Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which people decide on policy initiatives directly. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are representative democracies. The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic was the core of work of many theorists, philosophers, politicians, and social critics, among whom the most important is Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.D.H. Cole.
Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting, is the primary source of legitimacy for the law.
Participatory democracy or participative democracy emphasizes the broad participation of constituents in the direction and operation of political systems. Etymological roots of democracy imply that the people are in power and thus that all democracies are participatory. However, participatory democracy tends to advocate more involved forms of citizen participation and greater political representation than traditional representative democracy.
E-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. It incorporates 21st-century information and communications technology to promote democracy; such technologies include civic technology and government technology. It is a form of government in which all adult citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development and creation of laws.
Online consultations or e-consultations refer to an exchange between government and citizens using the Internet. They are one form of online deliberation. Further, online consultation consists in using the Internet to ask a group of people their opinion on one or more specific topics, allowing for trade-offs between participants. Generally, an agency consults a group of people to get their thoughts on an issue when a project or a policy is being developed or implemented, e.g. to identify or access options, or to evaluate ongoing activities. This enables governments to draft more citizen-centered policy.
The Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) is a non-profit organization based at Columbia University in the United States.
The National Issues Forums (NIF) is a US-based non partisan, nationwide network of civic, educational, and other organizations and individuals whose common interest is to promote public deliberation in America. NIF sponsors public forums and training institutions for public deliberation." Everyday citizens get to deliberate on various issues through NIF forums. Some of the issues discussed include civil rights, education, energy, government, etc. "Think, Deliberate, Act" is the slogan on the NIF.
Televoting, telephone voting or phone voting is a method of decision making and opinion polling conducted by telephone. Televoting can also extend to voting by SMS text message via a mobile cell phone.
Electronic participation (e-participation) is the term referring to ICT-supported participation in processes involving government and citizens. Processes may concern administration, service delivery, decision making and policy making. E-participation is hence closely related to e-government and e-governance participation. The need for the term has emerged as citizen interests have received less attention than those of the service providers in e-government development. It also emerged as the need to distinguish between the roles of citizen and customer has become more pressing.
Public participation, also known as citizen participation, is the inclusion of the public in the activities of any organization or project. Public participation is similar to but more inclusive than stakeholder engagement.
Governance is a broader concept than government and also includes the roles played by the community sector and the private sector in managing and planning countries, regions and cities. Collaborative governance involves the government, community and private sectors communicating with each other and working together to achieve more than any one sector could achieve on its own. Ansell and Gash (2008) have explored the conditions required for effective collaborative governance. They say “The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach of collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an approach to policy making and public management” Collaborative governance covers both the informal and formal relationships in problem solving and decision-making. Conventional government policy processes can be embedded in wider policy processes by facilitating collaboration between the public, private and community sectors. Collaborative Governance requires three things, namely: support; leadership; and a forum. The support identifies the policy problem to be fixed. The leadership gathers the sectors into a forum. Then, the members of the forum collaborate to develop policies, solutions and answers.
Civic intelligence is an "intelligence" that is devoted to addressing public or civic issues. The term has been applied to individuals and, more commonly, to collective bodies, like organizations, institutions, or societies. Civic intelligence can be used in politics by groups of people who are trying to achieve a common goal. Social movements and political engagement in history might have been partly involved with collective thinking and civic intelligence. Education, in its multiple forms, has helped some countries to increase political awareness and engagement by amplifying the civic intelligence of collaborative groups. Increasingly, artificial intelligence and social media, modern innovations of society, are being used by many political entities and societies to tackle problems in politics, the economy, and society at large.
In governance, sortition is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. Filling individual posts or, more usually in its modern applications, to fill collegiate chambers. The system intends to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It also minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections, by contrast, foster it. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.
Inclusive management is a pattern of practices by public managers that facilitate the inclusion of public employees, experts, the public, and politicians in collaboratively addressing public problems or concerns of public interest.
Liquid democracy is a form of delegative democracy whereby an electorate has the option of vesting voting power in delegates as well as voting directly themselves. Liquid democracy is a broad category of either already-existing or proposed popular-control apparatuses. Voters can either vote directly or delegate their vote to other participants; voters may also select different delegates for different issues. In other words, individual A of a society can delegate their power to another individual B – and withdraw such power again at any time.
Types of democracy refers to pluralism of governing structures such as governments and other constructs like workplaces, families, community associations, and so forth. Types of democracy can cluster around values. For example, some like direct democracy, electronic democracy, participatory democracy, real democracy, deliberative democracy, and pure democracy strive to allow people to participate equally and directly in protest, discussion, decision-making, or other acts of politics. Different types of democracy - like representative democracy - strive for indirect participation as this procedural approach to collective self-governance is still widely considered the only means for the more or less stable democratic functioning of mass societies. Types of democracy can be found across time, space, and language. In the English language the noun "democracy" has been modified by 2,234 adjectives. These adjectival pairings, like atomic democracy or Zulu democracy, act as signal words that point not only to specific meanings of democracy but to groups, or families, of meaning as well.
A citizens' assembly is a body formed from citizens or generally people to deliberate on an issue or issues of local or national or international importance. The membership of a citizens' assembly is randomly selected, as in other forms of sortition. It is a mechanism of participatory action research (PAR) that draws on the symbolism, and some of the practices, of a legal trial by jury. The purpose is to employ a cross-section of the public to study the options available to the state on certain questions and to propose answers to these questions through rational and reasoned discussion and the use of various methods of inquiry such as directly questioning experts. In many cases, the state will require these proposals to be accepted by the general public through a referendum before becoming law.
LiquidFeedback is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants. The software offers much promise but also faces many threats.
The term online deliberation describes the emerging field of practice and research related to the design, implementation and study of deliberative processes that rely on the use of electronic information and communications technologies (ICT).
Patrizia Nanz is a political scientist and an expert for public participation and democratic innovations. She is a professor of transformative sustainability studies at the University of Potsdam, and one of three scientific directors at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS).
