I. Geneva Roots of Direct Democracy
II. Swiss Roots of Direct Democracy
III. Direct Democracy Global Network
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines democratic forms of government as follows:
“Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” . . . generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.”
In contrast to this lofty ideal, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance based in Stockholm, Sweden reports the following:
"Half of democratic governments around the world are in decline, undermined by problems ranging from restrictions on freedom of expression to distrust in the legitimacy of elections."
"The number of backsliding countries—those with the most severe democratic erosion—is at its peak and includes the established democracy of the United States, which still faces problems of political polarization, institutional disfunction, and threats to civil liberties. Globally, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy."
"Global democracy’s decline includes undermining of credible elections results, restrictions on online freedoms and rights, youth disillusionment with political parties as well as out-of-touch leaders, intractable corruption, and the rise of extreme right parties that has polarized politics."
"The Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD) show that authoritarian regimes have deepened their repression, with 2021 being the worst year on record. More than two-thirds of the world’s population now live in backsliding democracies or authoritarian and hybrid regimes."
"In Europe, almost half of all democracies—a total of 17 countries-- have suffered erosion in the last five years. These declines affect 46 per cent of the high-performing democracies."
"Authoritarianism continues to deepen. Almost half of all authoritarian regimes have worsened."
"Democracy does not appear to be evolving in a way that reflects quickly changing needs and priorities. There is little improvement, even in democracies that are performing at mid-range or high levels."
The Direct Democracy Global Network, modeled after Switzerland's renowned direct democracy government, is designed to empower voters worldwide to use expanded direct democracy tools to reverse the global weakening of democratic processes, institutions, and governments.
The historic Swiss roots of this model are described below. A Voter Guide to the Direct Democracy Network is accessible here.
I. The Geneva Roots of Direct Democracy: A Leap across Centuries
Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753
What is most remarkable about Rousseau is his forthright articulation of the principle that citizens and voters control governmental decision-making and implementation. He asserted that every individual is born with inherent birth rights that cannot be transferred or abrogated.
The inherent rights of citizens include the non-transferable right to determine "the general will" in "assemblies" in which they participate and control. While they can assign "magistrate" roles to bodies that transform the decisions into laws, these roles are perfunctory and logistical only.
These views diverge from what is occurring in traditionally democratic forms of representative government in the 21st century. Critics claim they have been altered to transfer to lawmakers and governments prerogatives that belong to voters.
Rousseau foresaw this writing on the wall when he advocated the adoption of the direct democracy practices emerging in the regions that coalesced to form the Swiss Confederation. They include the rights of citizens at the grassroots to conduct initiatives and referendums that were binding on lawmakers.
The Direct Democracy Global Network is designed to provide voters worldwide the direct democracy tools and services needed to create the decentralized "assemblies" recommended by Rousseau. Modern digital technologies make it possible for them to function democratically at be interconnected across election districts. These assemblies can function simultaneously at local, regional, and cross-national levels. By reaching out to build consensus across partisan lines, they can acquire sufficient voting strength to elect lawmakers of their choice. They can address any demands, crises, and emergencies they wish, and formulate any policies and laws they desire.
So where did these unique advances in political thinking originate? Key sources of modern democratic principles and doctrines, according to many historians and analysts, can be traced back to ancient Greece, and renowned philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.
Yet others consider Switzerland and the 18th century Geneva born Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be just as influential, and possibly more so. For example, Yale University Professor of Political Science Stephen Smith considers Rousseau's unique conceptualizations of human nature, inalienable human rights, "the general will" and the social contract to have exerted an unparalleled influence on political doctrines right up to modern times. (See lectures 18. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Discourse; 19. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau’s Discourse; and 20. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Social Contract. I-II).
Born in Geneva in 1712, he was a pioneering advocate of fundamental principles of democracy, who vigorously argued in favor of inalienable individual rights and popular political sovereignty. Specifically, he declared that citizens’ possess the sole power to determine the "the general will", and irrevocably control governing bodies in order to implement their will. Simultaneously, he vigorously refuted the views of wealthy "patrician" families,
Rousseau’s unique and expansive ideas about individual liberty were well-known in the 18th century. His doctrines advocating self-government were also well-known, especially his insistence that government officials are “servants” of the people. He authored the famous Social Contract in which he provided a multi-faceted rationale and numerous prescriptions for building political institutions capable of empowering individuals to use government to protect their liberty. Given the simultaneous emergence of Switzerland’s popular sovereignty doctrines and direct democracy principles, he urged European countries to emulate them.
