Rural New Politics: An introduction

• Rural Democratisation: (Re)Framing rural poor political action
  A six-country study project of the New Politics Programme
  Jennifer Franco, December 2007

Rural social organisations as co-producers of New Politics innovation and their impact on democratisation and development policy processes

Project summary:

The search for concrete alternatives to neo-liberalism is in full swing, spurred on partly by the widening momentum of an evolving World Social Forum process begun in Porto Alegre, and partly by the increasingly obvious failure of the neo-liberal project to deliver most people in the world from poverty and inequality. Interest is also rising in new modes of political agency, especially in poor people's collective efforts to overcome the obstacles to full human development with credible and feasible alternatives.

Progress toward more democratic development necessitates work on two fronts. First, it requires the building of 'new' social and political institutions capable of effectively and democratically representing the plural identities and interests in society vis-à-vis the state, and engendering more democratic social-political practices in the process. Second, it requires developing innovative (and more democratic) ways to wage the 'old' struggle to democratise the state and make its development policies more accountable to the poorest sectors of society.

From this perspective, the Rural New Politics project is a systematic six-country comparative and action-oriented inquiry into:

1. innovations in the political agency of social organisations of the specifically rural poor; and
2. their impact on state development policy and processes.

An emphasis on rural-based innovation that targets national policy-making is necessitated by the continuing capacity of rural elites to prevent and undermine progress towards more democratic development. Land-based regional rural elites, through exclusionary political practices, continue to influence electoral outcomes at all levels. The rural elite 'spoiler' role thus has the potential to undermine even urban-based 'new politics' initiatives.

Advocates of democratic development, whether urban- or rural-based, must give serious and systematic attention to rural-based initiatives aimed at influencing state development policy and practice. Such initiatives may contain the seeds of a more strategic resistance to the undemocratic inertia and obstacles imposed by rural elites on development processes system-wide.

Relatively little systematic interrogation of a comparative nature of initiatives among the rural poor to overcome and move beyond existing social-political institutional obstacles to democratic development has been done, however. This is in contrast to the growing literature on urban-based experiments with popular democracy -- e.g, the Porto Alegre participatory budget process. Yet such initiatives do occur, even if unexpectedly and though they often remain 'invisible'.

Working with scholar-activists and rural rights-advocacy organisations in six countries (namely, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Mozambique, Indonesia and the Philippines), the project aims to look into new initiatives toward democratic development on the rural front; their relationship to urban-based initiatives; and their impact on the national development policy process. Such an investigation, when linked to a broader exchange of ideas and experiences, is expected to contribute to better understandings, improved practices and greater impact.

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