Sir Keith might not be a household name outside his native Britain. But his apt phrase neatly justifies how much societies around the world today need more democracy—and more citizen engagement.

When democracies limit citizen participation to voting for political parties, we can blame our misfortunes on the politicians. Under such circumstances, we easily fall prey to demagogues who promise the earth, but who merely are in it for themselves. What we need is a system of “responsible” government, and this means that we have to take responsibility ourselves.

Direct democracy offers a number of ways to make us more responsible. First, there is the citizens’ initiative, a practice in democracies including Taiwan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Uruguay. In Uruguay, if 25 percent of the electorate propose a piece of legislation (by signing a petition), the entire electorate must vote on it in referendum.

In 1994, Uruguayan citizens gathered enough signatures for a popular vote on whether to protect old-age pensions. A majority supported the proposition; it seemed a balanced choice and one that the country could afford. In making this choice, a majority of the citizens of Uruguay opted for social justice, and as they had in a 1992 vote on a plan for privatization, defied the neoliberal political establishment.

So was there a liberal bias? Did Uruguayan voters default to supporting policies of the left? Not uniformly. Indeed, in the same year, when the nation’s teachers’ union sought to guarantee the allocation of 27 percent of the state budget to education, the vast majority voted “no.” Not, it should be said, because the voters were opposed to good education. Rather, the voters rejected the measure because the proposition was too blunt and lacked nuance. Also, on balance, setting a fixed percentage was not a prudent way to budget. The debate over the education measure became a practical exercise in responsibility. The citizens weighed the alternatives and decided after careful deliberation.

What is interesting about the Uruguayan example is that both votes were initiated by the people. In this way, it is different than the top-down referendums in many countries. Unlike California, for example, countries like Switzerland, Italy, and Uruguay do not allowed paid petition gatherers. Hence, the initiative process is truly bottom-up and less likely to be captured by those with the deepest pockets.

Too often, politicians hold referendums when they themselves are in a tight spot. As the economist John Matsusaka has written, governments often rely on referendums for issues that are “too hot to handle.” In the late 1990s, British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a referendum on a parliament for Scotland in order not to alienate voters in England, and in 2005, the French government submitted the European Constitution to voters for fear of upsetting the large segment of French voters who were skeptical of the EU.

This process of elected politicians submitting unpopular questions to voters is not direct democracy. It is an abuse thereof. And it is entirely out of step with the current moment and how people want to engage with the world. By contrast, over the past three decades, some local and national governments have taken a much more proactive approach to citizen engagement through participatory budgeting.

The idea is simple: the government distributes a percentage (typically 10 percent) of the local budget to the citizens, who decide what to spend the money on. “How would you spend one million of the City’s money?” asked a pamphlet distributed to New Yorkers in 2011 that introduced them to the process.

Participatory budgeting came to Tower Hamlets, one of the most unequal parts of London, in 2009 and 2010 in a project designed to help the area choose new social service providers. The borough was divided into eight smaller areas; in each, a representative section of community volunteers could question the providers on whatever they wished, including social responsibility and commitment to the community. Eventually, the citizens were able to negotiate with providers on the details of how service would work.

Finally, after this process, a vote was taken on which providers offered the best value and which were most likely to provide employment to local residents. This participatory project was a success. An evaluation by the local government association concluded that “a majority of participants said they had developed skills linked to empowerment, and the community overall felt they could better influence their local environment and services.” It was popular, too. More than 77 percent wanted the council to repeat the event in the future.” This level of engagement was considerably above the average for similar boroughs, where as few as 20 percent of residents even bother to vote.

The Tower Hamlets experiment—as well as participatory budgeting in places as different as Porto Alegre, Brazil and Paris, France—shows that citizens behave responsibly when they are given responsibility.

The money allocated in participatory budgeting is finite, and those involved in the process know that they have to make hard choices. Admittedly “trust” is a difficult concept to measure, but research by the World Bank suggests that citizen engagement grows trust in the political system. Moreover, citizens learn democracy by doing it. As Harvard political scientist Jane Mansbridge wrote, “Participating in democratic decisions makes many participants better citizens.”

