Can a small citizen deliberation have more impact than a giant one?
Among the many trends I see in my work on democratic innovation I highlight two here, one in Canada, one in the …
How to scale up conversations to embrace millions (Collective Coherence Part Three)
We know we can scale up democratic exercises like voting to embrace thousands or millions of people. But what about scaling up …
vTaiwan (Part 5) – Lessons for Government-Engaged Popular Deliberation
How could we generate vTaiwan-like citizen- and stakeholder-engaged government elsewhere? In this post I explore the nature of government engagement with participatory …
vTaiwan – A Glimpse of Open Source Open Space Government (Part 1)
Here’s a fascinating introduction to one of the most remarkably co-intelligent experiments in governance happening on the planet today. More to follow…. …
The wisdom of the fringes?
Counterintuitively, the highest evolutionary wisdom lies on the fringes of business as usual. The fringes are fringes because they are different, dissident, …
Using a few million dollars to transform American political culture
What high-leverage initiatives can we imagine that could embed wisdom-producing dialogue and deliberation – among citizens, stakeholders, and/or public officials – deeply …
A wisdom-generating deliberative democracy game app?
Most virtual forms of democracy that involve discussion, debate, networking and/or voting may facilitate individual voter expression and learning, but are not …
January opportunity #1: Can Conversations on Crises Change Civilization?
Powerful conversations have a track record of impacting individuals and systems in significant ways. Thus, for many of us who practice and …
Randomly selected legislators? You’ve got to be kidding!
It’s easy to dismiss the idea of a randomly selected legislature. After all, how could a bunch of ordinary people create workable, …
Bias warps reason. Does deliberation ameliorate that?
Research shows that individuals bend facts and math to align with their existing views. But does this happen when they’re in high …