Regional Democracy

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Regional democracy is a political theory and practice developed in the West Yorkshire region of England that critiques and expands the devolution policies of the United Kingdom [UK] central government as they are applied to the regions of England rather than the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Regional democracy identifies three complimentary and interconnected fields of theory and practice: region building, radical subsidiarity and overcoming the London hegemony.

Building a Region

The first field of activity proposed by regional democracy is cultural: the construction and maintenance of the idea of a region as a space for co-operation between people and places, and the opportunity of fair and equal participation in that co-operation by everyone who currently lives in the region, no matter where they or their relatives were born.

Given that England, and the wider UK, has no meaningful history of federal regional governance, constructing regional democracy begins with a process of 'conscientisation', which is “the process whereby people become aware of the political, socioeconomic and cultural contradictions that interact in a hegemonic way to diminish their lives”. This Paulo Freire idea also includes “taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by... understanding” that hegemony. The Kirklees Democracy Commission, a local government initiative "to design democracy for the next generation", reported in its findings that "We believe that we should start with the local and evolve our regional democracy from there."

The first act of regional democracy conscientisation was a one-day public event in Manningham, Bradford in 2015, which asked the question 'What Kind of Region Do We Want to Live In?'. This event was purposefully non-party political and actively tried to engage a more diverse range of voices by using the Open Space format, by offering childcare and help with travel costs, and by taking place on a Saturday in order not to exclude citizens who were at work during the week. This approach was taken in order to be in direct contrast to the government-driven devolution process which is regularly criticised for its lack of diversity.

Following this first event further creative conscientisation projects have included a viral sticker campaign that featured on a regional TV report about devolution and a participatory_art project in which campaigners visited all the major markets of West Yorkshire, asking people shopping there to create hand-drawn maps of things they valued in their communities. These activities were documented in a book called "What Kind of Region Do We Want to Live In?", which also included specially commissioned short essays from regional writers and campaigners including sports writer James Oddy, and Penny Wangari-Jones, director of the Racial Justice Network. Since publication the book has attracted both scholarly and news media attention.

Radical Subsidiarity

The second field of regional democracy is the design and implementation of a governance architecture for England based on the principle of subsidiarity, in which the regional scale sits between the local and the national. In regional democracy theory, this regional scale has two roles, one inward facing, one outward. The inward facing role is to be the space for co-operation between people and places outlined above, and formally this covers things like transport, education and skills, healthcare, major cultural venues (including sport and parks), the environment, local taxation, planning laws, regional banking, making and managing relationships with other regions nationally, in Europe and worldwide, and so on. The outward facing role, crucially missing in the recent historical context of England and the UK, is to counterbalance London's hegemony.

In regional democracy, the principle of subsidiarity means that all authority and responsibility for governance flows from the foundational scale upwards, and by only as much as is granted by one level to the level above. At the lowest level, regional democracy takes the form of participatory_democracy at an interpersonal, face-to-face scale, embodied in formal structures of local government, and also, just as vitally, embodied in participatory and deliberative democracy at a neighbourhood level, in the economic democracy of cooperatively-run businesses, in clubs and societies, arts and sports organisations, governance and delivery of public services, the stewardship and enjoyment of the natural world, and not least local commercial businesses in their relationships with customers and each other. Governance of a regional democracy is the shared responsibility of citizens in their everyday conduct: to mindfully look for opportunities to work together to maximise the benefits of what they have in common, while respecting and valuing differences.

Governance architectures based on similar principles are commonplace around the world. German federalism includes a Bundesrat made up of representatives from the government in each Land and the Bundestag, made up of directly elected representatives from across the republic. Representatives in the Bundestag reflect the fact that within each Land, and across the republic as a whole, there are a diversity of opinions. Within this well defined and transparent governance architecture, some decisions (default competencies) are made by the Land government autonomously and are implemented within its own space only. These are substantial powers, for example German regions can make their own choices about student tuition fees.

