Proximate is a big believer in participatory philanthropy, with a channel of its content dedicated to that topic. And the global NGO People Powered demonstrates how member-based organizations can use participatory democracy to determine how to allocate its budget.
Now, a commentary in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance proposes that a mechanism similar to a citizens’ assembly be used among investors to decide on “value-value tradeoffs” (the determination of how much gain is needed in one area to compensate for loss in another).
“We claim that a legitimate, politically uncontentious and very practical way to settle the value-value tradeoff is to let a representative sample of investors deliberate on ethical guidelines via an investor assembly,” the authors write.
Another front in the overlapping ecosystems of participatory democracy and the solidarity economy are worker cooperatives. One of the largest and most impressive examples is Spain’s Mondragon, which operates around the world in the finance, retail, industry and knowledge sectors. Its website proudly states that its business is “driven by a commitment to solidarity, applying democratic methods in its organisation and management.”
The Mondragon Corporation is actually an association of 95 cooperatives. According to The New Yorker: Each co-op’s highest-paid executive is paid no more than six times the salary of its lowest-paid employee. There are no outside shareholders; instead, after a temporary contract, new workers who have proved themselves become member-owners, voting to determine the co-op’s overall strategy, policies and salaries. Whether or not they are senior management or blue-collar, each member’s vote counts equally. When individual co-ops do well, members share in the profits. When times are hard, they collectively support one another, sharing funds and reallocating workers among themselves to preserve jobs. And Mondragon is doing well; it currently employs about 80,000 people.
The bottom line, to me, is that we can all look at our employment, recreation and even family lives for ways to infuse participatory democracy into how we interact with our broader communities. Here’s to a truly participatory world…