Although Rousseau’s life was caught up in turbulent cultural, economic, and political upheavals inside and outside his native city, his writings displayed dogged determination to make sense of these upheavals, as Swedish historian and American university scholar describes in Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to The Social Contract, 1749–1762.
As a consequence, Rousseau’s pro-democracy] views were controversial and widely condemned during and after his lifetime, even by those who considered him an unparalleled genius. Although he is regarded as one of the world’s most influential thinkers and authors, the following critique was written by historians Will and Ariel Durant:
“How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédie and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity . . . how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced . . . the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century?"
He pursued this avocation even when his idiosyncratic formulations for reversing growing inequality evoked criticism from wealthy patricians and aristocratic proponents of social, political, and economic hierarchies. And while he read widely and familiarized himself with the renowned authors of his time, and met many of them in his travels, especially to Paris, his eclectic views were idiosyncratic and non-conformist.
He opposed the censorship of intellectuals’ views and writings by members of both patrician families and aristocrats in Geneva. In retaliation, they frequently banned works and their authors, who could be beaten, and even killed if they deviated from orthodoxy. Nonetheless, even though Rousseau could mince words if necessary to propagate this views and avoid censorship, he rarely went out of his way to conform, even though he often found himself unwelcome in many places throughout his life.
On occasion, Rousseau did try to immerse himself into other ways of thinking aligned with more patriarchal and aristocratic views. They included those espoused by prominent French intellectual Voltaire and prominent partisans in nearby France, which was ruled by an oppressive monarchy ended by a revolution lasting from 1789 -1799. But soon thereafter he repudiated Voltaire and these views, and re-aligned his views with those of the people with whom he grew up in his native city of Geneva, and in surrounding regions that later coalesced into the nation-state of Switzerland.
He delved into ancient history and immersed himself in works written centuries before his time, including those of the Greek philosopher Plutarch. His purview extended from inherent birth rights to institutions and processes he considered indispensable to ensuring ordinary people remain the sole, sovereign decision-makers.
In arguing that lawmakers in government are the servants of the people, he was countering long-standing patriarchal and aristocratic views that were being relentlessly affirmed to create a highly stratified and rigid system of social classes. Undaunted, he painstakingly identified, described, and prescribed specific ways and means by which sovereign citizens can determine the general will, such as gathering together to make decisions, and thereafter voting in elections to decide which "servants" of the people will hold positions in governing institutions."
“Rousseau believed in a legislative process that necessitates the active involvement of every citizen in decision-making through discussion and voting. He coined this process as the “general will”, the collective will of a society as a whole, even if it may not necessarily coincide with the individual desires of each member.” [141] Wikipedia
"Throughout his life he kept returning to the thought that people are good by nature but have been corrupted by society and civilization. He did not mean to suggest that society and civilization are inherently bad but rather that both had taken a wrong direction and become more harmful as they became more sophisticated." Encyclopedia Britannica
Paradoxically, Rousseau signed his original works “J.J. Rousseau, Citoyen de Geneve”. But later, after Geneva elders condemned his books and they were ordered to be destroyed, he renounced his citizenship. Interestingly, he maintained his independent, idiosyncratic views even after they were roundly condemned, and he was declared persona non grata in one place and one country after another. He simply moved on to other less hostile environments where he could find influential people who would protect him.
What makes Rousseau’s 18th century work especially relevant to the Direct Democracy Global Network in the 21st century is its emphasis on the source of political liberty — people’s rights at birth, and the institutions and processes required for them to exercise it -- not on constitutions, laws, court decisions, cultural mores, etc.
What he railed against were the external forces and factors that obstructed this exercise, and limited the possibilities for people to live their lives in their own way, as part of self-defining and self-determining communities.
Rousseau's political views and entreaties exhort us today to re-invent such self-defining communities -- a primary goal of the consensus building, agenda setting, and political organizing technology embedded in the Direct Democracy Global Network. As described in the next section, Rousseau's Geneva-based philosophical and political enlightenment was intertwined with the wisdom of indigenous mountain dwellers in regions that coalesced to became Switzerland, who created and defended unique pathways to exercising and retaining their self-defined political sovereignty.
II. Swiss Roots of Direct Democracy
Outside the region that eventually coalesced into the nation-state Switzerland, in earlier centuries, neighboring France and the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty were rife with internal and external conflicts and attacks. But one notable exception within the region were people living high in the mountains who co-operated to build peaceful, agrarian communities. They were well-armed and capable of fending off external attackers.
