Swiss preschoolers line up to cast their ballots in a vote that will shape lives in the make-believe village where they call the shots.
Direct Democracy and Ballot Initiatives articles on Democracy Chronicles
This section has the latest DC news on direct democracy, something akin to a pure democracy, a form of democracy whereby people decide policy initiatives directly as opposed to a representative democracy. Cooperatives (Co-ops), Democratic Workplaces, Collectives, Communes, Intentional Communities, Referendums and Ballot Initiatives are also featured right here until we build more content for this neglected area of democratic experimentation. Also see our section on American democracy and get more info at Voting Methods Central.
Innovative New Book is a User’s Guide to Democracy
Providing solutions to the real problems facing humanity in the world today – solutions that are so practical that they have been tried and tested.
How Swiss Referendums Still Thrive Amid Covid
The worry was that new rules would make life impossible for citizen campaigners, who rely on human contact and rallies to launch initiatives.
Sources of resilience: Democracy ‘contains seeds of its own recovery’
Some have warned that populist drives are likely to cause democracies to die. However, democracy contains the seeds of its own recovery.
How people power builds democratic resilience
A new perspective looks at the role of people activism in shaping democracy. It argues that it plays a key role in building democratic resilience.
Why doesn’t people power work like it used to?
“People power, which democratized countries from South Korea and Poland in the 1980s to Georgia and Ukraine in the 2000s and Tunisia in 2010, has been on a losing streak”, perspective.
Is Direct Democracy the Cure for What Ails the Nation?
Allowing Americans to vote, by referendum, on the biggest issues wouldn’t be legally challenging or risky.
Civil society sources of Ukraine’s resilience
Ukraine is geopolitically sandwiched between European democracy and Russian kleptocracy. Its civil society remains its best chance to fight-off the latter.
The people, not Congress, should vote to impeach or acquit the President
The partisan nature of the impeachment process is the stamp of America’s flawed democracy. The people, not Congress should be the ones to impeach or acquit.
Belgium’s experiment in permanent forms of deliberative democracy
The parliament of the Region of Brussels in Belgium amended its internal regulations to allow the formation of ‘deliberative committees’.