Digital Deliberative Spaces, Infrastructure, & Methods
This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology programme at Newspeak House, open to faculty, fellows, and fellowship candidates only.
People collectively thinking, discussing, and deciding what they think about an issue is an important aspect of quasidemocratic polities. Ideally, deliberation enables peaceful synthesis of conflicting preferences and needs. Local assemblies are a simple yet dangerous tool to do this. They are simple because it's just people gathering; they are dangerous because unless there is appropriate structure to them, chaos is likely.
Things we'll talk about that exist online:
Polis by The Computational Democracy Project
Community Notes by Twitter
vTaiwan's open consultation platform
Books:
Open Democracy, Hélène Landemore, 2020
When the People Speak, James S. Fishkin, 2011
Against Elections, David Van Reybrouck, 2016
Other books:
Against Democracy, Jason Brennan, 2016
The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan, 2007
Finally, there are a number of organisations in the UK (and outside / global) that work in the field of citizen assemblies and participatory democracy:
Involve
Shared Future
Sortition Foundation / 858.org.uk
House of the People / timetoassemble.org