Grassroots Democracy Quotes

Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

I do not think it is possible for anyone, not even the leaders of a political organization, really to know in detail the exact situation in every locality. That is why we hold primaries, so that the people who live in the locality may have the opportunity to choose the best man as they see him and know him.

True democracy is not inconsistent with a few persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent.

The voice of the people may be said to be God's voice, the voice of the Panchayat.

Decentralization is always a passion of those in opposition

Bottom up democracy is hard for our leaders to accept. It is cultural. Chinese culture is based on the family. The daddy makes all the big decisions for everyone. It is top down.

People have the most control over their affairs at the grass-roots level. Anything that can be fairly and efficiently handled at a grass-roots level should be thus handled, and only delegated to a higher authority when necessary.

In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.

A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not through general elections, but rather through civil society and the strengthening of local institutions.

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

The value of democracy lies in the fact that good or bad government has its roots in the localities where people know each other and where they account for their actions to their neighbors.

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.

We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning--of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy.

The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man's Swaraj.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

We can't continue assuming that politics is something which is decided elsewhere by distant leaders in a distant capital. Protest is insufficient too. If people who are willing to put time into demonstrations also prove willing to work on behalf of candidates in local elections - or to become candidates themselves - they will achieve far more. If all of this upheaval provokes more involvement, then we have a slim chance of ending up with more vibrant democracies eventually. The alternative, as you've hinted, is that democracy fails altogether.

A town meeting is a legislature of citizens, for citizens, and by citizens. The fact that each citizen of the town is also a legislator separates the New England town meeting from all other forms of democracy.

There is a lack of emphasis and detail on self-government of business enterprises and community government. There is too much emphasis on the part that the Project Director and his staff play. Governmental officials should not impose their will on the residents, but the government should be formulated by the residents. It is absolutely essential that the personnel understand and sympathize with the policy of self-government.

I'm convinced democracy will grow from the ground up, from the community.

I believe, in America, we're a nation of people that are self-governors. This idea that only a chosen few elites have the ability to make decisions is foreign to me.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.