . a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in the tradition of, say, Bakunin and Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized form of society, but a society that was organized on the basis of organic units, organic communities. And generally, they meant by that the workplace and the neighborhood, and from those two basic units there could derive through federal arrangements a highly integrated kind of social organization which might be national or even international in scope. And these decisions could be made over a substantial range, but by delegates who are always part of the organic community from which they come, to which they return, and in which, in fact, they live.
QUESTION: So it doesn't mean a society in which there is, literally speaking, no government, so much as a society in which the primary source of authority comes, as it were, from the bottom up, and not the top down. Whereas representative democracy, as we have it in the United States and in Britain, would be regarded as a from-the-top-down authority, even though ultimately the voters decide.
CHOMSKY: Representative democracy, as in, say, the United States or Great Britain, would be criticized by an anarchist of this school on two grounds. First of all because there is a monopoly of power centralized in the state, and secondly -- and critically -- because the representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere." [1].
See also Top-down democracy is a form of representative democracy in which candidates for government offices present themselves for election -- normally -- through signed petitions, as in the United States. ...
For other meanings, see Grass roots (disambiguation). ...
This article is becoming very long. ...
The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power, Five Nations, or Six Nations) is a group of First Nations/Native Americans. ...
References - ^ "The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism", Noam Chomsky interviewed by Peter Jay, The Jay Interview, July 25, 1976.
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