Given the opportunity to make choices—and difficult ones at that—everyday people learn that politics is not a simple business. This realization lessens the allure of those who erroneously claim to offer simple solutions. The proof, as always, is in the pudding of facts. What is interesting is that populist parties have been less successful in countries that have experimented with deliberative mechanisms. Thus, in Ireland, there is no far-right populist party. The same is true for Brazil, where reports on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre suggest that citizens who engaged in the process become more interested in the policy issues and less concerned about the tribal politics.

This realization is also a defense against those who would use plebiscites, ballot measures, or other campaigns to threaten minorities or immigrants. Stronger citizen decision-making, if well designed, can de-escalate divisive issues, and also keep debate civil and respectful.

Ireland offers one example of direct democracy protecting human rights. For decades, the European island nation was a conservative bastion that outlawed abortion and even limited the right to divorce. Politics was often polarized as right-wing parties competed to be more conservative than each other.

This changed when, in 2012, the government accepted the use of citizens’ juries (or citizens’ assemblies), in which everyday people gather, study an issue, and make a recommendation to parliament as to how to proceed. Soon, Irish politicians, seeking to end division, agreed that such groups of ordinary citizens would handle any proposed legislation on same-sex marriage and abortion.

The citizens’ assembly on abortion met in 2016. Because making sound decisions is about information, and weighing the pros and cons, the group got the same access to expert briefings as elected officials, and to suggestions submitted by other Irish citizens. The organizers of the citizens’ assemblies also invited advocacy groups ranging from the Catholic Church to LGBTQ+ organizations to offer input.

After deliberating, the citizens’ assembly proposed allowing abortion in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. This fell well short of what various feminist groups wanted but was also far more liberal than the existing prohibition, which made it a criminal offense to travel abroad to terminate a pregnancy. This compromise position was endorsed by just over 60 percent of the assembly, and subsequently ratified in a referendum by a similar majority of Irish voters.

The use of the citizens’ assembly was welcomed by both sides of the argument. Even senior Church clerics expressed support for the process of deliberative listening. “Concepts, in and of themselves, rarely move people emotionally. Relationships and stories, however, do move people,” Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson said in a statement, noting that the referendum was decided after “the telling of and the listening to stories ‘on both sides.’” Independent evaluations of the citizens’ juries concluded that participants took their duties seriously and used their powers responsibly. Participants told evaluators and the press that they themselves had to live with the consequences of their actions.

Previously, Irish voters could blame politicians for their unhappiness with social policy—even if they had voted for the officials. Now that citizens had to make recommendations themselves, people’s stances became more nuanced, and they became more open to a plurality of arguments.

Society needs shifts like this now more than ever, both to escape our polarized politics and to capitalize on the way we live today. Just as out-of-print books can be printed “on-demand” if customers wish, democracy should be upgraded to reflect the wishes of the voters. In the age of Netflix and Spotify, people demand the ability to select individual playlists and policies. We are no longer content with the package deals offered by political parties. Majorities in all democratic countries want more decision-making power and deserve democracy on demand.

Almost 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville concluded, “the most potent, and possibly the only remaining weapon to involve men in the destiny of their country is to make them share in its government.” Apart from upgrading the antiquated gendered language, this conclusion still holds true.

The post The Secret to Making Democracy More Civil and Less Polarized appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Then, as now, local food was all the rage, evidenced in crowded farmers markets, whole-animal butcher classes, and field trips on foraging food. I thought local yarn sounded like a good idea, too. “Don’t these same people care about where their clothes came from?” I wondered. Yarn, after all, is the foundation of all fabric, spun to thin thread and then either woven or knit. “Aren’t synthetic fibers at least as bad as a factory-farmed hamburger? Why can I buy sheep’s milk cheese at the weekly farmers market on my street, but not a hat or sweater from the very same animal?” I began searching for answers.

