From Participatory Democracy to Digital Democracy

When Does Participatory Democracy Deepen the Quality of Democracy?

Inclusive Democracy and Participatory Economics

Although Michael Albert is well aware of the existence of the Inclusive Democracy (ID) project, still, in his new book Parecon, Life After Capitalism he prefers to ignore its existence and follows the trouble-free path to compare Parecon with the disastrous central planning system and the narrowly ecological bio-regionalism, (or, elsewhere, with social ecology’s libertarian municipalism, which,...

Participatory democracy in social movements

Participatory democracy refers to an organizational form in which decision making is decentralized, nonhierarchical, and consensus oriented. It can be contrasted with bureaucracy, in which decision making is centralized, hierarchical, and based on a formal division of labor, as well as with majority vote. Participatory democratic organizations have been a prominent feature of many progressive m...

From Managed Democracy to Sovereign Democracy

The first year of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s second term has been disastrous. A series of crises has occurred, from the assassination of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov in Grozny in May 2004, to the widespread demonstrations against the government’s seriously flawed attempt to replace social and other benefits with cash payments. Fighters staged raids in Grozny and Ingushetia, the gove...

From “Democracy” to Dictatorship

This essay describes how a " democratic " voting can give a dictatorial outcome. In essence, choosing representatives in political systems could be understand as a coarse-graining process or decimation of opinions. Therefore, ideas and techniques from real-space renormalisation group can be used. This is a good example of the application of statistical physics to politics.