ABSTRACT
The participatory vision seeks to extend the mode of friendship to larger groups, and beyond voluntary associations to decision making on the job and in the neighborhood. Aristotle wrote that "friendship appears to hold city-states together." Friendship also appears to hold participatory democracies together—at least until they evolve into polities that only aggregate and protect individual interests. Natural friendships are built on equality of respect. In would-be friendships, like Vietnam Summer, members use political equality to strengthen their commitment to each others' equal worth. If the goal of a more participatory society is to provide its members with a context of equal respect, direct control over events that affect them and the opportunity for self-development, it must be based on groups small enough to work as friendships. While members of large participatory democracies use participatory procedures to protect themselves from coercion, their more deeply held goal is a society in which coercion will seem nonexistent—a friendship.
