Citizens' Democracy 
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- Description:
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"This paper, presented to Australia’s Citizens’ Parliament, is intended as an overview of ideas and perhaps as a guide to crafting political institutions in which random selection is a core element of the democratic system.
"Citizens’ Democracy, as I define it, is a new democratic paradigm in which random selection replaces elections as the primary source of democratic legitimacy. Elections, however, do remain as an important, albeit secondary, source of democratic legitimacy. The superiority of random selection over elections has very tangible implications.
"To set into place a Citizens’ Democracy, I propose citizen democrats rally around a core strategy: asking existing parties to set up a Citizens’ Assembly on Constitutional Renewal. However, if this fails, more radical steps could be considered. I briefly explore the idea of setting up a totally new type of political party, based on citizens’ democracy ideals, in which candidates are not elected, but rather selected at random, either from amongst the party’s ranks, or even directly amongst the citizenry. Also, another more radical step would be to propose directly setting up a permanent Constitutional Assembly, instead of an ad hoc Citizens’ Assembly on Constitutional Renewal. Such an avenue for change would probably require a citizens’ democracy party."
- Submitted On:
- 12 Jan 2009
- Submitted By:
- Ron Lubensky (rlubensky)
- File Date:
- 12 Jan 2009
- File Author:
- David Poulin-Litvak
- File Size:
- 474kb
- File Type:
- Downloads:
- 125
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Total Votes:1 - Comments:
- Rosemary Peterson 2009-01-17 11:58:08 I am about to read the first 14 pages, R.
- Gregory Horne 2009-01-17 15:20:36
