New Book: Democracy As Problem Solving

Posted by on August 3, 2009

[posted from Comm-Org]

From: “Xavier de Souza Briggs” <xbriggs@MIT.EDU>

i’m pleased to announce my new book, DEMOCRACY AS PROBLEM SOLVING: CIVIC CAPACITY IN COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE GLOBE, available from barnes & noble or other booksellers or directly from The MIT Press.

beyond offering a new, comparative perspective on democratic problem-solving, social capital, the civics of leading change at the local level, and governance and accountability in a changing world, the book’s cases-in Brazil, India, South Africa, and the U.S.-encompass a range of domains that are of urgent concern around the globe, including uneven and unsustainable urban growth, economic restructuring in older city-regions, and investing in the healthy development of the next generation.

aimed at a broad audience, the book is suited for use in discussions, training, and coursework on community organizing and community development, urban politics and governance, urban development and
sustainability, democratization, civil society and planning institutions, and social policy.

Description and endorsements:

Complexity, division, mistrust, and “process paralysis” can thwart leaders and others when they tackle local challenges. In Democracy as Problem Solving, Xavier de Souza Briggs shows how civic capacity-the capacity to create and sustain smart collective action-can be developed and used. In an era of sharp debate over the conditions under which democracy can develop while broadening participation and building community, Briggs argues that understanding and building civic capacity is crucial for strengthening governance and changing the state of the world in the process. More than managing a contest among interest groups or spurring deliberation to reframe issues, democracy can be what the public most desires: a recipe for significant progress on important problems.

Briggs examines efforts in six cities, in the United States, Brazil, India, and South Africa, that face the millennial challenges of rapid urban growth, economic restructuring, and investing in the next generation. These challenges demand the engagement of government, business, and nongovernmental sectors. And the keys to progress include the ability to combine learning and bargaining continuously, forge multiple forms of accountability, and find ways to leverage the capacity of the grassroots and what Briggs terms the “grasstops,” regardless of who initiates change or who participates over time. Civic capacity, Briggs shows, can-and must-be developed even in places that lack traditions of cooperative civic action.

“If John Dewey, the seminal twentieth-century theorist of democracy as the praxis of community problem-solving, returned to commission studies of how democracy might work in the twenty-first century, he would be pleased with this important new book. Briggs extracts lessons of importance to urban policy makers and civic activists everywhere.”
– Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University, author of Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone

“This is a timely book about real world politics, not some abstract treatment that lends itself to a pet methodology. Democracy as Problem Solving steers clear of a cynical view of human relationships and proves mobilization can occur, given the right factors. Few books rival this book’s achievement in its multilevel, multistage scope.”
– Clarence Stone, George Washington University, author of Regime Politics and Building Civic Capacity

“Our theories of democracy lag behind the deep changes in how it works, or fails, globally. Expectations have risen, creating huge potentials and challenges. These new rules about what is democratically legitimate are often more demanding than the physical or economic issues. Briggs charts global transformations and identifies dramatic success in unexpected quarters, from Salt Lake City to Mumbai and Cape Town. Social capital and democracy take on new meaning here as Briggs shows how they are subtly intertwined with political cultures and policy innovation.”
– Terry Nichols Clark, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago

Xavier de Souza Briggs is Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning at MIT. He has worked as a community planner and senior urban policy official. A faculty research fellow of Harvard’s Hauser Center
for Nonprofit Organizations, he is also the founder of The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT. His book The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America (Brookings, 2005) won planning’s top book award, the Paul Davidoff Award, from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.