Patterns of Participation

Abstract

The ideal of public participation in political life, along with the concept of popular sovereignty, has gained a powerful hold on the modern political imagination. But ‘participation’ is an elastic yes-word, with different connotations in different political cultures. In liberal democratic regimes the meaning of participation has been given above all by electoral politics. Political power is legitimated by the preferences of individual voters, and political choice in turn implies a domain of civil society in which political parties and pressure groups can carry on an open political struggle. In the Soviet tradition ‘participation’ is understood differently. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has claimed the right to a monopoly of political power, on the grounds that Soviet society, having rid itself of capitalism and class antagonism, is fundamentally harmonious. The party rules in the interests of the people as a whole; there is therefore no room for political competition and electoral choice, and no place for an autonomous domain of civil society.