This article introduces a short series on economic democracy.
The global economy is failing to deliver for people or for the environment. Resource extraction and industrial pollution are leading to climate change and biodiversity degradation while millions of people lack access to the minimum material resources required to preserve life and achieve well-being.
At the same time, we are observing alarming levels of economic concentration and distrust in governments. Just when environmental and social emergencies seem to call for enlightened leadership, trust in governments is declining, protests and other forms of resistance are on the rise and people are asking for whom and to which ends our economy works.
Read more in the economic democracy series:
- Better responses to our flawed food systems
- Now is the time to democratise decision-making around clean energy extraction
- Increasing citizen scrutiny of national economic policy
Data from both the USA and OECD shows a steady increase in market concentration over the last 100 years in all sectors, including those which are key for our well-being, such food, health, and minerals. This means that a handful of global companies not only hold the power to determine prices or the supply of goods and services in these sectors, but also to make choices over key technologies which could green our economies (or not), and where jobs will be created (or lost). This phenomenon has accelerated over the last few decades in association with new technologies like IT and biotech that have provided a reduced number of firms with new ways of accumulating both economic and political power.
A recent report from IDS shows how concentrated power in food systems is leading to inequities in access to food.
Opportunities for economic democratisation
It is in this context that we need to understand better and explore opportunities for democratisation of economic decisions and spaces. Economic democratisation is emerging not as one grand theory, but as a set of ideas, experiments – and demands – to deepen democracy and improve checks and balances in previously exclusionary economic spheres. Key topics include: who takes economic decisions and through what processes, what role for individuals (vs collectives), what conditions make their participation meaningful, and what are different and novel forms of ownership in the social and solidarity economy, including communing/collective arrangements for common knowledge and resources.
Over coming weeks, a new blog series on ‘Democratising the economy for justice and legitimacy’ will show how the processes of environmental decay, social deprivation and economic and political concentration , even as they are generating growing discontent, tensions and conflicts might be creating opportunities to democratise the economy. We also highlight significant differences across peoples and regions in terms of the importance of these tensions, the capacity of authorities to respond to demands, and the extent to which economic democratisation is already taking place.
The blog series
The blogs in the series will discuss existing opportunities, challenges and practices in the direction to democratise the economy in relation to different economic and social problems, including food production and distribution, energy transition and mineral intensity, and land grabbing. We also explore the relevance of ideas and practices of democratisation for different types of countries and existing barriers to democratisation when pressures for global governance schemes are increasing with the urgencies of global problems like climate change.
Based on evidence from our work, we will argue that ideas and practices of economic democracy should be promoted: not to advance justice but also for the viability of economic activities and sustainable transformations in democratic societies. However, we also ask questions about how they may work or not work under different political regimes and about the limits and costs of democratisation.
Read the first blog in the series: Better responses to our flawed food systems
Blog 2: Now is the time to democratise decision-making around clean energy extraction
Blog 3: Increasing citizen scrutiny of national economic policy
