I've been bothered by a conundrum of planning and democracy in the past decade or so. In our state (and evrywhere in the U.S.) when groups such as labor or the Democratic party attempt to rationalize the use of scarce resources - through targeting on winnable districts, etc.- the only perspective from which this makes sense is a centralized one, i.e. at the state level. The result has usually been that they fail or refuse to respond to grassroots support - focusing instead upon professionalized empirical indicators of success. Both the value committments and "tacit knowledge" which serves as a basis for local support become irrelevant or suspect. The result is much like management's typical disregard of "morale" as a factor in sucess. Do you think this is because the "rationality" we associate with planning is not genuinely democratic, i.e. based on value consensus achieved through discussion or is it something else? -------------- A more generalized statement of this practical problem is addressed in a couple of articles: Ray Kemp "Planning, Public Hearings and the Politics of Discourse" and John Forester, "Critical Theory and Planning Practice" in _Critical Theory and Public Life_, ed by John Forester, MIT Press, 1985 Maurice Foisy Political Science Western Washington University Bellingham, WA