I found many. Most U.S.-grown wool is exported raw, returning in garments labeled only with the country name of the last manufacturing step—as required by trade treaties. On top of that, most U.S. wool and textile weaving mills had closed by the early 1990s. Still another factor is a shortage of sheep shearers: the people most likely to raise sheep breeds that make interesting yarn have trouble finding a shearer, due to the smaller sizes of their flocks. This is because shearers typically make money on volume. At $3 a head, for example, a shearer needs to shear at least 100 sheep per day to make a decent living. And shearers themselves are a dying breed. As Gary Vorderbruggen, one of my shearing instructors, says, the first thing you do to get ready for shearing season is to “call your shearer and see if he’s still alive.”

In May 2013, I attended a beginning sheep shearing school at the University of California Hopland Research and Extension Center, where I got beaten up by sheep for five days straight. By day three, my lip was split, my body was purpled with hoof-shaped bruises, and I had trouble standing up to walk. By day five, I had a dim idea of what I was doing and could shear a few sheep per day.

Shearing is a highly skilled job, a full mind-body experience. Courtesy of Stephany Wilkes.

A classmate took me out on some shearing jobs with him, and though I still don’t know why shearing stuck, it did. Shearers blame “wooly worms” for it, because even we can’t explain why shearing is rather addictive. If nothing else, I knew I preferred an ornery, manure-laden, 250-pound, horned ram over my day job—which was, at the time, in tech—any day of the week.

Since then, I’ve spent much of every January through August in barns loud with the sound of electric shears, wool baling machines, bleating sheep, and sometimes a generator. Shearing is a highly skilled job, a full mind-body experience. To keep all involved injury-free, we must intensely focus on what we’re doing. If we get too caught up in our own worlds, we’ll seriously hurt ourselves and the sheep. I’m constantly watching where my hand is in relation to the shears, if I’ve pulled the sheep’s skin taut enough so I don’t cut it, if my feet are in the right place, and so on.

As I have slogged my way through each back-breaking job, I have learned that sheep shearing looks much the same today as it has for the past two centuries. It’s an American tradition—a highly skilled, journeying trade—that has always relied on crews of immigrant and American workers alike, some of whom descend from earlier generations of Native American, French, Basque, English, Portuguese, and Mexican shepherds.

The tradition of sheep shearing, and the way it survives today, are the result of humans creating wool-growing sheep. Wild sheep, like the American-native Bighorn, shed their wool as they grow it. But domesticated sheep have been bred over the course of 15,000 years to hold onto their wool. We created sheep to reliably grow our clothes in our backyards, year after year, until we were ready to harvest it. Today, wool must be sheared every 6 to 12 months for the good of the sheep.

Skilled shearers are in high demand. By my best estimates, there are currently 350 to 500 actively practicing American sheep shearers, a few dozen of whom are women—not nearly enough to cover 5.23 million head of sheep and lambs in the country. Reduced sheep numbers (down from tens of millions in individual states alone) mean that shearers need to be recruited from other countries on H2-A sheep shearing visas, and shearers like me have to travel farther. I’ve met more than one shearer in his or her 50s or 60s who says they used to hit their numbers for the year by shearing “across the street and down the road.”

The unrelenting physical demands of both shearing and the road life combine to make the shearing community a tightly knit, mutually supportive one. Every shearer is, automatically, each other’s “ride or die,” and it’s palpable. Besides, I enjoy equal pay for the first time: unlike my experience in tech, everyone on a crew is paid the same per-head rate. The only difference is how many sheep each of us shears.

How much does our present-day shearing community in the U.S. resemble that of the past? There is not much documentation, but one historical source is The Flock by writer Mary Austin, published in 1906. In it, she describes the crews and manner of shearing in California during the late 1800s, which feels similar in communal spirit and camaraderie to shearing days today. Austin writes, “each man chose to shear what pleased him … Under the social stimulus they turn out an astonishing number of well-clipped muttons.” Austin quotes a rancher who says that, as of the 1860s, “there were no laborers but” Native Americans, that “Round the half moon of the lower San Joaquin the Mexicans are almost the only shearers to be had,” and describes camps comprised of French, Basque, and American shearers. She describes shearers calling out their tallies and notes she heard once heard a man keep tally in three languages. That strikes me as quintessentially American.

Austin’s book also reflects the nature of sheep shearing today, which crosses a lot of international borders. Because sheep shearers are in high demand all over the world, some shearers come to the U.S. from cultures with their own long, expert traditions in sheep and wool: Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand. U.S. workers also travel to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe to shear as temporary workers themselves.

