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Ideas |
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| the ‘Age of Consent’ | review of George Monbiot’s book outlining a new to democratise global institutions; issues around implementability, but well worth a read for an understanding of the undemocratic nature of existing institutions |
| Cleisthenes and People-power | first stab at any kind of democracy (although only male – but it was ancient Greece); grand assembly administered by a group elected by lottery |
| Contraction and Convergence | not exactly an idea for a new system, it’s about levelling the global playing field in terms of development, carbon emissions etc. |
| Demarchy | system whereby government members are randomly-selected by lottery (see ‘Sortition’ below) |
| Gaian Democracies | ‘redefining globalisation and people-power’ – see what you think |
| Iroquois Confederacy | decentralised native American political entity developed in response to European colonisation |
| Open Source Governance | advocating the use of open source technology for decisions to be made via collective wisdom |
| Participatory Budgeting | idea for grassroots democracy started in Porto Alegre in Brazil |
| Plato’s philosopher kings | idea for a system where the big decisions are made by philosophers who don’t get paid any money – unfairly seen as a precursor to totalitarianism; would of course include queens today |
| Simultaneous Policy | ‘Simpol offers us a way to take action on global problems; problems individual governments cannot resolve by acting alone.‘ |
| Sortition | idea that involves choosing decision-makers by lottery – either for a set time period, or for specific decisions. Implementability is an issue |
| Ujamaa | development policy that amounted to an entirely new political system in Tanzania in the 1960s and 70s; eventually beaten by the World Bank |
Organisations promoting system change or building alternatives |
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| Mondragon Corporation | replicable system of co-operative business and governance in the Basque Country |
| Smart CSOs Lab | some very interesting documents on their websites, including the failure of most civil society organisations to promote systemic change |
| The Next System | US organisation doing interesting things |
| Yamagishi Association | Japan Times article about an idea for a new system founded in 1951, and based on talking things through in egalitarian communities. (Dave of Lowimpact.org spent a couple of months at a Yamagishi centre, and reports that there really isn’t any ‘brainwashing’) |