As early as 1291, fiercely independent farmers and peasants banded together to provide each other mutual aid and protection against foreign invaders. As the formal structure of the nation took shape, governing laws were written. They included the insertion of self-governing laws into Switzerland’s evolving governmental structure that entitled Swiss citizens at the grassroots living in “communes” and “cantons”. They created a “direct democracy” form of government that included “initiatives” empowering citizens to directly propose laws to lawmakers, and “referendums” empowering citizens to directly mandate amendments and revocation of existing laws.
Peasants living high in the Swiss mountain ranges banded together to provide each other mutual aid and protection against foreign invaders. They were strong and well-armed, and included the legendary William Tell. He was "an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow", who is credited with slaying a tyrannical Austrian duke. According to the legend,
"Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy. Tell was considered the father of the Swiss Confederacy."
Due to the successes of these early inhabitants of Switzerland in repelling external attackers, more and more of their neighbors in nearby regions joined their mutual aid alliance.
As the formal structure of the nation took shape, governing laws were written. They included self-governing laws inserted into the country’s evolving federal structure by Swiss people living at the grassroots in “communes” and “cantons”. Among the fundamental laws inserted into the constitution, creating a “direct democracy” form of government, are "initiatives" that empower citizens to directly propose laws to lawmakers, and "referendums" that empower citizens to directly mandate amendments and revocation of existing laws. These actions are legitimized by nationwide votes by Swiss citizens to accept or reject specific proposals formulated by Swiss citizens, which mandate implementing actions by federal lawmakers.
What is most impressive in the evolution of the Swiss nation-state is that the people living at the grassroots succeeded in maintaining their autonomy and authority to launch and vote in initiatives and referendums during the several centuries when Switzerland’s statehood was being formalized.
Eventually, a bicameral federal legislature was created, with the lower level comprised of lawmakers representing the population, and the upper level comprised of lawmakers representing the cantons, all subject to implementing the results of referendums and initiatives. Wisely and presciently, rules have been made to prevent any elected lawmaker from serving more than one-year term as president, and prevent any of the multiple Swiss political parties from placing one of their elected lawmakers in the presidency for more than one year.
An important consequence of Switzerland's historic "direct democracy" roots, and evolution into a formal nation-state, is the emergence of political and cultural norms that favor compromise and consensus building to reconcile divergent views. The emergence of these norms was motivated in all likelihood by common recognition of the need to reconcile the internal diversity existing within Switzerland, reflected in distinct, geographically-based cultures; four different languages; and two major religions.
In the early years of forming the Swiss Confederation, the Swiss people most likely agreed that in order to unite internally to build a common front to repel external adversaries, their survival might well depend on their ability to reconcile diversity and avoid being internally divided by domestic quarrels and conflicts. A small country like Switzerland, existing in environments dominated by far larger, well-armed, and often aggressive countries, needed to be as free as possible of internal confrontations in order to circumvent external confrontations with foreign countries. On many occasions in the early days of its existence, what saved the day were the high Swiss mountain ranges which few foreigners could climb better or faster than the Swiss themselves.
What is also salient is about the pervasive, long-standing consensus-building norms is that Swiss federal lawmakers strive to avoid provoking Swiss citizens into launching and passing initiatives and referendums mandating federal lawmakers to change what they have done, or are planning to do. In effect, these fundamental rights, which that empower Swiss citizens at the grassroots possess to decide what laws are passed, revoked, or amended, are reported to exercise an inhibitory influence on lawmaking at the federal level.
Significant benefits of Switzerland's accrued from its internal and external circumstances and environments, however. One such benefit, dating back to the early 1800s, is Switzerland's decision to declare its political neutrality and refusal to take sides in external conflicts. This neutrality has contributed to internal and external stability. In contrast to countries where internal and external conflicts are endemic, and political violence is frequent, the politically neutral, consensus-building Switzerland is internally peaceful, by comparison, and can play a uniquely helpful international role as conflict mediator and peace builder.
In addition, the country has become the home of numerous humanitarian organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and as one of the four major offices of the United Nations. In the difficult times characterizing the first two decades of the 21st century, Switzerland can also serve as an encouraging role model illustrating ways and means to use "direct democracy" to reverse the global decline of democracy.
Although Rousseau urged European countries whose governments were in formation to adopt Switzerland’s model of popular sovereignty based on “direct democracy” model, it was fully functioning and vibrant only in Switzerland.
Nor was it emulated by the founders of the American republic when they devised new institutions and processes, and ratified the constitution in 1776.
The consequences of imperfect democratic institutions and processes are dire when judged by the precipitous decline of democratic institutions and processes worldwide. Increasing ways and means are being devised and implemented, legally and illegally, by politicians, political parties, and special interests, to restrict citizens’ and voters’ control of elections. They prevent citizens and voters from duly registering to vote, choosing candidates, setting platforms and legislative agendas, casting ballots, and having their ballots accurately counted.
