Weak Democracy:
When Participation becomes Democratic
Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the
Western Political Science Association, March 2012
Mark J. Kaswan
Department of Government
University of Texas at Brownsville
and Michael W. Huber Fellow
Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations
[email protected]
Mark J. Kaswan
[email protected]
This is a draft paper. Please do not cite or quote.
Weak Democracy: When Participation becomes Democratic
In one company I went into, a majority employee-owned ESOP, I went to a meeting of all the
employees, who were talking about making a modest increase in the company’s annual donation to a local
public radio program. One fellow at the meeting, wearing dungarees and a work shirt and kind of
slouched over in a corner of the room, wasn’t participating at all. I asked one of the people sitting next to
me who that was, and I was told it was the former owner’s son, who still had a good-sized stake in the
company. The group continued its discussion, eventually taking a vote in which the proposal for the
increase was approved. At this point, the former owner’s son perked up and said, “Well, we’re not going
to do that,” and that was it. End of discussion.
In another company I visited, a minority employee-owned ESOP, the employees were discussing
candidates for their next CEO, with full knowledge that their decision would determine who got the job.
And it did—they decided who their boss was going to be.1
Benjamin Barber’s well-known work, Strong Democracy, sets up a curious dichotomy: The
counter-point to strong democracy is characterized as “thin.” But (as the reed said to the old oak
tree before the storm) this is a false dichotomy, since what is thin can also be strong. In this
essay, I put forward a version of what I call “weak democracy,” but instead of Barber’s
construction of thin democracy as way of articulating the failures of a kind of political system
that constrains active participation, I am interested in exploring the ways in which participatory
practices that do not carry sovereign authority may be understood as democratic. In other
Told to me by a prominent consultant who works with companies with employee stock ownership
plans, at the Beyster Fellows Workshop, sponsored by the Rutgers University School of Management and
Labor Relations and the Foundation for Enterprise Development, December 9, 2011, San Diego, CA.
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words, I am interested not in delegitimizing weaker forms of democracy, but in identifying the
basis upon which they can be recognized as authentically democratic.
Strong democracy, in my version, combines two essential elements of democracy,
participation and rule, in a high degree. Non-democracy lacks both. Weak democracy
effectively incorporates only one of the two.2 That is, a system may appear to be democratic but
either a) while participatory, this participation is not decisive; or, b) as with the kind of
representative system Barber critiques as “thin,” formal governance is the end result of
democratic procedures, but participation is substantially constrained. But I am not arguing
against Barber here. Rather, my argument is against democratic theorists who claim that the
form of weak democracy I discuss, participation without rule, is not really democracy at all. For
example, Rothschild and Ollilalnen deride a particular kind of participatory scheme called Total
Quality Management (TQM) as undemocratic because it “lacks collective ownership, shared
control over major decisions and a non-hierarchical structuring of positions” such that it
“cannot be said to measure up to the practices and standards set by the radically democratic
and egalitarian grassroots organizations.”3 I do not dispute that TQM fails to live up to the
standard given. The question, however, is whether this is the only appropriate standard for
democracy. The distance between a completely undemocratic enterprise and a strongly
democratic one is great, but, as I will argue, that distance is bridged by any number of models
that can be considered authentically democratic, if only weakly so.
The problem that motivates my inquiry is this: The extension of democratic practices to
workplaces has been actively promoted from a number of perspectives for at least 40 years, at
I say “effectively incorporates” because in order to be considered democratic at all both elements
must at least be present, but one of them is only barely so.
3 Joyce Rothschild and Marjukka Ollilalnen, "Obscuring but Not Reducing Managerial Control: Does
TQM Measure up to Democracy Standards?," Economic and Industrial Democracy 20, no. 4 (1999), p. 610.
2
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least since the publication of Carole Pateman’s 1970 Participation in Democratic Theory. But as
much as it has been promoted, scholars have questioned whether democracy in the workplace
is really possible. This questioning comes from two directions. In the first place are skeptics who
argue that the property rights of the owners give them the power to determine what happens in
the workplace, and that workers should have no expectation of rights of participation; besides,
democracy is simply too inefficient as a method of decision-making to be effective in the
workplace. The second set of challenges comes from democratic theorists, such as Rothschild,
who argue that in traditionally-capitalized firms, where owners retain ultimate control,
democratic practices in the workplace are at best superficial and at worst merely a means of
extracting a greater amount of surplus value from the workers. Further, this cannot be properly
considered “democracy” as long as workers’ decision-making is constrained and subject to
managerial control.
In this essay I am not concerned with the first set of objections: Robert Dahl has decisively
shown that democracy in the workplace does not undermine the rights of capital.4 From a
somewhat different perspective David Ellerman has made a powerful normative argument that
employees have a stronger claim to the control of both the labor process and the output than do
those who provide the capital.5 To Ellerman, there is a disjunction between the legal attribution
of responsibility and the American capitalist system in which capital can be said to simply rent
employees. Further, numerous studies have shown that “shop floor democracy” works in a
number of environments, and that the efficiency argument is primarily an ideological construct.
Robert Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
David Ellerman, "The Democratic Firm: An Argument Based on Ordinary Jurisprudence," Journal of
Business Ethics 21, no. 2/3 (1999); David Ellerman, Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic
Democracy (Basil Blackwell, 1992 [cited 2005]); available from http://www.ellerman.org/DavidsStuff/Books/p&c.htm.
