Successful participatory democracy experiment is actually quite boring

Successful participatory democracy experiment is actually quite boring

A common first reaction to the idea of more participative democracy is that dangerous and radical things will happen – ie the “we’ll bring back hanging” cliché.
So it is that I love this finding an experiment by our friends at Loomio reported on Civicist.

At the end of the four weeks, after five discussions consisting of 205 comments by the participants, three priorities for supporting agriculture and public green spaces in their community were submitted to the City Council. Jeff Swift says he was at first disappointed in these policy particular recommendations because it turns out that these initiatives were already on the City Council’s agenda in some form.

“I would have wanted something exciting,” Swift tells Civicist.

Ed Dowding

Technologist and entrepreneur, Ed specialises in social collaboration systems. His work has included building risk analysis services for the insurance industry, and from 2005 to 2010 he developed an SMS alert system which quickly grew into a full emergency management service for London local authorities and blue-lights.

No Comments

Post a Comment

Comment
Name
Email
Website