It is not uncommon to hear political scientists claim that New England’s town meeting form of government is the only “real” democracy practiced anywhere in the world today, comparable only to the assembly of ancient Athens in the power given citizens to govern themselves.
“Real democracy (for good or ill) occurs only when all eligible citizens of a general purpose government are legislators,” wrote University of Vermont professor emeritus Frank Bryan in “Real Democracy,” his 2004 landmark study of Vermont town government. “In real democracies, the citizens—in person, in face-to-face meetings of the whole—make the laws that govern the actions of everyone within their geographic boundaries.”
That would be a fair description of Harvard’s Annual Town Meeting, where citizens convene once a year to decide how to spend their tax dollars, what new projects to undertake, or what new bylaws to enact. While it is true that U.S. and Massachusetts laws set limits on a town’s authority, the Massachusetts Constitution also takes pains to protect the right of its cities and towns to govern themselves, leaving much of the day-to-day business of government in their hands. New England townspeople don’t elect others to represent them; they represent themselves, unless, of course, they decide to stay home, in which case they are represented by those who don’t.
Real democracies work best, Bryan wrote, “when attendance at meetings and participation in them are high and egalitarian.” He should know. Over a span of 29 years, he and his graduate students observed more than 1,500 town meetings in 210 Vermont towns. And yet town meeting attendance in Harvard and elsewhere has steadily declined over the years.
With only three weeks remaining until Harvard’s own 2016 Annual Town Meeting convenes on the evenings of April 5 and 6, it’s not too early to mark your calendars. The annual town warrant and report of the Finance Committee will arrive in your mailbox any day now (a copy is already available on the town website). With 57 articles to decide, each the work of the selectmen, a town committee, or a citizen petition, there will be much to debate, including the question of whether it’s time to more explicitly define Harvard’s town government by creating a town charter.
As he exited the final executive session of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin is said to have been asked by a bystander, “Well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin’s answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Democracy is not a spectator sport. To paraphrase Franklin, one might say of Harvard’s 284-year-old town meeting form of government, “A democracy, if you can keep it.”