4
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Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 4
This essay, then, is concerned with the latter set of objections. I see two parts to this
objection. The first, with its Marxist undertones, has to do with justification, because, from this
perspective, participatory practices fail to address the exploitative character of the organization
of labor under capitalism and merely ameliorates the oppression of workers. Democratic
theorists such as Pateman and Dahl, however, argue that the benefits of what has been referred
to as the “spill-over effects” of workplace participation in terms of producing a more democratic
society are significant and worth pursuing regardless of whether it addresses the logic of
capitalism.6
This essay is mostly concerned, then, with the second part of the second objection. This is
the idea that, without rule, a system of participation cannot be considered “democratic.” This is
where the concept of “weak democracy” comes in, because what I will examine is whether a
participatory model that does not include formal political power can, in fact, be understood as
“democratic.” To state it more formally, I am interested in discovering the terms on which—or
the conditions under which—we can understand participation as specifically democratic
participation when it occurs (or is situated) in a system in which the participants themselves do
not have final decision-making authority. This describes the first of the two types of weak
democracy given above, where members participate but do not directly rule.
In general, democratic theorists—and I include myself among them—advocate strong
democratic systems over weak ones, and the primary practical question is how to strengthen
democratic practices. I have no objection whatsoever to this approach. However, the concept of
weak democracy may be valuable when considering how to move from a non-democratic
regime to a democratic one without requiring the violent overthrow of the existing order,
I would argue that one advantage of having a more democratic society is that it would reduce the
political power of capital and, in the long run, establish conditions that could lead to a different economic
model. This issue may be addressed in the last section of the essay.
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Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 5
especially when considering domains of rule outside of the state.7 In the Anglo-American
context, one of the most significant domains in which democracy is largely absent is the
enterprise, or workplace. Normally, rules of democratic governance do not apply to the
workplace. Rather, governance is generally considered to be among the bundle of rights
enjoyed by the owners of an enterprise, and while the owners may alienate those rights to a
degree, even to employees, they are ultimately considered to have the final say. Even when
employees are also owners, a distinction can be made between their rights as employees and
their rights as owners.
The argument will unfold in four sections: In the first section I will lay out the basic idea of
weak democracy, based on a conception of democracy that includes two fundamental elements:
participation and rule. The second section will consider justifications used for implementing
participatory practices, and some of the different forms that participation might take in the
workplace. Important here will be a recognition of a diversity of forms, and that participation is
not a dichotomous variable, but that there is a great range from highly-participatory to
minimally-participatory, thus establishing the need for some kind of criteria for recognizing the
degree of participation. After this comes a discussion of rule and sovereignty. Part of this
involves a particular definition of politics that enables a more nuanced understanding of the
functions of power, which enables a different way of seeing how democracy can function, and
also leads to a recognition that rule, too, is not a dichotomous variable. The final section will
bring the three parts together to discuss how, and on what terms, we can understand workplace
participation as a weak form of democracy.
Of course, businesses as legal entities are fully constituted within states, and I do not wish to imply
that I think they somehow escape from that condition. My point has to do with their relative autonomy
within the state.
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Weak Democracy
It is not without reason that Gallie includes democracy as a prime example in his seminal
paper on essentially contested concepts.8 He contrasts the ancient Greek conception of
democracy as direct rule by the people with the modern conception, in which democracy is
basically a set of procedures whereby representatives are selected and held accountable to the
people. These two systems include one essential point in common and one essential difference.
The point in common is that, in both the ancient Greek and the modern model, what is assumed
is that democracy is a form of rule. The point of difference has to do with the nature of
participation.
The term ‘democracy’ is a conjunction of two Greek terms, demos, meaning ‘the people’ and
kratia, meaning ‘rule.’ Thus, ‘democracy’ means, literally, ‘the people rule,’ or ‘the rule of the
people.’ Many questions arise with respect to ‘the people,’ but I want to focus on how the people
rule, which is to say, participation. This may take either of two forms: Direct and
representative.9 Where the people are sovereign, direct democracy is the stronger form, simply
because the people’s exercise of sovereignty is not mediated by the existence of a representative
body. Representative systems may be considered participatory to greater or lesser extent, but
regardless of the extent of participatory procedures, they can never completely bridge the gap
between representative and direct democracy, because ultimately governance is the function of
W.B. Gallie, "Essentially Contested Concepts," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, no. New
Series (1955-1956). See also Ricardo Blaug, "Engineering Democracy," Political Studies 50 (2002).
9 Dahl distinguishes between “assembly” and “representative” democracy, conflating assembly
democracy and participatory democracy. However, assemblies can be used to elect representatives.
“Direct” establishes a clearer difference with “representative,” because the point is that citizens are
directly participating in the decision-making (i.e., they cast a vote), as opposed to indirectly participating
(by influencing their representative, who actually casts the vote). Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 103–4.
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the representatives.10 Barber’s version of strong democracy, however, includes both
participatory and representative institutions, and there is no reason to see them as
contradictory. Indeed, for the sake of my argument, what is important is to recognize that one
way of measuring the strength or weakness of democracy is by the degree of participation that
exists.
Rule has itself been defined in a variety of ways, all of which amount, for my purposes, to
more or less the same thing. One way of defining rule is as the function of the sovereign. The
sovereign is defined as that which rules but is not ruled in its turn—in other words, there is no
power above the sovereign. Another way of defining rule (and sovereignty) is as the one who
decides, and rule itself is instantiated in the act of making a decision that is final (to be, as
George W. Bush once famously described himself, “the decider”). This assertion of sovereignty
is important for democracy, because to allow for the existence of some power greater than that
of the people is to open the door for democracy’s antithesis, tyranny. It should be noted,
however, that rule is not a simple either/or proposition. This will be discussed further in the
third section, but for now it is enough to state that rule varies based on a variety of dimensions,
such that it is possible to refer to “weak” versus “strong” forms of rule. Strong democracy, then,
is a measure of the strength of popular sovereignty.
For further discussion of this point, see Mark Kaswan, "A Bridge to Nowhere: Connecting
Representative and Radical Models of Democracy," International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior
14, no. 4 (2011) .
