NEWSLETTER: Local Is Not a Level; Growing Grätzloasen; Democracy Camping

Also: Pati's Revolt, Irish Parks, Taiwan's AI

Welcome to the monthly newsletter of Democracy Local, a planetary publication of stories, ideas, data, scholarship, and events about everyday people governing themselves.

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LOCAL IS A SCALE, NOT A LEVEL

Stop talking about the “local level.”

When local becomes a level of government, it’s almost always the lowest level. And that’s terrible for local communities and the whole world.

Why? Because when it comes to governance, local is often the only game in town.

Around the world, national governments are failing to address planetary problems (climate, epidemics, etc.), as well as their own national responsibilities. Instead, they are consumed by polarization, politics and battles for control.

With national governments failing to govern, the work of solving problems—be they planetary or national—is falling to lower levels of government. Especially local governments, the most common kind of government on earth.

Put simply, as politics thus becomes nationalized, governance is localized.

What this means is that, in governance, the local can no longer be thought of as the lowest level, or a level at all. It’s the only game in town, and on earth.

So what is local if not a level?

It’s a scale.

Local governments now have to solve planetary and national problems at local scale.

But that’s not all. Local governments are working together—and must do more to solve these bigger problems at national and even planetary scale.

In other words, every local government is—or must become—a planetary government.

So, scale up.

EVACUATING A POSSIBLE TSUNAMI ON TWO CONTINENTS

by Joe Mathews

All global emergencies are local.

Sometimes, as I recently learned, doubly so.

The South Pasadena Pride, a 14-and-under youth baseball team, had taken the lead with a four-run rally in the second inning, and, with no outs and two men on, was threatening to blow open the game when my son stepped up to the plate.

Then a siren rang out—too loud to ignore.

Our players, our parents, our coach, and I (the team organizer-manager) were unsure what it meant and what exactly we were supposed to do.

We didn’t want to stop the baseball. We had traveled 6,500 miles from Southern California to the small town of Kunigami, on the west coast of Okinawa, to play against local teams on the Japanese island. The trip was spurred by two of our former players, whose families had moved back to Japan (one to Tokyo, the other to Okinawa) in recent years.

Much to our team’s delight, that day we were playing at Kaigin Stadium, which is the spring training home of the Nippon Ham-Fighters, the Japanese major league team for which Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani played. This was our first of three games scheduled for the afternoon. It would be our last time ever playing with our Okinawa-based teammate, a pitcher, who was scheduled to take the mound later in the game.

But with the siren, the umpire stopped play, stalling our momentum. After a few minutes of standing around, we returned to our dugout to escape the oppressive heat and humidity before our Japanese-speaking parents gave us the news:

A tsunami warning had gone out for the entire island of Okinawa, triggered by a massive earthquake in the Western Pacific off the coast of Russia’s far east.

The tsunami warning system went global after the 2004 tsunami that decimated oceanfront communities across the Indian Ocean. The Pacific Tsunami Warning System is its centerpiece.

It’s a combination of two networks. One consists of seismic stations, DART (deep ocean) buoys, and coastal tidal gauges to detect possible tsunamis. The other is a warning and emergency response network that is supposed to reach every Pacific coastal community. For both systems to be successful requires not just skilled local governments, but the participation of people all over the world.

Minutes after the siren stopped our game, loudspeakers in the surrounding neighborhood issued a detailed warning in Japanese. I learned later that they’d been installed as part of Japan’s national J-Alert system, which sends warnings to neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals all across the country.

We huddled with our opponents, from a small coastal town called Motobu, whose phones were also starting to ring with J-Alert tsunami warnings.

Then my phone went off too. But the emergency alert on it was not for Kunigami or Okinawa. As your columnist, I’m signed up for emergency alerts around the state, and Santa Barbara County emergency services was advising me to seek higher ground, away from the coast. A couple minutes later, my home county, Los Angeles, sent a similar warning. The phones of our parents and some players buzzed with the same text.

Read the rest here.