The German system was created by British civil servants after the Second World War in order to prevent the concentration of power. The same civil service went on to write and impose dozens of constitutions on other countries as they gained national independence from the British Empire. In contrast, the same principles were never applied in England. That has left England and the wider United Kingdom as one of only three established democracies with a wholly uncodified constitution. Regional democracy theory asserts that this is an example of English exceptionalism and asks which people and places benefit from it?

Actively Challenging London's Hegemony

The UK has the most regionally unbalanced economy in Europe, and the third field of regional democracy is an analysis of who benefits from things as they are, in what Sharon White (second permanent secretary at the UK treasury) described as “the most centralised developed country in the world”. Regional democracy seeks to actively challenge the negative impact of London's hegemony on the UK, in particular the most vulnerable people and places outside London and the Home Counties.

In this context, hegemony means the dominance of a way of thinking, doing and being that is most closely associated with a specific region of the UK and which is exactly the same place where overwhelming political, economic, cultural and media power is concentrated – London and the Home Counties. A regional democracy analysis draws on the work of historians Peter Cain and Tony Hopkins to contend that this hegemony is derived from London's position as a colonial capital city and its history of financial capitalism. In “British Imperialism: 1688-2015” Cain and Hopkins describe the co-evolution of the City, Whitehall, and Westminster into what they call "gentlemanly capitalism", focused on the generation of wealth through finance. This was separate from the financing of Britain's industry, which was done by regional banks, rather than the City. Instead the City focused on exporting finance to Britain’s colonies and extracting wealth from them. Hemsworth MP and former Leeds City Council leader Jon Trickett identifies the ongoing legacy of this imperialism is the way the City, Whitehall, and Westminster treat the rest of the UK, which he described as the UK government treating “us like the last colonial outpost of British Empire.”

Whether it is about government spending (such as prioritising and investing in London’s schools or infrastructure over other parts of the UK) or it is about creating a political and legal climate (such as one that benefits types of industries concentrated in London but not one that benefits types of industries concentrated elsewhere), London continues to be economically successful because UK government has decided actively to do something to make it so. Each time these decisions are successful, they strengthen London’s case for being prioritised in the future, based on a self serving return-on-investment metric.

Regional democracy stresses that this analysis is about structure and systems rather than a conspiracy of people in London setting out to be deliberately vindictive to people outside London and the Home Counties. It is the inevitable consequence of the London-centric UK structure that leads to concentrations of power amongst those who cannot help but share some key experiences and therefore perspectives. Regional democracy respects the analysis of those Londoners who also wish to challenge the London hegemony and describe how it fails the vulnerable of London itself, while continuing to critique those London based organisations who claim to organise nationally or offer a national perspective or service but whose hub and franchise structures mean they retreat there when resources are stretched or who continually expect people to travel to meetings or events in London as easily as the many other people based in the Home Counties. Such approaches merely perpetuate the London hegemony. John Tomaney, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the Bartlett School of Planning, called this “a (post)colonial cultural relationship” between London and other regions.

The analysis of the London hegemony in regional democracy is applied to the institutions of the Left as much as the Right. Political parties, national charities, national arts organisations and museums, the health service, trade unions and business associations all have the same hub and franchise organisational model derived from the colonial history outlined by Cain and Hopkins. The English Labour Party is itself a product of the London hegemony: the victory of the politics of the Fabians, who were a small group of well connected London journalists, over the regionally rooted Independent Labour Party.

Regional democracy challenges the London hegemony not just in order to overcome its negative impact but to give people across the country, rather than just those in London, the agency to campaign for, and make, positive changes where they live and work. Changing a national policy inevitably focuses on campaigners, politicians and civil servants based in London, if only because in such a centralised country, that is where the decision is made. Those conversations bypass people in other regions because it's more time consuming and expensive to be involved in them. A one hour meeting with a civil servant or to attend a protest is a day's commitment at least.

This analysis holds that the same hegemony also maintains systems of advantage and disadvantage that affect people differently based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, age and class. It therefore suggests that the life chances for all in the regions of England depend on acknowledging that hegemony and privilege. Regional democracy therefore promotes actively building an alternative civil society that challenges and does not depend on London’s hegemony. Inherent within that is the suggestion that regional democracy should actively address the impact of privilege on people within the region itself.

References

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