10
Participation
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 8
Weak Democracy:
Participatory-Consultative
Strong Democracy
Non-Democracy
Weak Democracy:
Representative-Formal
Rule
Figure 1: Forms of democracy
What emerges from this is a two-dimensional understanding of democracy, with two scalar
variables, participation and rule. Thus, we can identify three forms: Non-democracy, where the
people have neither participation nor rule (or only weak versions of both); weak democracy,
where they have either strong participation but weak rule or strong rule and weak
participation; and strong democracy, which combines both strong participation and strong rule.
These are presented graphically in Figure 1.
Weak democracy, then, comes in two flavors: Where participatory institutions do not
include final decision-making power, then they may be said to be consultative: Their purpose is
to advise or inform the rulers as to the preferences of the people, but they cannot be said to rule
in a formal sense. This is the most common form of “workplace democracy” currently in use—
although the term “democracy” here is presumptive, as the “rule” aspect is effectively absent.
Rather, a better term would probably be “workplace participation,” at least until we have some
way of understanding how this participation can be understood as clearly affecting rule. The
other form comes in the shape of representative institutions where the people’s voice is, at least
in some sense, final, but their participation is limited—what might be recognized as a
Shumpeterian model of democracy. This form of weak democracy is of course very familiar, as
it is the primary object of criticism by democratic theorists such as Barber.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 9
Workplace Participation
An extensive literature exists regarding workplace participation. For the most part, research
in this area has been driven not by normative concerns, but by economic ones, particularly
regarding competitiveness. Specifically, worker participation in decision-making began to be
promoted in the 1940s and 1950s as a means of improving productivity and morale. Rothschild
credits the work of two American expatriates, Edward Deming and Joseph Juran, who
developed models of workplace participation in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. These models,
quality circles and total quality management (TQM), were primarily geared toward quality
control, but they gained attention in the U.S. as Japanese companies began capturing everincreasing market share in areas that had been dominated by U.S. firms. Following an
agreement between General Motors and the UAW in 1973 to explore ways to “enhance the
quality of working life,” so-called “QWL” programs and joint labor-management committees
became fairly common. These were replaced by TQM, which, more recently, according to
Rothschild, “is being displaced by the ‘self-managing team’ and the ‘high performance team.’ In
the most recent estimates, some 85 percent of Fortune 1000 firms are said to be using some type
of team, circle, or other employee-involvement approach.” 11
Justification
This brief history of workplace participation reveals much about its principal motivations.
There is no pretense here of normative concerns about empowering workers,12 rather the
orientation is toward promoting greater productivity, quality control, cost savings, and,
ultimately, higher profits. As Rothschild notes, to the extent that the language of empowerment
Joyce Rothschild, "Creating a Just and Democratic Workplace: More Engagement, Less Hierarchy,"
Contemporary Sociology 20, no. 1 (2000), p. 198.
12 Indeed, an interesting feature of the literature is the tendency to refer to “employees” rather than
“workers.” Perhaps the latter term is seen as carrying too much ideological freight.
11
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is used at all, it is “set out as the main carrot to get employees to ‘buy into’” participatory
practices.13 Programs that promote worker empowerment and participation, then, are purely
instrumental, offered as part of management science as a means to extract more value from
employees—as critics often complain. Hodson quotes a study of Japanese industrial worker
participation programs: “Toyotism is, therefore, not an alternative to Taylorism but rather a
solution to its classic problem of the resistance of the workers in placing their knowledge of
production in the service of rationalization.”14
Clearly, then, two sets of justifications are used in order to implement participatory
practices: one for upper management and owners, and another for workers. However, this
participation cannot be just for show. In order for it to work, employees need to have meaningful
participation—they have to feel empowered. Some refer to this as an “ownership culture” in
which employees are given the sense that they are truly invested in the enterprise. The need for
the development of this sort of culture takes on greater significance when employees do, in fact,
have an ownership stake, either through an ESOP or other sort of stock-ownership program.
The need for this may be greatest where employees have minority ownership, although the
issue of developing an ownership culture also arises in fully employee-owned ESOPs, especially
where upper management is used to a more hierarchical, top-down system.
Forms of participation
Participation in the workplace can take a number of forms depending on the nature of the
work, the size of the enterprise, the type or level of the employees involved (or the degree to
which employees at different levels are involved), and so on. Bernstein has identified three
different dimensions of participation, sixteen specific areas of decision-making, and seven
13
14
Rothschild, "Creating a Just and Democratic Workplace," p. 198.
Randy Hodson, Dignity at Work (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 177.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 11
different models of participation. The three dimensions are: “(1) the degree of control employees
enjoy over any particular decision; (2) the issues over which that control is exercised; and (3) the
organizational level at which their control is exercised.”15 The areas of decision-making range
from the local—the “worker’s own work”—to the long-term goals of the company. This
includes a middle range of the means by which the company seeks to attain its goals.16 The
models of participation range from very weak (a suggestion box) to fully self-managed firms.17
Bernstein’s analysis of participation, while helpful, does not fully capture the different
dimensions and forms that participation can take. A number of categories can be easily
recognized: Formal versus informal, small-group versus large-group, open versus closed, and
so on. Formal systems would, for example, provide for regularly-scheduled meetings with
clearly identified participants. An informal system of participation could include ad-hoc
meetings called by a supervisor, or so-called “management by walking around,”18 in which
managers are expected to make a habit of walking around the shop floor or office to connect
with workers and give them an opportunity to discuss their work in a meaningful, direct way.
