Debates about the quality of local democracy are not new. This was also the case 100 years ago. In 1918 the ground-breaking dissertation of Adriaan Buriks on democratic municipal government was published in the Netherlands. In his dissertation Buriks proposed a radical democratic reform of Dutch municipal government by adopting the new system of ‘commission government’ from the US. That is a system of city government in which (almost) all city authority functions are concentrated in a small commission. The commission is organized in such a way that each member of the commission is the head of a city government department, every member is chosen by the population of the whole city and the exercise of authority is controlled by the whole population. The essay describes the remarkable life of this social revolutionary and municipal law expert. It goes on to discusses the dissertation through an introduction on the central issue of democratic municipal government, a description of the government systems of the US before and after the American Revolution of 1787, a description of the new system of ‘commission government’ and his proposal to adopt the new system in the Netherlands. The essay is closed by the author’s reflection on how the dissertation was received and its impact.

Democracy means the voice of the people. Democratic renewal means that the voice of the people is not static. Look at ostracism among the Ancient Greeks: could one imagine that it would not exist forever? Still the voice of the people, men and women, would sound different and clearer than it would if it were based on ostracism. Over the centuries change always appears to be the constant, also in democracy, for example in the democratic renewal we have been calling ‘citizen participation’. Bottom-up citizen participation originated in the 1980s, mostly in urban renewal, and was legitimized top-down in 1993 in the Dutch parliament through the Willems motion. During the past decade increasingly more instruments for citizen participation have been developed from the bottom up. This development aims for self-management, with instruments like neighbourhood rights and the right to challenge. It goes down in history under the name of ‘localism’. In this essay the author is looking for localism on the special Scottish island Gigha, which is part of the Argyll and Bute Council.

Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

This essay describes how municipal councillors can make the difference in the multiple democracy, in which forms of representative and participative democracy touch upon each other. The essay has three parts. The first part addresses the questions: what do you make politics of, and how do you fill in your role as municipal councillor in this multiple democracy? The second part is about the question: where to steer and control in the local interplay? The final part of the essay discusses what forms there are and at what moments they can be used. The key argument of the authors is that municipal councillors can make the difference by: (a) working on social assignments and connecting to these social assignments the administrative and organizational assignment by setting priorities; (b) being responsible for the whole system (for the community and for the municipality); (c) steering on a democratic process on the basis of clear criteria; (d) ensuring appropriate forms per assignment and per policy phase; and (e) thereby also supervising implementation and management.