Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. 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 are 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. Deliberative democracy seeks quality over quantity by limiting decision-makers to a smaller but more representative sample of the population that is given the time and resources to focus on one issue.
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative 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.
Dublin City University is a university based on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland. Created as the National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin in 1975, it enrolled its first students in 1980, and was elevated to university status in September 1989 by statute.
The Irish Research Council was launched in 2012 and operates under the aegis of the Department of Education. The core function of the organisation is to support research across a number of disciplines and career stages. The council also has a role in supporting research with a "societal focus", and has established partnerships across government and civic society to this end.
The Constitution Unit is an independent and non-partisan research centre based within the Department of Political Science at University College London. It analyses constitutional change and its effects. The unit was founded in 1995 by Robert Hazell and specialises in the study of parliament and parliamentary reform; elections and referendums; monarchy, church and state; devolution; constitution-making; freedom of information legislation; courts and the legal system; and the relationship between the UK and EU.
Tia Emmetine Keyes is a professor of physical chemistry at the School of Chemical Sciences, and a member of the National Centre for Sensor Research at Dublin City University.
Alan Farrell is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Fingal constituency since 2016, and previously from 2011 to 2016 for the Dublin North constituency. He previously served as Chair of the Committee on Children and Youth Affairs from 2016 to 2020.
A citizens' assembly is a group of people selected by lottery from the general population to deliberate on important public questions so as to exert an influence. Other names and variations include citizens' jury, citizens' panel, people's panel, mini-publics,people's jury, policy jury, citizens' initiative review, consensus conference and citizens' convention.
The Convention on the Constitution was established in Ireland in 2012 to discuss proposed amendments to the Constitution of Ireland. More commonly called simply the Constitutional Convention, it met for the first time 1 December 2012 and sat until 31 March 2014. It had 100 members: a chairman; 29 members of the Oireachtas (parliament); four representatives of Northern Ireland political parties; and 66 randomly selected citizens of Ireland.
James O'Higgins Norman PC, MStJ, FRSA holds the UNESCO Chair on Tackling Bullying in Schools and Cyberspace at Dublin City University. He is the director of the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre, and a member of the Government of Ireland Advisory Council on Online Safety.
David M. Farrell is a political scientist. He was appointed to the Chair of Politics at University College Dublin in 2009, having returned to Ireland after two decades working at the University of Manchester, where from 2006-09 he was Head of the School of Social Sciences. A specialist in the study of electoral systems, elections and parties, he has published 15 books and over 90 articles and book chapters. His most recent books include: Political Parties and Democratic Linkage (2011), which was awarded the GESIS Klingemann Prize for the Best Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Scholarship, and Electoral Systems. He is the founding co-editor of Party Politics, the President of the Political Studies Association of Ireland and the Speaker of the Council of the European Consortium for Political Research. In 2013 he was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. In March 2019 he and Dr Jane Suiter were awarded the Brown Democracy Medal for the Irish Citizens' Assembly Project.
Shelley McNamara is an Irish architect and academic. She attended University College Dublin and graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Architecture. She founded Grafton Architects with Yvonne Farrell in 1978. Grafton rose to prominence in the early 2010s, specialising in stark, weighty but spacious buildings for higher education. McNamara has taught architecture at University College Dublin since 1976 and at several other universities.
Thomas Martin Clonan is an Irish senator, security analyst, author and retired Irish Army Captain. He was elected to Seanad Eireann in March 2022 in the 2022 Dublin University by-election.
The Citizens' Assembly is a citizens' assembly established in Ireland in 2016 to consider several political questions including the Constitution of Ireland. Questions considered include: abortion, fixed term parliaments, referendums, population ageing, and climate change. Over 18 months a report is produced on each topic. The government is required to respond officially to the reports in the Oireachtas (parliament); as of 9 April 2019 responses have been given on three of the five topics.
Lindsay Peat is an Ireland women's rugby union international. Peat represented Ireland at the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup. Peat is an all-round sportswoman. In addition to representing Ireland at women's rugby union, she has also played for the Republic of Ireland women's national association football team at U-18 level, captained the Ireland women's national basketball team and played senior Ladies' Gaelic football for Dublin. Between 2009 and 2014 she played in three All-Ireland finals. She was a member of the Dublin team that won the All-Ireland title in 2010 and she scored two goals in the 2014 final.
Jane Ohlmeyer,, is a historian and academic, specialising in early modern Irish and British history. She is the Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin and Chair of the Irish Research Council, which funds frontier research across all disciplines.
The Citizens Convention for Climate is a citizens' assembly held in 2019 and 2020 which discussed reducing France's carbon emissions by 40% from its 1990 levels in a spirit of social justice. It was initiated in response to the Yellow Vest protests to the fuel tax. The convention was modeled after a number of other deliberative experiments known as mini-publics. The members of the convention were 150 randomly selected citizens designed to be representative of the French public across six demographic dimensions: gender, age, socio-economic background, education level, location type, and province. The convention was assisted by a number of committees including the governance committee, a team of experts who provided organizational guidance and assistance, a guarantor college, which maintained the convention's independence, and a legal board. The members themselves divided into working groups on five issues within the topic of climate change: food, housing, employment, transportation, and consumption.
Annie Hoey is an Irish Labour Party politician who has served as a Senator for the Agricultural Panel since April 2020.
Oral democracy is a talk-based form of government and political system in which citizens of a determined community have the opportunity to deliberate, through direct oral engagement and mass participation, in the civic and political matters of their community. Additionally, oral democracy represents a form of direct democracy, which has the purpose of empowering citizens by creating open spaces that promote an organized process of discussion, debate, and dialogue that aims to reach consensus and to impact policy decision-making. Political institutions based on this idea of direct democracy seek to decrease the possibilities of state capture from elites by holding them accountable, to encourage civic participation and collective action, and to improve the efficiency and adaptability of development interventions and public policy implementation.