A system based on small groups (such as workgroups) may be task-oriented, while a largegroup system would bring all of the employees of an enterprise, or perhaps even a sub-unit,
together for more general purposes. Open participation would include systems in which
participation is voluntary and available to anyone, whereas a closed system has defined
participants and is considered a part of the employees’ duties. One might also recognize a
difference between horizontal and vertical participation, the former incorporating employees
15 Paul Bernstein, "Necessary Elements for Effective Worker Participation in Decision-Making," in
Workplace Democracy and Social Change, ed. Frank Lindenfeld and Joyce Rothschild-Whitt (Boston:
Extending Horizons Books, 1982), p. 53.
16 Ibid., p. 57.
17 Ibid., p. 58.
18 Danny Miller, Jon Hartwick, and Isabelle Le Breton-Miller, "How to Detect a Management Fad--and
Distinguish It from a Classic," Business Horizons 47, no. 4 (2004), p. 8.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 12
who are all at the same level within the hierarchy of the organization, and vertical including
people from different levels.
Hodson, in a more recent work, identifies four forms of participation. The first includes
various team-based systems, such as quality circles, TQM, self-managed work teams and, most
recently, high-performance work teams. These teams have been “associated with workintensification . . . increased pressures for production . . . employee monitoring of peers . . . and
antiunion campaigns.”19 The key feature of such teams, and their strongest basis for any claim
to being democratic, is that they may enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy; in addition, they
are often presented to employees using the language of “empowerment.” A second form
identified by Hodson is referred to as “formal consultation,” characterized by “regular meetings
between management and employees, or employees’ representatives, in which various aspects
of work are discussed.”20 As a regularized practice with the intent of establishing lines of
communication between employees and management this is clearly participatory, but its claim
to being democratic rests on whether, or the manner in which, specific decisions may come out
of these meetings. Indeed, it has been criticized for a tendency to establish only one-way
communication without providing any mechanism for power-sharing.21 The third form, which
Hodson calls joint union-management programs, is formalized through union contracts. These
may cover an extensive array of issues that are “not necessarily restricted to managementdefined agendas.”22 Clearly these have a stronger claim to democratic legitimacy, although it
may be noted that they rely on the existence of a power structure, in the form of a union, that is
outside of the company itself.
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 177.
Ibid., p. 177-8.
21 Ibid., p. 178.
22 Ibid.
19
20
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Hodson’s fourth model, worker ownership,23 does not necessarily refer to a participatory
framework. In fact, employee ownership really only refers to workers’ rights as owners or partowners of an enterprise to participate in certain kinds of decisions with regard to the
governance of the firm (such as sale or merger), and most worker-owned enterprises,
particularly those with relatively low levels of employee ownership, do not institute any form
of participation in managerial decision-making. However, the addition of rights of ownership
clearly means that, where these systems do implement participatory practices, then they may be
recognized as the most fully democratic. Still, as this paper’s epigraph shows, even here their
claims to be authentically democratic may be weak.
Clearly, different forms of participation may lend themselves to a greater or lesser degree to
being considered democratic, based on whether or not generally accepted standards for
democratic procedures are in place. Dahl suggests five criteria: effective participation, equality
in voting, enlightened understanding, ability to control the agenda, and inclusion.24 Dahl admits
that it is unlikely that any association would ever be able to meet these standards in any
complete sense,25 which means that there is substantial flexibility in the degree to which they
may be implemented. However, the presence of a set of criteria does imply that some forms of
participation can be identified as clearly not democratic. Bernstein’s suggestion that
participation initiated by managers who “retain full power to accept or reject the employees’
decision” falls “below the threshold of . . . democratic participation”26 is certainly consonant
with Dahl’s procedural definition. So, for example, an informal system of “input,” be it a
23 Employee ownership comes in a number of forms, including worker-owned cooperatives,
employee stock ownership plans (ESOP), stock options and other forms of “equity compensation.” Here I
am only concerned with worker cooperatives and ESOPs, as these are the only forms that specifically
confer defined rights of ownership to employees due to their status as employees.
24 Dahl, On Democracy, p. 38.
25 Ibid., p. 42.
26 Bernstein, "Necessary Elements for Effective Worker Participation in Decision-Making," p. 58.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 14
suggestion box or a manager casually engaging in discussions with their employees, cannot be
considered democratic at any level.
It must be noted that much of the literature on participation is exclusively concerned with
positive forms of participation, in which workers are given opportunities to directly and
intentionally engage with management in decision-making processes over some aspect of the
enterprise in which they work. But one can also recognize forms of negative participation, which
includes such practices as absenteeism, shirking or sabotage; even exit may be seen as a form of
expressing dissatisfaction.27 For example, one author, citing a study that found that 30 percent
of Japanese assembly-line workers quit each year, notes, “Assembly workers vote with their
feet.”28 The use of an electoral metaphor in the statement is, perhaps, telling: This is a form of
participation that may be considered political to the extent that it involves an assertion of power
(the power of exit). However, it does not seem to rise to the level of democratic participation, at
least not by Dahl’s standard. “Vote” implies the presence of some kind of democratic
procedures, or at a minimum a level of explicit coordination that is missing in this case. The
metaphor, therefore, obscures the nature of the participation. The same could be said of most
forms of negative participation, because of their individualistic, uncoordinated nature.29 On the
other hand, such individual actions do have a collective effect. As has been pointed out by
numerous observers, the fact that most enterprises employ various levels of managers to
oversee workers imposes great costs on those companies.30 So, if the purpose of participation is
to influence the decision-making of management, clearly negative participation does this by
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 124-31.
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 126.
29 The exception here would be the types of collective action usually associated with unions, such as
strikes, slow-downs, sick-outs and the like.
30 See, e.g., Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "The Revenge of Homo Economicus: Contested
Exchange and the Revival of Political Economy," Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 1 (1993); Thorstein
Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904).
27
28
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creating the need for supervision. Indeed, the desire to address this condition is what inspired
the TQM movement, which sought to establish forms of positive participation precisely in order
to address the impacts of negative participation.
