European Local Democracy Week, three months away Options

[Simon Kirby]

European Local Democracy Week is three months away. It's a week to put people in touch with their local councils and this year's event is focusing specifically on participatory democracy - that's building on well-engaged representative democracy and making people even more directly involved in their local governance and public service provision.

ELDW is grounded in the European Charter of Local Self-Government which is on the whole a miserably self-serving charter of rights for administrators and empire-building state functionaries in the very worst traditions of the European Community, but there is one nugget of good sense hidden away in the Preamble:

Considering that the right of citizens to participate in the conduct of public affairs is one of the democratic principles that are shared by all member States of the Council of Europe;

And so it is that the governance of a free and fair democracy must be accessible to its citizens. Of course it is in the nature of democracy that you have to poke up with the majority decision once it's taken, but at our most local layer of local government participatory democracy means that parishioners will be actively engaged in informing those decisions and an empowered citizenry will oftentimes be enabled to make decisions for itself.

So watch out for European Local Democracy Week - it's not about dressing up like a 17th century pirate in a frock coat and tri-corn hat (that's in September), ELDW is about engaging tax-paying parishioners in their local governance and dissipating public cynicism about local politics and its politicians.