One consequence are widening gaps between the needs, priorities, and demands of people at the grassroots, on the one hand, and those of lawmakers who enact legislation, on the other hand. In my view, these retrograde developments indicate traditional democratic institutions and processes are failing to withstand the tests of time. Demands for reform are of scant avail, because effective internal reform mechanisms are ineffective and inaccessible. Consequently, it is my view that these institutions and processes must be re-invented externally — to protect individual liberty and popular sovereignty, as defined by Rousseau, and incorporate the basis premises and tenets of “direct democracy”.
To do so, voters must be able to circumvent anti-democratic and un-democratic laws and decisions that have been enacted, by using the advanced technologies that have been developed to support these rights and expand opportunities to exercise them. The Direct Democracy Global Network incorporates these technological advances and combines them with the prescriptions provided by Rousseau and the Swiss model of popular sovereignty and direct democracy.
What is needed and provided by the Direct Democracy Global Network is a technology-driven, web-based global network that connects voters and gives them access to unique tools for building consensus across partisan lines. It incorporates innovations that experts argue are needed to
"[Integrate] social networks and the broader civil society into governance through new deliberative practices, such as citizens’ assemblies and other forms of impactful citizen engagement ‘that complement representative government and compensate for its waning legitimacy’.
In line with these recommendations, the primary mission of the Direct Democracy Global Network is to connect verified voters to each other online, within and across nation-state boundaries, without charge. It provides them an autonomous environment free of the undue influence of biased social media, overweaning political parties, special interests, and partisan lines and ideologies. It empowers voters to autonomously build their own online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions, which can collectively gather and evaluate information; debate, discuss, and build consensus across partisan lines; and vote on who runs for office, who gets elected, and what laws are passed.
What evidence supports affirmations that contemporary mainstream voters have the capacities and proclivities to take this leap across centuries? While Rousseau was a keen observer of discernible influences on human behavior, and their evolution, can it be assumed they play a continuing role in protecting and supporting individual liberties? Will the capabilities of ordinary people to exercise sovereignty over elections survive opposition? Will the governing institutions, and the "magistrates" they elect to implement the "general will" defined by citizens in democratic assemblies persist and thrive?
Support is provided by University of California/Berkeley Professor of Psychology Dacher Keltner. His research findings demonstrate the evolutionary strengthening of cooperative, mutually beneficial, humanitarian traits within societies around the world. Akin to Jean-JacquesRousseau's basic premises, research indicates human beings possess inherent capabilities that can be purposefully enhanced and advanced with respect to collectively caring for others. He describes his views in The Power Paradox: The Promise and Peril of 21st Century Power’ | Talks at Google (YouTube. October 14, 2016.) and Survival of the Kindest. (YouTube. July 15, 2015.)
Keltner's research indicates positive, countervailing trends in the form of evolutionary patterns of interactions. At the same time, it also indicates the self-serving behaviors and conflict-producing interactions of competing political parties may well be a passing, retrograde blip in the forward march of humankind toward greater cooperation and collective problem-solving capabilities.
In addition to Keltner's work, there are additional related causes for optimism about the future of democratic governments and the role of social networks capable of sustaining them with unbiased algorithms, which will be leveraged by the Direct Democracy Global Network.
They include the numerical preponderance of the world’s 8.5 billion people, a number that dwarfs the comparatively small numbers of unscrupulous, power-seeking politicians, political parties, lawmakers, special interests, and despots endeavoring to increase their power, status, and wealth.
Far more people will be sharing mutually supportive values, cooperative behavioral norms, and altruistically oriented interrelationships than the political actors seeking to aggrandize their status by weakening the control ordinary people exercise over elections, their governments, and lawmakers.
III. Direct Democracy Global Network
As described above, in Western Europe, grassroots direct democracy practices originated in mountainous regions that coalesced into the country of Switzerland. They grew out of verbal agreements among armed members of peasant communities in well-defended enclaves to repel foreign invaders. Some of these agreements were written into simple treaties. Their practices, and citizens' legal rights to determine what laws are passed, spread throughout the country, taking the form of initiatives and referendums legally binding on lawmakers. They were subsequently legally protected by provisions written into the constitution of the Swiss confederation.
Throughout following centuries, they acquired important socio-political and technological protections. They explain "why" and "how" democratic forms of government can be strengthenend, transformed -- and even re-invented by voters, using the technology-enabled consensus building tools and services provided by the Direct Democracy Global Network. These dimensions are described by the Principal Research Scientist Mark Klein at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.