Regardless of the collective effects of negative participation, the fact that it is, generally
speaking, uncoordinated, informal and individualistic appears to preclude it from being
considered a form of democratic participation. Indeed, a procedural definition of democracy
implies, even mandates, positive participation, and the lack of such participation—or, negative
participation in the form of absence from engagement with the system—is generally understood
to undermine democracy and reflect its failures. My argument, that at least some systems of
workplace participation can, in fact, be understood as weakly democratic, does depend on a
procedural definition of democracy as the mechanism through which workers are given a voice.
Part of this rests, however, on understanding negative participation as a kind of assertion of
power, as a political act, that occurs as a response to the failures of positive forms of
participation. But before I get to this, I need to address the other half of the democratic equation,
having to do with sovereignty and rule.
Democratic Rule and Sovereignty
The overarching concept with respect to democracy is that of sovereignty and the
underlying notion of rule. The question with respect to sovereignty has to do not with its
definition but with its limits. This has a bearing on rule, because it helps to reveal some of the
dynamics within which rule takes place. To continue the spatial metaphor, between sovereignty
and rule are complex relationships that affect their functioning. Both tend to be defined as
absolute terms, but in practice they are not so pure.
Rule can be understood as a function of sovereignty, and sovereignty, as it is ordinarily
defined, is the highest power, that which has no superior which can overrule it. Rule is, in
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 16
effect, the practical activity of the sovereign and only the sovereign. Even Schmitt, who
famously defined the sovereign as “he who decides on the exception,” quickly accepts this as an
abstract definition of sovereignty.31 However, both Locke and Bentham, theorists who are often
considered to be at opposite poles on many questions of political theory, distinguish between
the sovereign itself and the exercise of sovereign power.32 This is essential to a theory of popular
sovereignty in which the people do not actively rule themselves but alienate the sovereign
power to an elective body which acts as fiduciary. Simply stated, the point is that the actions of
the sovereign power are subject to the consent of the people. This understanding of sovereignty
is generally accepted, and is fundamental to any theory of representative democracy. But what
it means is that the sovereign does not rule directly, but rather indirectly through the body that
exercises the sovereign power.
Before connecting this to my argument, it will be helpful to take a step back in order to
make explicit a particular concept of politics that was implicit in the discussion of participation
above but that now needs to be brought to the surface. I define politics as the dynamics of power
as it pertains to decision-making and its effects, under conditions of inequality. ‘Power’ is understood
as influence, and is therefore necessarily a social condition. That is, power is an element of
relationships, whether between individuals (for example, in the relationship between an
employee and her boss), between institutions (for example, in international relations, or
between a corporation and the state), or between individuals and institutions (as in the
relationship between a citizen and the state). Further, these relationships are never simple, but
always complex, because individuals always relate to one another from within any number of
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab,
2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985/1934), p. 5-6.
32 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996), p. 223; John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), p. §149.
31
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institutional contexts, and institutions always depend on the actions of individuals in order to
carry out their functions. Further, understanding power as influence orients this definition
away from an understanding of decision-making as a particular act, but understands it as a
process; simply stated, the function of power is to influence decision-making. The process of
decision-making itself is relevant because what happens in that process affects the decisions
that get made, and those decisions are assumed to have consequences. This all occurs under
conditions of inequality, because the effect of any one actor in a relationship conditioned by
power vis à vis any other with regard to any particular subject or process of decision-making
depends on their relative position in terms of the degree of power (or influence) they hold.
This definition of politics makes it possible to apply political concepts in a wide variety of
contexts, including the enterprise. It opens up the dynamics of power within the enterprise, and
offers a more complex way of understanding those dynamics, that challenges an understanding
of hierarchy as a purely top-down system that leaves employees powerless. Indeed, if it were
the case that employees are powerless, there would be no point for them to form unions,
because they would be ineffective. The potential of collective action and the assertion of power
from below also gain force from this understanding of politics, because when power is
recognized as relational, it carries the implication that as long as a party has the capacity to alter
the nature of a relationship, it has power. It may be the case that, in a relative sense, someone at
the top of a hierarchy has a greater concentration of power than any single individual lower
down, but it is also means that, collectively, those at the bottom have as much power as those at
the top. This is not to deny the importance of the inequalities that exist between, say the CEO of
Wal-Mart and the grossly under-compensated front-line employees of that company; if
anything, it highlights the significance of the problem of the company’s denial of employees’
rights to organize. At the same time, however, it also suggests that employees might have ways
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 18
of affecting company decision-making outside of the traditional structure of union
representation.
Another implication of this definition is that politics occurs in both formal and informal
settings, and that power itself can be expressed in both formal and informal ways. Indeed, this
way of understanding politics forces us to take a different perspective on the nature of
sovereignty and rule. In the model of weak democracy being discussed in this essay, there is a
high level of participation but decisions made through democratic procedures carry little
force—which does not mean that they are not enacted, but that the decisions are contingent
upon acceptance by a higher authority that is not subject to democratic control. While this
seems fairly straightforward on the surface—clearly there is no popular sovereignty in this
situation—understanding the relationship between the democratic and non-democratic
elements needs to be examined more closely in order to grasp the dynamics entailed. In this
case, democratic procedures can be understood as conditioning authority, such that what
appears to be an absolute authority must in fact take the views of the demos into account,
whether it wants to or not.
A very reasonable objection at this point would be that no business can be considered
sovereign in itself, because all businesses are subject to very extensive bodies of law and
regulation that establish limits to their actions.33 However, an enterprise has substantial
freedom to act within those established constraints. There may be significant tensions between
the larger body of the sovereign (i.e., the state) and any given subunit (e.g., an enterprise), but a
domain or sphere of action can be delineated within which an enterprise can operate, in effect,
as a functional political body. So, what we are concerned with here is a kind of limited
sovereignty.