The design of the tools we use is another thing that hasn’t changed much in the course of a century. In a 1902 advertisement, a boy operates a similar set-up to the one I use. He cranks the motor, which—via gears and transmission—moves a cutter across a comb. Distance is another part of the craft that hasn’t changed. Sheep still travel great distances, and shearing crews travel even farther to tend to remote flocks—if not quite as far as Austin describes. Today, land in the U.S. is too divided between public and private entities to let flocks roam to the extent they once did. Austin describes a “shearing crew which has begun in the extreme southern end of the [San Joaquin] valley, passes north on the trail of vanishing snows as far as Montana, and picks up the fall shearings, rounding toward home.”

Still, between January 1 and August 30 each year, I typically put 10,000 miles on my car—and I’m lucky, because many of my small-flock jobs are close to home. Iowa-based shearer Alex Moser noted in January 2019 that he puts 45,000 miles on his truck each year, while Michigan-based shearer Tim Wright says he averages about 18,000 to 22,000 miles a year.

Today, pick-up trucks tow the shearing trailer instead of a horse team, but shearers travel and set up to shear much like they always have. After the day’s work is done, shearers may stay in a private camper, truck or tent, as ever. Less often, shearers may share one hotel room nearby. Even an inexpensive one can eat up 15 to 20 percent of a day’s wages, so a hotel room usually means buddying up.

Shearing the rams by painter Tom Roberts, 1890. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest Fund.

One thing that has changed is the way we actually shear the sheep. The shearing method we use today is called the Bowen—or New Zealand—method, a shearing dance designed to keep the fleece in one piece and achieve maximum speed and quality work, with a minimum of physical effort. It’s safe for the sheep and gets them out of the experience as quickly as possible. It was invented by brothers Ivan and Godfrey Bowen, and over the last few decades has become standard practice in the world of sheep shearing.

When we use the Bowen method, we put the sheep on its back and make three strokes with the shears down the belly. We cover teats and udders with the hand that isn’t holding the shearing handpiece, so we don’t nick them. Next, we go out the right leg, then back up the same leg. After this, we shear the sheep’s left leg, sinking our fists into the hip socket to straighten the leg out, and then shear the hip haunch (hock) all the way over to the spine.

Each and every movement is carefully choreographed between feet, hands, shears, and sheep. For example, as we shear the sheep’s head, we bend the ear over each eye, to protect the sheep’s eye socket and to see clearly around the ear. Later, to shear the neck, we’ll step forward with our right foot, put it between the sheep’s legs, and push our right knee into the sheep’s chest, which keeps it safely held while we do long strokes to shear the neck. After this, we make long sweeps of the shears down the sheep’s back and sides, which is the fun part; sustained, smooth, fast strokes. Finally, we pull the shears off, release the sheep, and gently pat its rump as a signal that it’s free to stand and go. The sheep pop up between our legs, facing the door, and run off to their flock and food.

Sheep have gotten much larger over the past hundred years, which makes shearing them much more physically demanding. As recently as the 1980s, a 170-pound ewe was considered a big sheep. Now, shearers regularly handle 250- to 300-pound sheep.

I hope I will have work for as long as I can hold my shears and a sheep. We need more natural fibers and sheep for different, complementary reasons: as natural, compostable fiber for the fashion industry, to replace plastic-shedding synthetic fabrics, and for soil health as well. As the climate changes and flooding and soil temperatures increase, we will depend more heavily on sheep and goats that can graze a wide variety of plants and efficiently turn that energy into both fiber and food.

We always need more shearers to join us. Shearers get injured, start families, reduce travel, and retire. I think it’s an underrated, rich, free life. I see the most beautiful parts of the country; I love the sheep and my shearing community; and no two jobs are ever alike.

The post The Joys of Shearing Ornery, 250-Pound Sheep appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But I study the world’s heritage museums—the national, state, or city museums that tell stories from the past—and I am convinced that the best of these institutions forge national identity and impact our civic actions far more profoundly than we recognize. National identity is a myth we create together in order to cooperate as large societies, and heritage museums tell the stories that perpetuate—and also modify—those national myths.