BUILD YOUR OWN URBAN PARK

Vienna is seeing a surge in low-cost, volunteer-built urbank parklets known as “Grätzloasen.” The Guardian explains how this old idea is winning new converts, not so much for the greenery but for the community they build.

READINGS

Does Democracy Really Make the World More Peaceful?– SwissInfo deconstructs a myth, and notes the danger of regimes in “the middle” between democracy and autocracy.

Are Youth Going Far-Right?– The Carnegie Endowment asked 12 young researchers in its youth and democracy project to write about the far-right in their countries and communities. Their pieces are worth a read.

The World Needs Global Diplomacy and Local Bargaining– It’s worth spending time with David Van Reybrouck’s 7,300-word essay outlining just how bad national governments and commercial interests are at the deal-making the world needs. The playwright and poet, author of Against Elections: The Case for Democracy and Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World (2024), then presents solution: a new system of global diplomacy that would bring in strong local entities as negotiators. He would do that in part through a global citizens assembly, tied to the COP 30 process.

WHO WILL GOVERN YOUR UTOPIA? GOVERNANCE IN YOUR UTOPIA?

Governments, rich people, and institutions around the world are offering visions—and even building—showcase utopian cities. Their proposals are full of goodies—100-mile-long skyscrapers, new capitals on a Borneo cliff, sustainable manufacturing suburbs—but omit one crucial detail.

Plans for local self-government.

Here’s more from a Democracy Local column.

ASIA DEMOCRACY CHRONICLES

Our partners at Asia Democracy Chronicles continue to produce outstanding analysis and reported essays. Here are a couple of highlights.

Education as a Weapon of War: In Myanmar communities, schools and teachers have become targets.

Life in the Rubble. A look back, and forward, at one of Bangladesh’s worst disasters.

INDONESIA WATCH

As the national government seeks to re-assert top-down control over Indonesia’s powerful local governments, the people are rebelling.

In Pati, in central Java, a newly elected regent found himself facing protests, riots, and resignation after pursuing a 250 percent increase in the land and building tax. The Jakarta Post story is worth your time.

WORTH WATCHING

Via Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger’s Possible, here is a terrific interview about how Taiwan’s democracy—and the role of AI in its future.

Future Local Lab has produced its first documentary, on the remaking of Croke Park in Dublin, to accommodate an aging population.

CALENDAR

September 3-7, Vienna and Linz, Austria. “Democracy Camp,” a five-day intercultural exchange of 65 young people from across Europe to explore democracy, media, inclusion and civic participation.

September 9, Cologne, Germany. “Democracy Unboxed.” Registration is mandatory.

October 1-6, Youth Bridges Europe—Bosnia. An international youth exchange bringing together 60 young people (ages 16–27) from Germany, France, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to explore how democracy, conflict, reconciliation, and memory shape Europe today.

October 7-9, Open Government Partnership Global Summit, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country.

October 16-18, World Council, United Cities and Local Governments. Xi’an, China.

October 13-19, Eisenach, Germany, for the 3rd annual Forum of the Student Network on Future Democracy (SNFD)

COLUMNS FROM CALIFORNIA

Democracy Local’s Joe Mathews on why Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gerrymandering gambit won’t work, how Donald Trump’s opposition might save high-speed rail, and why L.A. should abandon the 2028 Olympics.

NEW BOOK FROM DEMOCRACY LOCAL

Now on sale is the first book from Democracy Local’s publishing house, Ostrich Farm Press. It’s called “U.S. vs Us: Essays from California as It Fights—And Leaves—America.”

It’s available worldwide.

DEMOCRACY TYPE OF THE MONTH: MILITANT

Militant democracy, the controversial idea that democracies must use illiberal means to defend democracy. As Karl Loewenstein, who coined the term in the 1930s, explained:

"If democracy is convinced that it has not yet fulfilled its destination, it must fight on its own plane a technique which serves only the purpose of power. Democracy must become militant.”

DEMOCRACY QUOTE OF THE SUMMER