User:Tjagmax/Town meeting

Significance in democratic theory
Since the turn of the nineteenth century, political scientists have characterized New England's town meetings as notable examples of direct and deliberative democracy. In his 1831 visit to New England, the political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville visited several townships in Massachusetts, remarking in the first volume of Democracy in America (1835) that town governments in New England appeared to show greater political independence than French communes or other municipal bodies in Europe. Tocqueville believed that town meetings, with direct power given to attending residents, trained citizens for participation in broader democratic society, writing that "the institutions of a township are to freedom what primary schools are to science; they make them taste its peaceful employ and habituate them to making use of it." Town meetings also influenced the republican thought of Thomas Jefferson, who in 1816 wrote that townships in New England "have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation."

Town meetings represent some of the only modern institutions, apart from some townships in Minnesota and the cantons of Switzerland, in which everyday citizens can regularly participate in "face-to-face" assemblies that deliberate binding collective action decisions in the form of laws. Proponents of communitarianism and civic republicanism in political thought, notably Frank M. Bryan of the University of Vermont, have advocated town meetings as forms of direct democracy based upon unitary values. Deliberative democrats, such as James Fishkin, have presented the town meeting as a setting of "empowered participation" in which thoughtful deliberation between all participating individuals can coexist with a sense of engaged citizenship and responsibility for solving local problems. Both camps, however, note the difficulties of maintaining the benefits of town meetings when the format is scaled to larger groups.

Other political scientists have expressed more skepticism toward town meetings on the basis of their poor attendance and lack of representativeness. Jane Mansbridge and Donald L. Robinson have argued that town meetings in Vermont and Massachusetts feature extremely low turnout in part because they last for a full working day, leading to disproportionate representation of seniors and non-working residents in the meetings. As participation is still voluntary for attendees of the meeting, Mansbridge also notes differences in participation on the basis of education and class when conflicts arise, writing that "the face-to-face assembly lets those who have no trouble speaking defend their interests; it does not give the average citizen comparable protection." Feminist critics have also identified mixed results in town meetings. While women exhibited increased equality in attending town meetings relative to men, their relative participation in discussion declined as the size of the town increased.