33
This is also the case with multinational corporations, even if those controls are weakened.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 19
It might be objected that the idea of limited sovereignty is an oxymoron. Schmitt, for his
sake, is very clear that the precise moment of the assertion of sovereignty, at the decision-point
that determines the exception, is an absolute power. However, under the definition of politics
given above, the reduction of sovereignty to a single point of decision isolates it from the
process that led to the decision. Again, power is not something exercised in a vacuum. It is
historically and socially conditioned, and to assert that it is otherwise is to deny the political
significance of the historical and social conditions and processes that lead to its exercise.
Further, while anyone might be free to make decisions about all sorts of things at any particular
time, what distinguishes the decision of a sovereign is the effects that follow from them.
Decisions that do not lead to subsequent action (which we can also understand in the negative
sense, that the decision not to act may be as significant as a decision to act, or also understood as
a kind of action), that have no effect, cannot be considered sovereign decisions. Thus, the power
of the sovereign depends on the agreement of other institutional and individual actors to carry
out the sovereign’s decision. The sovereign may have substantial influence over those
individuals’ decisions to act on the basis of the orders of the sovereign, but this power to cause
others to act is not and cannot be absolute. The dictator who personally executes those who fail
to carry out his orders may find himself knee-deep in blood, but he may also find that this does
not lead to his orders being carried out.34 Sovereignty, then, always operates within certain
constraints: The sovereign can command, but that does not mean the commands will be obeyed.
The need to articulate commands in such a way that obedience will follow limits the power of
Epictetus cites an exchange between Diogenes and the king of Persia in which the philosopher
explains why the Athenians cannot be enslaved, which concludes with Diogenes telling the king, “if the
Athenians die as soon as you take them, what is the good of your armament?” Epictetus, Discourses, trans.
P.E. Matheson, 2 vols., vol. 2 (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), p. 69.
34
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 20
the sovereign. The question is not, therefore, a matter of absolute vs. limited sovereignty, but of
the nature of the limitations.
What does this have to do with the enterprise? The point is that orders, directives, or
instructions rely on the willingness of employees to carry them out. In normal circumstances,
they will be. But employees who are dissatisfied with the conditions of their employment, or
who consider orders to be ill-considered, have a number of mechanisms by which they can
register (often in subtle ways) their disapproval. The most obvious or, in some settings,
traditional, approach would be to form a union. However, other responses are possible. Exit is
the most dramatic: employees quit. Shirking, or failing to perform one’s tasks (or doing so
slowly or inadequately) is another. A middle ground would include sabotage, or deliberately
undermining work processes. This latter set are, however, problematic, in that they do not
involve forms of collective action, and taken as isolated events they may have little or no effect
on company decision-making. This, I want to suggest, is where participatory practices come in.
Democracy, Participation, and Democratic Participation
A procedural theory of democracy is generally unconcerned with questions of power with
respect to the implementation of decisions that have been reached, in part because it is assumed
that a major reason for implementing democratic procedures is to legitimize the exercise of
power on the basis of those decisions. For example, none of Dahl’s five criteria for democratic
procedures, discussed above, addresses authority. Rarely considered is what it might mean if
the group making a decision does not, in fact, have either the capacity to carry out its decision
or the authority to ensure that it is carried out, or if the legitimation of its decision occurs
outside of the democratic procedures that produced it—for example, in the executive suite. In
this case, it would appear that the basis for characterizing those procedures as democratic has
been removed, reducing it to non-democratic participation. In other words, authority is a
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 21
feature of rule, and rule without authority is meaningless. Without rule, participatory decisionmaking procedures cannot be considered democratic. On this basis, most forms of workplace
participation fail because the decisions made are always contingent, in some sense, upon
acceptance by management.
Some workplaces do allow workers within particular groups substantial levels of autonomy,
although it comes with an important condition: Their autonomy, which is to say the scope of
their decision-making, is not only constrained but in fact determined from outside of the group
involved. As one author notes, “instead of management prescribing standards for performance,
workers are being asked to develop these standards. The goals to be achieved, however, are still
typically set by management and focus on increased productivity and improved product
quality.”35 These constraints undermine the democratic nature of the group, because of the
application of power on the group. In other words, as with the first case, the group’s
sovereignty is undermined, because of the existence of a power outside of the group that limits
what they can do.
As the discussion above showed, however, all sovereigns operate under some form of
constraint, so the fact that a decision-making body is constrained should not lead us to reject the
notion that it may engage in some kind of rule. There is no question, however, that in both of
these cases the “sovereign,” if we may call it that, is very weak. Indeed, in the first case
especially, it could be said that the group does not actually decide anything; in effect it merely
makes a recommendation which may or may not be accepted by management. But they do
decide: They decide on the recommendation, and they use democratic procedures to arrive at
that decision. The domain of their decision-making is certainly constrained, but “constrained” is
not equivalent to “non-existent.” Just as the boss’ order to an employee does not mean that it
35
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 173.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 22
will be carried out (the employee can ignore the order), the employees’ recommendation to
management is not a command. Clearly, this is not an equal relationship: the boss’ “order”
carries quite a bit more weight than the employees’ “recommendation,” since the boss has an
institutionally-protected mechanism for coercion (in the first place there are norms of
obedience, and, besides, she can always fire an unwilling employee) that the employees lack.
But this does not mean that they are powerless. The question has to do with the form their
power takes.
