Indignant, fumbling, drawing lots

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Yoram Gat

The WSWS has a critical report about the “indignants” movement in Greece:

Greece: The Syntagma Square movement—no real democracy

It is not easy to report on the “Indignants”, the protesters in Athens’ Syntagma Square. We spent almost an hour trying to find someone responsible who could tell us about the goals and character of the movement, without success.

[…]

There was no one willing to provide information about the objectives and purpose of the movement, and take responsibility for this. This game of hide and seek is not a coincidence. It is justified by reference to the principle of “genuine” or “direct” democracy, according to which the people take decisions directly, without the mediation of political representatives or parties. In fact, it serves to hide the real political objectives of the Indignants.
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Filed under: Athens, Participation, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Participatory Budgeting

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Here’s an example that demonstrates that citizens can effectively grapple with the difficult issue of budgeting. The only piece missing, as far as true ‘government by the people’ is concerned, is that the groups convened to make these decisions should be randomly selected. Otherwise, it is only those who have the time and personal interest who ‘solve’ the community’s issues.

Government can’t solve budget battles? Let citizens do it.

To resolve the budget battles tearing apart Congress and state and local governments, politicians should look to a new model of citizen involvement: participatory budgeting.

Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 13 Comments »

A semi-direct model for a more participative democracy

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Armando Vieira offers a reform program with some of the high-tech participative characteristics offered by Matteo Martini:

Abstract

Here I propose a new political system that will become possible in a society where all its citizens will be connected to the Internet. Its main philosophy is inspired in the free market mechanism, and I will call it semi-direct democracy. The main points of this model are: i) the substitution of political parties by a set of non-profit political organisations specialized to deal with most aspects of the executive and the legislative power; and ii) the introduction of a constant electronic scrutiny by the citizens of the activities of these organisations. The emergence of this system will be enhanced by the increasing need for more representativity and transparency in public affairs, on one hand, and the increasing incapacity of the actual political system to deal with an increasingly complex society, on the other.

Keywords

Semi-direct democracy, e-government, e-democracy.
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Filed under: Participation, Proposals | 14 Comments »

I-Democracy

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In the following post Matteo Martini presents a proposal for government reform. Martini’s criticisms of the electoral system are similar to those made by sortition advocates, but his proposed remedy is different.

A system-nation can be defined as “democratic” if the actions taken within such system-nation are according to the will of the people who are part of such system.

A major problem with current governments, including the so-called “democratic” ones, is that the actions of the government of a nation are not according to the will of the majority of the population of that nation: some of the laws that most of the people would like to see brought forward are not even discussed, while the government passes laws and does things that are not according to the will of the majority of the electorate.
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Filed under: Elections, Participation, Proposals | 49 Comments »

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