Practice

Recognizing that the genius of democracy is in its roots, the Right Question Institute sets about strengthening those roots. By helping people learn how to help themselves, the project makes possible the vital process of converting residents into effective citizens...The project offers the prospect of strengthening the vital core of our society. 

Bill Kovach, former editor of the Atlanta Constitution and Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalists at Harvard University and current Co-Chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. 

Framework

Microdemocracy is a framework for the Right Question Institute's initiatives in a variety of fields and across the country. The Microdemocracy Strategy has three key components:

1. Recognize the democratic significance and potential of the public terrain where millions of individual citizens come face to face with public agencies.
2. Teach simple and powerful skills for focusing on decisions and formulating questions that can lead to more effective participation in decision-making.
3. Tap into an already existing workforce of several million frontline workers who can teach the skills to the tens of millions of people with whom they work.

Microdemocracy in Practice

The Microdemocracy Strategy can help produce more examples of Microdemocracy and make it possible for far more citizens to take action on their own behalf, on behalf of their families and their communities. It will also help build a constituency ready and able to expect and require accountable decision-making.

In nearly twenty years of educational work with The Right Question Institute (RQI) in low-income communities around the country, we have seen that citizens who have never before participated can learn key skills, adopt new habits and acquire the “look of a citizen,” ready to participate in decisions and ready to expect and require accountable decision-making. This change is triggered by learning to use simple and powerful tools RQI has developed that build skills for asking questions and participating effectively in decisions. These skills are rarely explicitly taught, but they are essential democratic skills for more effective participation in decision-making on any level of democracy. 

Frontline staff of many agencies and organizations working day in and day out with low-income people all over the country, can play a key role in making this possible. Many of them are frustrated by the constant flood of people who come through their doors, dependent on them to advocate for them, solve their problems and provide a temporary service to deal with stubborn, recurring problems. They have shown us how, with a slight, but significant shift in practice, they can move from “doing for” people to teaching them these essential skills. And, then, they see remarkable changes.

The hundred million encounters individuals have with public agencies on a micro level – currently the endpoint of their interaction with decision-making in the public sector - can be transformed into examples of Microdemocracy. The same skills that are used on the micro level can be used to participate more effectively on any level of democracy and, thus, Microdemocracy becomes a new starting point for democratic action.

Examples

Most of RQI’s work involves working with and providing training to the staff of agencies and organizations at work every day in low-income communities all around the country. In addition to the training of frontline staff, RQI’s own staff have done direct training with a wide range of people including sugar cane plantation workers in Hawaii, with Mexican, Vietnamese, Haitian, and Latino immigrant parents of schoolchildren in California, Arizona, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, public housing tenants in Chicago, homeless shelter residents in Kentucky, migrant workers in North Carolina, welfare recipients in New Hampshire, adult literacy students across New England, patients in mental health institutions, inmates in correctional centers and halfway houses, and youth in alternative diploma programs.