He focuses on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and "social computing", specifically how computers can enable better knowledge-sharing and decision-making among groups of humans. Klein analyzes this broader dimension in “A Critical Review of Crowd-Scale Online Deliberation Technologies.”
Humanity now finds itself faced with pressing and highly complex problems – such as climate change, the spread of disease, international and economic insecurity, and so on - that call upon us to deliberate together at unprecedented scale, incorporating the input of large numbers of experts and stakeholders in order to find and agree upon the best solutions to adopt.
While the Internet now provides the cheap, capable, and ubiquitous communication infrastructure needed to enable crowd-scale deliberation, current technologies (i.e. social media tools such as email, forums, social networks, and so on) fare very poorly when applied to complex and contentious problems, producing toxic inefficient processes and highly sub-optimal outcomes. This paper explains the emergent crowd phenomena that underlie these poor outcomes and describes a set of integrated crowd-scale deliberation technologies - for idea generation, idea evaluation, and collective decision-making via negotiation - that are being developed to transcend these barriers.
Klein's work defines the broad context in which voters worldwide will be able to use the direct democracy tools and services accessible on the Direct Democracy Global Network to re-invent democracy. The network will enable them to increase their control over elections and legislation, by deciding who runs for office, who is elected, and what laws are passed. The description includes the ten steps outlined below.
They incorporate consensus-building mechanisms that enable virtually unlimited numbers of people to connect online via an autonomous social networking platform. It enables them to colletively build consensus to set common legislative agendas, and form and manage their own voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions to elect lawmakers to enact their agendas.
They can use the network’s platform to vote on any proposals they wish, at any time and on any subject, without waiting for elections. For example, if voters oppose laws and policies that have been enacted, or are pending enactment, they can use the platform to vote on proposals that express their opposition, and transmit them to lawmakers with legislative mandates.
This unique capability prevents lawmakers from ignoring voters, which many often do between elections. If lawmakers do not heed voters’ priorities and mandates reflected in voters’ online votes, the voters can hold additional votes — “recall votes” -- in which they can express their intention to vote against the lawmakers in upcoming elections. Such “recall votes” alert lawmakers to the prospect of electoral defeat and loss of offices in legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.
Critics of efforts to reform this dysfunctional status quo by empowering voters argue that voter empowerment will lead to more conflicts. But research shows that voters -- especially mainstream voters -- tend to favor building consensus and oppose polarizing actions that engender legislative stalemates.
One successful research project was conducted by Professor Beau Sievers and his teams of researchers at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. The findings of this research demonstrate that settings can be devised that are conducive to consensus building among diverse groups of people who did not previously know each other.
These consensus-building settings are virtual opposites of the closed, conflict-producing political enclaves created by politicians and political parties attempting to corral voters into accepting their priorities rather than determine their own. Below are excerpts describing the research: How consensus-building conversation changes our minds and aligns our brains.
"A few years ago, Dr. Sievers devised a study to improve understanding of how exactly a group of people achieves a consensus and how their individual brains change after such discussions.
The results showed that a robust conversation that results in consensus synchronizes the talkers’ brains — not only when thinking about the topic that was explicitly discussed, but related situations that were not.
The study also revealed at least one factor that makes it harder to reach accord: a group member whose strident opinions drown out everyone else.
“The groups with blowhards were less neurally aligned than were those with mediators, the study found.
"Perhaps more surprising, the mediators drove consensus not by pushing their own interpretations, but by encouraging others to take the stage and then adjusting their own beliefs — and brain patterns — to match the group. . . Being willing to change your own mind, then, seems key to getting everyone on the same page."
In anticipation of the description of the ten steps below, here is a short synopsis of pivotal types of empowerment that the Direct Democracy Global Network's tools provide voters to increase their capabilities to build consensus to collectively determine who runs for office, who gets elected. and what laws are passed. (Voters include individuals intending to vote, even if they have yet to be officially registered in an election district in which they are eligible to vote).
- Network tools enable voters to extend their spheres of influence beyond the boundaries of an election district in which they may be eligible to vote, by enabling them to join forces with voters in other election districts, within and beyond a single nation-state.
- Voters can use network communication tools at any time, day and night, to connect online with other voters using the network for a broad array of purposes.
- They can individually define, express and share their needs, priorities, and legislative agendas with other voters using the network whose identifies have been verified.
- The needs, priorities, and agendas that voters define do not have to conform to those of any political party, and can be updated, stored, retrieved, and shared at any time.