To understand what makes museums most effective, the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa makes an especially useful example. Te Papa embraces its role as the nation’s cultural glue, celebrating unity, while also functioning as its cultural goad, encouraging new viewpoints.

Te Papa avoids the classic trap of national museums which sometimes assert either that the old story of national history has always been right or that a new story of national identity is vastly superior, by instead embracing the ambiguity of these stories. My research, focused on the rhetoric used by heritage museums, convinces me that one-sided assertions only persuade those who already believe them. Te Papa and other persuasive museums instead ask visitors to think about the highs and lows of a society rather than merely demand their allegiance. Paradoxically, what is more persuasive in developing national identity is asking people to contemplate alternative views of and paths for their nation.

Te Papa, which opened in 1998, draws approximately one-fifth of New Zealand’s population each year, alongside hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors. “Identity” is such a focus that its logo is a giant fingerprint, and it asks visitors from the moment they enter to think about what it means to be a New Zealander today.

This starts with its name. “Te papa tongarewa” translates as “the place where treasured things are held,” according to the guide provided for visitors. Its collections—indigenous Maori, European settler, and (most recently) Pacific Islander artifacts—demonstrate that the common heritage of the nation includes treasures from multiple cultures. The dual-language (English/Maori) signage and careful depiction of multiple viewpoints emphasize this hybridity as well. Its Te Marae meeting house, a traditional Maori structure, incorporates symbols from Maori, European, Asian, and Pacific cultures and “embodies the spirit of bicultural partnership that lies at the heart of the Museum, and is based on the idea that Te Papa is a forum for the nation,” according to the Te Papa website. The first two of the museum’s four exhibit floors repeatedly emphasize two unifying traits: the connection to New Zealand’s landscape that Europeans and Maoris share, and the history that all New Zealanders share as seafarers who arrived relatively recently (Maori settlers arrived in the 13th century, Europeans in the 17th to 19th centuries, Pacific Islanders largely after World War II).

The interactive exhibit Ourspace, which ran from 2008-2014, involved visitors themselves in creating a shared nation. Ourspace was a giant floor map of the country onto which visitors’ footsteps triggered preset images of New Zealand’s people and places. Visitors were invited to upload their own images to “create your vision of New Zealand … mix it, own it, share it.” Over 10,000 images were contributed by the time the exhibit closed. Crucially, these individual images were mixed with those of others for the next visitors to see. So, rather than visitors selecting the New Zealand they wished for themselves, they were contributing to a hybrid communal identity—the same hybridity embodied in the design of the newer Te Marae exhibit.

Only after firmly cementing these commonalities does the museum shift to presenting the nation’s divergent challenges. A recent exhibit chronicled the European/Maori wars of the 19th century, for instance. A permanent exhibit considers refugee struggles. And until 2016, a final exhibit on the many social changes of 20th century New Zealand summed up the Te Papa identity as both glue and goad in its final placard:

Us and Them: Entering the 1950s, New Zealand society seems prosperous, peaceful, and integrated. The ‘us’ behind this image of unity are heterosexual Pākehā blokes (male European New Zealanders)—the country’s dominant players. Other groups, however, find themselves marginalised. In the 1970s and 80s different voices start to speak out … By the century’s end, many diverse groups have a say in New Zealand society and politics. ‘They’ have become part of ‘us.’

Who is this new “us”? The Essential Guide to Te Papa defines the new “Kiwi identity” as someone who sees unity and values diversity: “Kiwis live in a broadly egalitarian society and believe that everyone deserves a ‘fair go.’ … Widespread protests have reflected Kiwis’ willingness to oppose injustice or back a principle … Kiwis have grown wings—many have travelled extensively or lived in other countries … [But] Kiwis retain a strong identity … Home or abroad they feel a strong affinity with the land.”

The assertion of unity in diversity is, admittedly, a common theme in many forward-looking museums. It is the master narrative of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where citizen groups historically unite across differences to forge “a more perfect union.” In today’s divisive times, unity-in-diversity is a good message—but it can also become so much pablum, a broadly pleasant statement that all can agree with but few need to act upon.

