Democracy Reinvented

Democracy Reinvented

Author: Hollie Russon Gilman

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 081572683X

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Participatory Budgeting—the experiment in democracy that could redefine how public budgets are decided in the United States. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called "revolutionary civics in action" by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds. Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, indepth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance. While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Reinvesting in Democracy also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.


Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance

Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance

Author: Stephen Elstub

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2019-12-27

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 1786433869

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Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.


Innovating Democracy

Innovating Democracy

Author: Robert E. Goodin

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-07-10

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0191563307

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In recent years democratic theory has taken a deliberative turn. Instead of merely casting the occasional ballot, deliberative democrats want citizens to reason together. They embrace 'talk as a decision procedure'. But of course thousands or millions of people cannot realistically talk to one another all at once. When putting their theories into practice, deliberative democrats therefore tend to focus on 'mini-publics', usually of a couple dozen to a couple hundred people. The central question then is how to connect micro-deliberations in mini-publics to the political decision-making processes of the larger society. In Innovating Democracy, Robert Goodin surveys these new deliberative mechanisms, asking how they work and what we can properly expect of them. Much though they have to offer, they cannot deliver all that deliberative democrats hope. Talk, Goodin concludes, is good as discovery procedure but not as a decision procedure. His slogan is, 'First talk, then vote'. Micro-deliberative mechanisms should supplement, not supplant, representative democracy. Goodin goes on to show how to adapt our thinking about those familiar institutions to take full advantage of deliberative inputs. That involves rethinking who should get a say, how we hold people accountable, how we sequence deliberative moments and what the roles of parties and legislatures can be in that. Revisioning macro-democratic processes in light of the processes and promise of micro-deliberation, Innovating Democracy provides an integrated perspective on democratic theory and practice after the deliberative turn.


Global Quality of Democracy as Innovation Enabler

Global Quality of Democracy as Innovation Enabler

Author: DAVID F J. CAMPBELL

Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan

Published: 2019-11-22

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9783030102210

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This book assesses the interconnectedness of democracy and economic development. It concentrates on how to conceptualize and to measure democracy and quality of democracy in global comparison. The author makes the argument that a quality-of-democracy understanding based on sustainable development relates crucially with economic growth, but more so with economic development. The empirical macro-model focuses on approximately over hundred countries (in a world model) and covers about a fourteen-year period of 2002-2015, identifying the following basic dimensions as being relevant for further analysis: freedom, equality, control, sustainable development, and self-organization (political self-organization). Readers will appreciate the global perspective the work offers.


Innovating Democracy?

Innovating Democracy?

Author: Thamy Pogrebinschi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-03-31

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1108587208

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Since democratization, Latin America has experienced a surge in new forms of citizen participation. Yet there is still little comparative knowledge on these so-called democratic innovations. This Element seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on a new dataset with 3,744 cases from 18 countries between 1990 and 2020, it presents the first large-N cross-country study of democratic innovations to date. It also introduces a typology of twenty kinds of democratic innovations, which are based on four means of participation, namely deliberation, citizen representation, digital engagement, and direct voting. Adopting a pragmatist, problem-driven approach, this Element claims that democratic innovations seek to enhance democracy by addressing public problems through combinations of those four means of participation in pursuit of one or more of five ends of innovations, namely accountability, responsiveness, rule of law, social equality, and political inclusion.


Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions Catching the Deliberative Wave

Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions Catching the Deliberative Wave

Author: OECD

Publisher: OECD Publishing

Published: 2020-06-10

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9264725903

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Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.


The Politics Industry

The Politics Industry

Author: Katherine M. Gehl

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1633699242

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Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.


Democracy and Knowledge

Democracy and Knowledge

Author: Josiah Ober

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1400828805

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When does democracy work well, and why? Is democracy the best form of government? These questions are of supreme importance today as the United States seeks to promote its democratic values abroad. Democracy and Knowledge is the first book to look to ancient Athens to explain how and why directly democratic government by the people produces wealth, power, and security. Combining a history of Athens with contemporary theories of collective action and rational choice developed by economists and political scientists, Josiah Ober examines Athenian democracy's unique contribution to the ancient Greek city-state's remarkable success, and demonstrates the valuable lessons Athenian political practices hold for us today. He argues that the key to Athens's success lay in how the city-state managed and organized the aggregation and distribution of knowledge among its citizens. Ober explores the institutional contexts of democratic knowledge management, including the use of social networks for collecting information, publicity for building common knowledge, and open access for lowering transaction costs. He explains why a government's attempt to dam the flow of information makes democracy stumble. Democratic participation and deliberation consume state resources and social energy. Yet as Ober shows, the benefits of a well-designed democracy far outweigh its costs. Understanding how democracy can lead to prosperity and security is among the most pressing political challenges of modern times. Democracy and Knowledge reveals how ancient Greek politics can help us transcend the democratic dilemmas that confront the world today.


Democratic Innovations

Democratic Innovations

Author: Graham Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-07-02

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0521514770

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This book examines democratic innovations from around the world, drawing lessons for the future development of both democratic theory and practice.


Making Futures

Making Futures

Author: Pelle Ehn

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-10-31

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0262027933

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This book describes experiments in innovation, design, and democracy, undertaken largely by grassroots organizations, non-governmental organizations, and multi-ethnic working-class neighborhoods. These stories challenge the dominant perception of what constitutes successful innovations. They recount efforts at social innovation, opening the production process, challenging the creative class, and expanding the public sphere. The cases considered include a collective of immigrant women who perform collaborative services, the development of an open-hardware movement, grassroots journalism, and hip-hop performances on city buses. They point to the possibility of democratized innovation that goes beyond solo entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing in the service of corporations to include multiple futures imagined and made locally by often-marginalized publics.