- For the first time in history, voters have an autonomous web-based platform where they can individually and collectively define priorities and legislative agendas that affect regions and election districts anywhere in their home country, and in nations and regions around the world.
- To call attention to their priorities and agendas on the part of individuals and groups outside the network, voters can use the network’s online voting utility to calculate how many voters support specific priorities and agendas, regions and election districts in which these voters reside (although voters can decide whether or not to provide this information), and publicize these numbers and locations through as many channels as they see fit.
- Voters can also share their needs, priorities, and legislative mandates with lawmakers anywhere at any time, and alert unresponsive lawmakers to the numbers of dissatisfied voters in their election districts who indicate they are learning towards voting to defeat them in future elections.
- The network’s AI and ML-based agenda-setting, consensus-building, and political organizing tools empower voters to create their own online political parties, and work within and between them to build consensus across partisan lines in support of specific agendas, as well as reach out across partisan lines to forge electoral bases large enough to win elections to defeat incumbent lawmakers and elect lawmakers of their choice to replace them.
- Voters can bypass AI-generated misinformation containing falsehoods and misrepresentations, and actively participate in elections and influence legislative decision-making, by using the network’s person-to-person and teleconferencing tools to engage in real-time, face-to-face interactions with other network users.
IV. 2025 Direct Democracy Tools
The Direct Democracy Global Network adds significant tools and activities to the repertory of traditional direct democracy tools that have centered around initiatives and referendums.
For example, they shift power to voters at the grassroots, connect them online, and empower them to democratically set legislative priorities and decide who is elected to be the lawmakers mandated to enact constituent's legislative agendas.
In effect, the network provides voters a unique and unprecedented web-based platform where they can dialogue, debate, and vote on any proposals and issues they wish at any time, and share their decisions with whomever they wish, at times and places of their choosingt.
Voters can use the platform to build consensus across partisan lines to set common legislative agendas, decide whether to join existing political parties, or create and manage their own parties, electoral coalitions, and voting blocs. Their parties, coalitions, and blocs can nominate electoral candidates and conduct campaigns to elect lawmakers of their choice, by engaging in the following activities:
- Build consensus across partisan lines from the grassroots upwards.
- Set common legislative agendas, and update them whenever necessary to keep pace with evolving needs and priorities.
- Create and manage formal and informal online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions, and host them on the network.
- Invite voters across the spectrum to join with them in forging cross-partisan electoral bases large enough to determine who runs for office, who gets elected, and what laws are passed.
- Mandate lawmakers to implement voters’ agendas by conducting petition drives, initiatives, referendums, and recall votes.
Key premises of the Direct Democracy Global Network, and ten recommended steps for using it, are supported by several decades of research demonstrating the value and efficacy of crowdsourcing.
They include New York University Professor Clay Shirky, who was among the first to recognize the transformative potential of political crowdsourcing.
He analyzed the web-based activities of self-selecting groups of people without previous organizational ties coming together to solve problems. Shirky’s prescient understanding of the combined power of these phenomena is described in Wikipedia as follows:
In his book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations., Shirky explains how he has long spoken in favor of crowdsourcing and collaborative efforts online. . . . He discusses the ways in which the action of a group adds up to something more than just aggregated individual action. . . The fourth and final step is collective action, which Shirky says is ‘mainly still in the future.’ The key point about collective action is that the fate of the group as a whole becomes important.
Shirky's insights undergird core premises of the Direct Democracy Global Network. One key premise is that voters can and will use network tools to create their own immediately responsive, democratic, and flexible online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions controlled by the voters who build and manage them. The members of these voter-controlled entities can use network tools and technologies, especially the voting utility, to adopt, update, share, and publicize evolving priorities, while functioning democratically on an ad hoc basis.
They do not have to transform their blocs, parties, and coalitions into formal organizations, although they can choose to formalize their existence and operations if circumstances warrant -- e.g. if they wish to officially register their existence in specific election districts in order to obtain official ballot lines in chosen districts. Even then, these parties do not have to replicate the rigid structures, ideologies, agendas, and operations of traditional parties that have been in existence for decades, which may not serve the interests and resonate with contemporary voters and people at the grassroots.
In addition to Shirky’s contributions, the research and work of Nobel laureate and American economist Elinor Ostrom PhD lend empirical support to a core premise of the Direct Democracy Global Network.
In her article, Are Ordinary People Able to Self-Organize?, she asserts that self-selecting groups of people -- such as crowdsourced blocs of voters using the Direct Democracy Global Network -- are capable of governing themselves and their local communities.
