Rekindling Democracy

Originally published June 2020

I don’t often write or post book reviews, however I wanted to with this one.  As we move forwards in the world we might want to imagine, as we consider the impact of COVID19, the changing shape of community and the challenges of our climate emergency – we need a new way of thinking about ‘service’.

Cormac’s new book is a critical contribution to that thinking…

Having heard Cormac talk about communities previously, I was intrigued as to how his ability to inspire an audience would translate to text. This book definitely provides the combination of inspiration and challenge that we’d expect from him. Cormac challenges us to consider our position personally and professionally within society, and even if we think we are attempting to facilitate change alongside communities – are we really doing that? His Seven Habits of Institutional Radicals and Seven Habits of Highly Connected People, help us reflect on how effective we actually are.

There are some fantastic quotes that sum up the dilemmas many of us working in the service sector face. For example, “community building is not simply about referring people to different programs; instead it is about disrupting power within professions and relocating authority to uncredentialled people and their associations”. This is key as the risk is that statutory institutions think they have achieved a relocation of care into the community by purely involving the third sector, however this can be just another tier of institution, and not an ‘associational life’. As Cormac writes ‘social progress is about the expansion of freedom, not the growth of services’.

‘Rekindling Democracy’ addresses some of the challenges of our ageing society, and describes the tendency for institutions to think ‘how are we to reach everybody and ensure that everybody’s needs are met?’. The reality is institutions will never achieve this, we cannot replace the functions of community, however, so much energy and resource is spent on trying to do more rather than do less and shift power.

Cormac talks about cultural atrophy how people lose confidence in their own power as they hand it over to ‘professional helpers’, and how what people used to do for themselves and each other has been ‘outsourced to serviceland’. The answer, Cormac believes is in ‘connections, networks, associations and social movements, and that this can be achieved by redefining institutions and relocating authority to people and associations. In his conclusions, Cormac warns us of progressives, I think many of us will relate examples of ‘top down’ innovations, using all the correct terms such as ‘asset based community development’ but actually delivering an institutionalised model and not embracing the real ethos of the social change that this book describes. It won’t be easy flipping from institutionalising behaviour to deinstitutionalising behaviour across society, but Cormac helps navigate this challenge and introduces a range of examples and authors to guide the way.

I read this book in one sitting, and felt as inspired as I always am with what Cormac has to say. This book will allow me to stay challenged, to reflect, to share and to reposition my thoughts and actions as I continue to strive to do the right thing in the right way. The seven essential functions of a rekindled community, Cormac reminds us cannot be found in the board room, but on our streets