The idea that employees have power that they can use to affect management decisionmaking is not a new one. Unionization, after all, is simply a form of collective action that
enables employees to make effective demands that can produce results. However, participatory
democratic practices are not widespread in unions, and in any case, unions are external to the
enterprise and for the most part act only episodically and within a very limited domain
restricted to pay, benefits, and working conditions. Unions are not normally involved on an
ongoing basis in managerial or strategic decision-making of the sort I am mostly concerned
with here.36
However, unions are not the only means through which employees are able to assert power
in the workplace. Hodson’s (2001, ch. 4) review of ethnographic research on workers’ responses
to both direct abuse and mismanagement makes clear that workers apply any of a number of
different resistance strategies. These range from overt forms such as wildcat strikes and direct
conflict to more subtle forms such as social sabotage (such as gossip) and absenteeism. The
Exceptions to this come in the form of the joint union-management programs discussed above.
These are, according to Hodson, “concentrated in the automobile and telecommunications industries”
and are focused on “improved worker training to meet the challenges of automation and global
competition,” although some programs do extend well beyond this. It may be noted, however, that these
programs come within the context of heavily unionized industries in which unions have been able to
constrain the power of management. What is unclear from Hodson’s account is the extent to which
employees do, in fact, participate in these programs, and how effective their participation is. Ibid., p. 1789.
36
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 23
word commonly used to refer to these practices is significant: resistance. Resistance is an
expressly political term that conveys the informal exercise of power by those who do not have
access to formal forms of power.
The distinction between the formal and informal exercise of power brings to mind a
different model of democracy: what Wolin refers to as fugitive democracy.37 There is no space
here for an extended discussion of the various characteristics of fugitive democracy, but the
essential point is that Wolin differentiates between a formal, institutionalized model of
democratic practice, characterized by formal rules and procedures, and an informal model
where democracy arises as form of rebellion that upsets the existing order. Wolin challenges
procedural theories of democracy by arguing that the institutionalization of democratic
practices through the establishment of procedures limits democracy, such that politics in
“[c]onstitutional democracy . . . is based, not as its defenders allege, upon ‘representative
democracy’ but on various representations of democracy . . ..” Elections legitimate the actions of
those who exercise power, but, “The demos has no effective voice” in what is done in their
name.
38
Wolin contrasts this with a model of democracy that he calls “fugitive.” Fugitive
democracy is characterized by transgression and rebellion, necessarily upending existing
hierarchies in an assertion of power by those normally deemed powerless. It is, however,
episodic: Rebellion eventually gives way to institutionalization, which must then place limits on
what now is seen as “surplus democracy” in the interests of order and efficiency.39
37 Sheldon Wolin, ""Fugitive Democracy"," Constellations 1, no. 1 (1994). See also Sheldon Wolin,
"Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy," in Athenian Political Thought and the
Reconstruction of American Democracy, ed. J. Peter Euben, John R. Wallach, and Josiah Ober (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1994).
38 Wolin, ""Fugitive Democracy"," p. 13-14.
39 Ibid., p. 18-19.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 24
While Wolin’s primary object of concern is the state, his argument can be extended to the
workplace, where the ostensible implementation of formal democratic procedures can be seen
as an attempt to provide legitimacy for, without removing, the exercise of domination by
management.40 Indeed, as one author notes, “many of the forms of participation have been
introduced simultaneously with an intensified utilization of unbridled market forces in the
organization of work. . . . Many participation schemes are . . . part of a manipulative drive to
raise productivity while offering employees only harder work and greater insecurity.”41 Some
modes of participation are, it seems, little more than efforts to replace inefficient bureaucratic
models of supervision with forms of social control and “team-based surveillance” that can
result in workers who are “more tightly controlled . . . than in traditional supervisory
settings.”42 Just as representative democracy is expressly designed to limit the participation of
the people while, at the same time, providing legitimation for the state’s actions in the name of
the people, so these schemes of workplace “democracy” (which are used in some cases by
management to counteract unionization drives43) provide a means for the legitimation of
management directives without giving workers meaningful power.
In some ways, however, Wolin’s theory of fugitive democracy suggests a different way of
understanding democracy in the workplace that may, in fact, provide the means for recognizing
participatory schemes as authentically democratic. The rebellious nature of fugitive democracy
need not be—in fact, cannot be—engaged in an ongoing manner. It is not a form of government.
In a crucial passage, Wolin says, “Democracy needs to be reconceived as something other than a
form of government: as a mode of being which is . . . a recurrent possibility . . . a rebellious
Rothschild and Ollilalnen, "Obscuring but Not Reducing," p. 593-6.
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 173-4.
42 Ibid., p. 175.
43 Ibid., p. 192-3.
40
41
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 25
moment that may assume revolutionary, destructive proportions, or may not.”44 In effect, the
fugitive form of democracy, the rebelliousness it embodies, may constitute the power of
employees not as an on-going practice, but as an ever-present threat that counteracts the formal,
institutionalized power of management. Indeed, the very democratic procedures implemented
by management to provide, in some cases, a release valve for employees to give them the
appearance or sense of control that they, in fact, lack, or that enable forms of social control that
exceed the capacity of managerial supervision, may paradoxically provide employees with a
means through which fugitive democracy may arise.
It is significant that the implementation of participatory schemes reduces but does not
eliminate employee resistance.45 This is, at least in part, because, as Hodson puts it, “Workers . .
. are not naïve, and narrowly self-serving management agendas are often quite transparent.”46
Ironically, establishing participatory mechanisms gives employees opportunities to express
themselves in ways that may not be favorable to management. The more strongly the language
of empowerment is used to encourage employee participation, the higher the expectations of
employees will be that they will have a meaningful voice—and the deeper the disappointment
and the stronger the reaction will be if this turns out not to be the case. Furthermore, through
the participatory mechanisms put in place, workers may become more familiar with one
another, more accustomed to working out their problems collectively, and more skilled in the
use of democratic procedures as a method of decision-making. The “genie of participation” may
indeed prove “difficult to recork.” 47
Wolin, ""Fugitive Democracy"," p. 23.
Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 187-9.
46 Ibid., p. 181.
47 Adrian Wilkinson and Hugh Willmott, "Introduction," in Making Quality Critical: New Perspectives
on Organizational Change, ed. Adrian Wilkinson and Hugh Willmott (London and New York: Routledge,
1995), p. 17.
44
45
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 26
Worker participation in decision-making, then, without formal participation in rule of the
sort associated with either or both representation on the board of directors or substantial
ownership, can be said to be democratic only to the degree that it rests on an implicit threat of
retaliation by workers if it turns out to be less than meaningful. This is not a very strong claim,
but it should be recalled that what I am discussing here is called weak democracy.
Conclusion
It is not easy to find data on the extent of participatory schemes in American enterprise, let
alone trends, but anecdotal evidence from research in the field indicates that, after reaching a
peak in the 1990s, it has fallen out of favor.48 It is not difficult to imagine why. The reasons for
implementing participatory schemes were largely instrumental, based on traditional capitalist
norms. In other words, they arose from a belief by management that this was a way to improve
quality and productivity, reduce costs and, ultimately, increase profits. Within the normative
order of the traditional workplace, compliance depends heavily on the legitimacy of the system
of command, usually institutionalized in a hierarchical structure. If participatory practices are
introduced, a new normative order is introduced with them, and a new basis for legitimacy.
Failure by management to adhere to those new rules by, for example, frequently failing to act
on employees’ concerns or refusing to accept their recommendations, undermines the system.
The result seems fairly straightforward: The expected gains evaporate and are replaced instead
with increased conflict between management and employees. Employees use the participatory
mechanisms to make demands that management is not prepared to address, and the result is
48 E-mail from Jacquelyn Yates, researcher for the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Kent State
University, March 9, 2012. Miller, et al., show how one of the most popular schemes, Total Quality
Management (TQM), had an especially precipitous rise and fall, making it a classic example of a
management fad. Miller, Hartwick, and Le Breton-Miller, "How to Detect a Management Fad." Blasi and
Kruse find most claims of employee participation over-blown and the changes in levels of participation
between 1994 and 1997 largely static. Joseph Blasi and Douglas Kruse, "U.S. High-Performance Work
Practices at Century’s End," Industrial Relations 45, no. 4 (2006).
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 27
the opposite from what was expected: lowered productivity, efficiency and profits, instead of
higher, not to mention new headaches from a disgruntled workforce.
From the perspective of a normative commitment to expanding democratic practices, one
might perceive some risk associated with employee participation schemes that are only
nominally democratic. Although the setting is different, a writer considering participatory
Citizens Juries argues that, “if . . . their recommendations are systematically ignored, the
experience may prove counter-productive . . . and as a consequence the participatory project
would be likely to collapse and backfire.”49 If there is a “spillover effect,” such that participatory
practices in the workplace affect participation in the political affairs of the state, the effect may
as easily be negative as positive: People who’ve been burned by false promises of
empowerment are less likely to want to participate in other settings.
Given these risks, it might be well to ask whether weak democracy, in the form of
participation without rule, is worth pursuing. I think the answer is at least tepidly affirmative,
for a number of reasons. Hodson notes, in the first place, that programs of employee
involvement in decision-making “also create openings for expanded worker voice concerning
other aspects of work life as well.”50 Participatory systems also clearly result in reduced levels of
both abusive treatment of employees by management and mismanagement, by putting in place
“normative constraints on management so that competence is encouraged and abuse is
disallowed.”51 Further, while they are not a panacea, when they work these kinds of programs
are generally successful in both reducing incidences of employee rebellion as well as promoting
Shlomi Segall, "Political Participation as an Engine of Social Solidarity: A Sceptical View," Political
Studies 53 (2005), p. 371.
50 Hodson, Dignity at Work, p. 173.
51 Ibid., p. 185.
49
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 28
positive behaviors of the sort that Hodson refers to as “citizenship.”52 One might expect that
these positive results only appear where management and workers take participatory practices
seriously—where employees are able to enjoy a real sense of empowerment, which in turn
implies that management is responsive. It is not important whether they are responsive because
they understand the implicit threat of rebellion and recognize that the payoffs in terms of
increase efficiency and profits requires some willingness on their part to cede some control, or if
they decide to take a normative position in support of justice and democracy. If it is successful,
we know that democracy can never be adequately contained, and that, once organized into
collective units workers may begin to recognize the existence of shared interests and begin to
articulate demands that go beyond the narrow confines that have been ascribed to them.
Included in these demands may be yet more autonomy, broader decision-making power, and a
more formal role in decision-making, including in the governance of the enterprise. With a
greater share in decision-making, employees may also gain opportunities to share in the wealth
they are creating, and even in the ownership of the firm (if they don’t already have it). On top of
this are the important and well-documented spillover benefits that come from worker
participation in decision-making.
To go from non-democracy, which is what characterizes most American businesses, to
strong democracy would seem to be a very substantial leap, one unlikely to have much chance
of success. To get from the one to the other would seem to have to go through one or the other
form of weak democracy, and it seems that the participatory form is a more likely candidate. To
the extent that weak democracy may be recognized as allowing for greater diversity of form, it
may also improve its chances of success, as it can be adapted to fit particular circumstances
52
Ibid., p. 187-93.
Kaswan “Weak Democracy” 29
more easily.53 As Rothschild puts it, “direct democracy cannot occur by fiat. . . . New
institutional forms do not arrive de novo. They are born and grow inside of old institutional
forms, and they can grow a long way before people notice that something very basic has
changed.”54 Purity can only be maintained in a highly concentrated form; the expansion of
democratic practices might be expected to involve some dilution. But where they can be
introduced and allowed to take root, they may over time be expected to strengthen, and to be
productive of some very significant changes, indeed.
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