Her extensive fieldwork focused on how people interact with ecosystems such as forests, fisheries, and irrigation systems, challenging the conventional wisdom that ordinary people weren’t able to successfully manage natural resources without any regulation or privatization. She believed that people are perfectly capable of taking control of decisions that affect their lives.” Ostrom described eight design principles that affect the success of self-organized governance systems, for example collective choices, mechanisms of conflict resolution and the recognition of a community’s self-determination by the authorities.” [italics added]
Ostrom's findings support the premise that voters that can effectively and flexibly use the Direct Democracy Global Network without having to build or transform their own votings blocs, parties, and coalitions into formal organizations. They can choose to formalize their existence and operations if circumstances warrant -- e.g. if they wish to officially register their existence in specific election districts in order to obtain official ballot lines in chosen districts. Even then, these parties do not have to replicate the rigid structures, ideologies, agendas, and operations of traditional parties that have been in existence for decades, which may not serve the interests and resonate with contemporary voters and people at the grassroots.
These options and flexibility are inherent in the ten steps described in the infographics below.
Bordier, Nancy.
Decision Assisting Artificial Intelligence System for Voter Electoral and Legislative Consensus Building.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
Patent Number: US 11,935,141 B2. March 19, 2024.
Dean, James.
Democratic decline a global phenomenon, even in wealthy nations.
Cornell Chronicle. January 17, 2024.
Delphi Series Eight Book 18.
Delphi Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Illustrated).
Kindle. July 29, 2017.
Drutman, Lee.
Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.
Oxford University Press. 2019.
Drutman, Lee.
Why the Two-Party System Is Destroying America.
YouTube. January 24, 2020.
Fairness Project
REPORT: State Legislatures Continue Attacks on Direct Democracy in 2024.
April 23, 2024.
Fairness Project
Ballot Measure Attacks in 2024.
April 23, 2024.
Fiorina, Morris.
Party Sorting to Blame for Political Stalemate.
Stanford News. October 26, 2020.
Gardels, Nathan.
How To Soul-Search As A Losing Party.
Noema Magazine. November 23, 2024.
Gardels, Nathan.
The Light Bulb Of Collective Intelligence: Finding innovation while seeking consensus.
Noema, October 9, 2020.
Gardels, Nathan.
Illiberal Democracy Comes To America.
Noema Magazine.
November 7, 2024.
Greminger, Thomas.
The World of Conflict Mediation Is Evolving
SWI Swissinfo.ch. January 24. 2024.
Hossenfelder, Sabine.
Is the U.S. a republic or democracy?
Youtube. November 2, 2024.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The Social Contract, 1762.
Wikipedia.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1755.
Wikipedia.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The General Will.
Wikipedia
Kaufman, Bruno.
The Uncanny Reinvention of Autocracy.
Swissinfo.ch November 30, 2022.
Kaufman, Bruno.
Is it all over for the World Summit for Democracy?
SwissInfo.ch. March 11, 2024.
Kaufmann, Bruno.
The way to modern direct democracy in Switzerland.
House of Switzerland. April 26, 2019.
Kaufman, Bruno.
Anger sparks Swiss-Catalan appetite for direct democracy
Swissinfo.ch July 25, 2023.
Keltner, Dacher.
Dacher Keltner - Survival of the Kindest
YouTube. July 15, 2015.
Keltner, Dacher.
Dacher Keltner: ‘The Power Paradox: The Promise and Peril of 21st Century Power’ | Talks at Google
YouTube. October 14, 2016.
Klein, Mark.
MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.
Klein, Mark. “A Critical Review of Crowd-Scale Online Deliberation Technologies.” Social Science Research Network. SSRN Scholarly Paper. September 16, 2015.
Klein, Mark, et.al. “Supporting Argumentation in Online Political Debate: Evidence from an Experiment of Collective Deliberation (PDF) .” ResearchGate, April 2018.
Klein, Mark, et.al. Enabling Deliberations in a Political Party Using Large-Scale Argumentation: A Preliminary Report. ResearchGate, May 2012.
Kuzminski, Adrian.
Fixing the System
Continuum, 2008.
Maison Rousseau Litterature.
A Social Contract for the 21st Century.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Matthews, Joe.
Is the time ripe for national referendums in the US?
SwissInfo.ch, October 24, 2020.
Michels, Robert.
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, 1911.
Wikipedia.
Ostrom, Elinor.
Are Ordinary People Able to Self-Organize?
UBS.com, July 20, 2020.
Parker, Clifton.
Political Parties More Polarized than Voters.
Stanford News, July 20, 2020.
Silver, Laura, et.al.