The Te Papa goes further. Its new Pacific Islander exhibit, for instance, asks visitors to consider a fundamental aspect of their own identity: “Aotearoa [New Zealand] is a Pacific place in location and history. But do New Zealanders consider themselves Pacific Islanders? Do you?” And in a central section of the museum hangs a key artifact of the museum: The Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840 agreement between the British Crown and Maori chiefs. Largely ignored for more than a century, its provisions, which took much from the Maori, have been used since the 1970s as a template to redress breaches of Maori rights. In the new New Zealand it has assumed the role of a foundational document.

In Te Papa, signage informs visitors that the Treaty deals with “ideas vital to modern New Zealand,” and New Zealanders today walk in with an understanding of the Treaty principles learned in school. Yet it also points out that the document is still controversial, its purpose in the modern nation still a matter of debate. The Treaty, therefore, is surrounded by speaker poles broadcasting the voices of different people debating the treaty. Some voices praise it as transformational to New Zealand society in righting old wrongs, while others wonder if society has gone too far in protecting Maori rights and redressing legal disputes over land/resources. Do the values the Treaty represents embody the “fair go” of Kiwi identity, and if so, what should happen next? Allowing this new story to be debated within a museum that celebrates points of national commonality means that debate is not seen as antithetical to nationhood. What divides can be discussed—and so the work of persuasion is ongoing.

The divided United States might learn from this example. In fact, these lessons are already being applied in some surprising places. Just last month I visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in Philip, South Dakota. For the past 20 years, the site has told the story of the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War. The missiles scattered throughout the Dakotas “[hold] the power to destroy civilization, but [are] meant as a nuclear deterrent to maintain peace and prevent war,” the National Park Service introduction says.

Thirty years ago I spent my college years active in the Nuclear Freeze movement; when I visited the museum last month I happened to be sharing a guest house with a Cold War-era member of the U.S. military, and both of us found the exhibit surprisingly balanced. Both of us, in fact, spent the next morning persuading a young Russian guest to stop at the exhibit as well—which, we both assured our new friend, included a surprisingly significant recounting of Russian perspectives.

The site’s exhibit manages to cover not only the obvious divisions of that time—mistrust and miscommunication, hysterical ideology—but also the less-discussed commonalities that included the mutual fear of global annihilation and how it shaped identity on both sides of the Cold War. It begins with the bravura of cold warrior missileers (“Minuteman II: World-wide delivery in 30 minutes or less” boasted a hand-painted silo door in the shape of a pizza box), but ends with the sobering placard “Too Close for Comfort”—five narratives of specific dates when accidents and false alerts “came close to ending the world as we know it.”

Most crucially, the site asks its visitors to think, with panels posing questions ranging from “Would you do your duty?” to “Do you think nuclear weapons make the world more safe? Less safe?” At the very end, a prominently placed guest book invites visitors’ thoughts on all these questions.

Reading through comments from just the day I was there, I saw diverse opinions, rather like the Treaty of Waitangi speaker poles: “It was a scary time growing up in Washington, DC.” “Nuclear weapons are only safe if put in the right hands.” “I grew up in Finland in the ‘80’s … It was a source of constant anxiety.” “The strategy succeeded for all of humanity. Would a strategy without Minuteman have been successful?” “Nobody wins.” “Kill em all and let God sort em out! Trump 2020.” “Never again, please.”

A Swiss visitor nicely summed up the purpose of the book, and the exhibit, in German (my translation): “There were a lot of interesting comments … some I do not agree with, but it is very cool that it was free!” I like to think he meant both “free” access (there is no admission charge) and “free” debate. Did this small museum change my opinion on nuclear weapons? No. But it left me better able to have a real discussion with someone who believes in their necessity.

In today’s heterogeneous societies, public speeches and pageants are too homogeneous and too propagandistic to unite people. When societies know they are divided, one response is to let those differences rest side by side. But a more nuanced response, demonstrated by some of the world’s best heritage museums, is to seek to consider competing and difficult ideas together. Museums, if well designed, can provided rare public spaces where different people from the same place can engage thoughtfully with the basic questions of who we are, what we value, and, therefore, what we may be willing to do next.

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