Participatory democracy, participant democracy, participative democracy, or semi-direct democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected representatives. Elements of direct and representative democracy are combined in this model.
Citizen participation or public participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions—and ideally exert influence—regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision-making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including economic, political, management, cultural or familial.
E-democracy, also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clit. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process.
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a type of citizen sourcing in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget through a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making. Participatory budgeting allows citizens or residents of a locality to identify, discuss, and prioritize public spending projects, and gives them the power to make real decisions about how money is spent.
Participatory management is the practice of empowering members of a group, such as employees of a company or citizens of a community, to participate in organizational decision making. It is used as an alternative to traditional vertical management structures, which has shown to be less effective as participants are growing less interested in their leader's expectations due to a lack of recognition of the participant's effort or opinion.
Citizen media is content produced by private citizens who are not professional journalists. Citizen journalism, participatory media and democratic media are related principles.
Electronic participation (e-participation) refers to the use of ICT in facilitating citizen participation in government-related processes, encompassing areas such as administration, service delivery, decision-making, and policy-making. As such, e-participation shares close ties with e-government and e-governance participation. The term's emergence aligns with the digitization of citizen interests and interactions with political service providers, primarily due to the proliferation of e-government.
Participatory planning is an urban planning paradigm that seeks to involve the community of an area in the urban planning of that area. It's a way for communities to work together to identify and address problems and to create a plan to achieve a desired socio-economic goal. Participatory planning emerged in response to the centralized and rationalistic approaches that defined early urban planning work.
E-petitioner is an online petition system developed in Scotland, characterised by its integration into the processes of representative democracy. It allows citizens to raise and sign a petition, read background information on the issue, and add comments to an online forum associated with each petition.
The Free Culture Forum (FCForum) was an international meeting of relevant organisations and individuals involved in free culture, digital rights and access to knowledge. It took place in Barcelona every annually from 2009 to 2015, jointly with the oXcars, a free culture festival. The oXcars are a non-competitive awards ceremony held at Sala Apolo in Barcelona, Spain, in October each year. They are a public showcase that puts the spotlight on cultural creation and distribution carried out under the paradigms of shared culture. Through presentations and symbolic mentions of works in a series of categories, real legal situations involving free culture are shown using parody.
Telematics Freedom Foundation is a non-profit organization which aims to bring citizens, in the age of telematics, Internet, mobile phones and the web, all those freedoms and rights that the Free Software Movement has already brought to PC users worldwide.
Collaborative e-democracy refers to a hybrid democratic model combining elements of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy. This concept, first introduced at international academic conferences in 2009, offers a pathway for citizens to directly or indirectly engage in policymaking. Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn describe it as an "innovative way to engage citizens in the democratic process," that potentially makes government "more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the people."
Simona Levi is a theatre director, playwright, activist, technopolitical strategist, cultural manager and curator, and lecturer. Born in Italy and with Spanish nationality, she has been living in Barcelona, Spain, since 1990. She is an activist in the field of freedom of expression and information, digital rights, the free flow of culture and knowledge, strategic use of digital tools for collective action, institutional accountability, protection of whistleblowers and the fight against corruption and disinformation. She has also participated in movements in defence of the right to housing and use of public space.
LiquidFeedback is free software for political opinion formation and decision making. The software incorporates insights from social choice theory in order to aggregate opinions more effectively.
The Major Cities of Europe IT Users Group is an independent association of chief information officers, IT managers and department heads of cities. The group was founded in 1982 as a result of an initiative by the Greater London Council. Since then it has focused on innovation in cities, driven by information and communications technology.
Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.
The X Party is a political party officially registered with the Spanish Ministry of Interior. The X Party registered towards the end of 2012, and appeared publicly at the beginning of 2013. It was the first party to be founded by a group of people connected to the 15M movement and other free-culture movements. The party supports a model of democracy that is participatory and monitored by everyday citizens, taking advantage of the political potential of tools available for digital communication.
The anti-austerity movement in Spain, also referred to as the 15-M Movement, and the Indignados Movement, was a series of protests, demonstrations, and occupations against austerity policies in Spain that began around the local and regional elections of 2011 and 2012. Beginning on 15 May 2011, many of the subsequent demonstrations spread through various social networks such as Real Democracy NOW and Youth Without a Future.
As of 2015, over 1,500 instances of participatory budgeting (PB) have been implemented across the five continents. While the democratic spirit of PB remains the same throughout the world, institutional variations abound.
Electronic voting in Switzerland started in 2003 in the canton of Geneva, where the residents of Anières cast their vote using the Internet. This was the first trial of e-voting in Switzerland. In the following years, the number of people able to use electronic voting grew as more and more cantons began adopting such a system.
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