5. Electoral reform and direct democracy
Pew Research Center. March 13, 2024.
Rainie, Lee, et.al.
Key Findings about Americans’ Declining Trust in Government and Each Other.
Pew Research Center. July 19, 2022.
Rosenblatt, Helena.
Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to The Social Contract, 1749–1762.
Cambridge University Press. 1997.
Rueff, Martin.
Is there a " late style " in philosophy? Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker.
College de France. April 9, 2021.
Russell, Peter.
The Global Brain: The Awakening Earth in A New Century
Floris Books, 2008.
Sagan, Carl.
Carl Sagan's future 'celebration of ignorance' prediction from 1995 was spookily spot on.
Upworthy.com. June 7, 2024.
Shirky, Clay.
Here Comes Everybody.
Wikipedia.
Shirky, Clay.
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.
Wikipedia.
Sievers, Beau, et al. 2020.
How consensus-building conversation changes our minds and aligns our brains.
Open Science Framework. September 17, 2022.
Smith, Stephen.
18. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Discourse.
Yale University. September 22, 2008.
Smith, Stephen.
19. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau’s Discourse.
Yale University. Fall, 2006.
Smith, Stephen.
20. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Social Contract. I-II
Yale University. Fall, 2006.
Soltvedt, Torbjorn.
101 Countries Witness Rise In Civil Unrest In Last Quarter, Worst Yet To Come As Socioeconomic Pressures Build.
Verisk Maplecroft. September 3, 2022.
Swiss Confederation.
Direct Democracy.
Swiss Confederation.
Political System.
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
Mission.
United Nations.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
University of Geneva.
Rousseau et Geneve: Entretiens Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
December 12, 2012.
University of Gothenburg, V-Dem Institute
The Case for Democracy. 2022
University of Gothenburg.
Report: The World Is Becoming Increasingly Authoritarian, but There Is Hope.
Phys.org. March 3, 2023.
Waller, Lewis.
How Switzerland Changed the World.
YouTube. 2017
Waller, Lewis.
How Switzerland Changed the World.
Then & Now. June 26, 2023
Wikipedia.
Global Brain
Wikipedia.
Popular sovereignty
Wikipedia.
Voting in Switzerland
Zmigrod, Leor.
The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking.
Henry Holt and Company, 2025.
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Direct Democracy :
"Direct democracy is one of the special features of the Swiss political system. It allows the electorate to express their opinion on decisions taken by the Swiss Parliament and to propose amendments to the Federal Constitution. It is underpinned by two instruments: initiatives and referendums.
"In Switzerland the people play a large part in the decision-making process at all political levels. All Swiss citizens aged 18 and over have the right to vote in elections and on specific issues. The Swiss electorate are called on approximately four times a year to vote on an average of fifteen such issues.
"Citizens are also able to propose votes on specific issues themselves. This can be done via an initiative, an optional referendum, or a mandatory referendum. These three instruments form the core of direct democracy."
Popular initiative
"The popular initiative allows citizens to propose an amendment or addition to the Constitution. It acts to drive or relaunch political debate on a specific issue. For such an initiative to come about, the signatures of 100,000 voters who support the proposal must be collected within 18 months. The authorities sometimes respond to an initiative with a direct counter-proposal in the hope that a majority of the people and the cantons support that instead."
Optional referendum
"Federal acts and other enactments of the Federal Assembly are subject to optional referendums. These allow citizens to demand that approved bills are put to a nationwide vote. In order to bring about a national referendum, 50,000 valid signatures must be collected within 100 days of publication of the new legislation."
Mandatory referendum
"All constitutional amendments approved by Parliament are subject to a mandatory referendum, i.e. they must be put to a nationwide popular vote. The electorate are also required to approve Swiss membership of specific international organisations."
Swiss Confederation: Political System.
"Switzerland is governed under a federal system at three levels: the Confederation, the cantons and the communes. Thanks to direct democracy, citizens can have their say directly on decisions at all political levels. This wide range of opportunities for democratic participation plays a vital role in a country as geographically, culturally and linguistically varied as Switzerland."
"Since becoming a federal state in 1848, Switzerland has expanded the opportunities it provides for democratic participation. Various instruments are used to include minorities as much as possible — a vital political feature in a country with a range of languages and cultures. The country’s federal structure keeps the political process as close as possible to Swiss citizens. Of the three levels, the communes are the closest to the people, and are granted as many powers as possible. Powers are delegated upwards to the cantons and the Confederation only when this is necessary."
info@directdemocracyglobalnetwork.net
Copyright © 2025 Direct Democracy Global Network
All Rights Reserved