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Associative Principles and Democratic Reform 19

economic writings developed ideas that were practical in the con-text of the relatively decentralized and artisan-based economy of mid-nineteenth cen tury France. Many associationalists did seek to replace entirely representative democracy with a new functional democracy, and also to replace the market-based economy with a socialist system of a non-collectivistic type. I shall argue that neither of these aims is sustainable. Modem associative democracy can only be a morę or less extensive supplement to liberał representative democracy, it cannot seek to abolish the individual right to vote on a territorial basis, nor to abolish the State as a public power that attempts to protect the rights of individual citizens and associations. In that sense associationalism extends and enhances liberalism and does not seek to supersede it. Like-wise, the introduction of associative forms of govemance of the economy and associational forms of welfare provision are de-signed neither to supplant a market-based economy nor to reduce levels of publicly-funded welfare. On the contrary, associative economic govemance is conceived as extending those forms of social embeddedness of markets that enable market economies to work better, and associative welfare is designed to extend in-dividual control and choice, which collectivistic Systems fail to do, whilst offering extensive and primarily publicly-funded services.

Associative democracy is deceptively simple in its most basie political claims. These can be stated briefly as follows. Associationalism makes a central normative claim, that individual liberty and human welfare are both best served when as many of the affairs of society as possible are managed by voluntary and demo-cratically self-goveming associations. Associationalism seeks to square the aims of freedom for the individual in pursuing his or her chosen goals with the effective govemance of social affairs. Individualism is rejected because associationalists argue that in a purely competitive market society many people will lack the resources to achieve their objectives, they will not have the freedom denoted by the capacity to control their affairs, and in consequence many of the dimensions of social life will be ill-govemed. Whilst associationalism gives priority to freedom in its scalę of values and defines freedom as the ability of individuals to pursue their chosen purposes, it contends that freedom can only be pursued effectively by the majority of persons if they are both enabled and supported by society in joining with their fellows in