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The Democracy Files is a resource of collected articles about democracy seen from the perspectives of us as designers. It does not claim to be a collection of fullfilling texts judged from the view of lets say political science. The files are under construction and we hope to be able to sort the sources in a way that makes them especially useful for people engaged in design for democracy. The collection is put together by Harold Nelson and Birger Sevaldson with input from others. Please help with collecting relevant and important texts by sending them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. If you have contributions and comments we are more than happy to receive them. THE FOUR MAIN DOMAINS OF DESIGN
1) Design of democracy: It addresses the structural elements that function as frames and regulators of human action in a democratic system. It focuses on institutions (as: branches of government, agencies, bureaus, courts, and offices) and procedures (such as: laws, regulations, rules, and protocols). 2) Design for democracy: it increases the opportunities for citizens to participate in deliberative processes. It focuses on transparency (which enables citizens to be aware of the on-going process of governance) and deliberative methods (which means the opportunity to be better involved in decision making processes). 3) Design as democracy: (added by Manzini) it sets a stage on which diverse actors can come together and democratically collaborate in shaping their present and future world. It engages diverse people and publics in co-design and co-production processes concerning different aspects of their everyday life. 4) Design in democracy: It refers to all the design initiatives that are particularly responsive to the goals of democracy. It may deal with the provision of human rights, and fundamental freedoms (such as access to food, shelter, health care, and education) and, more in general, with the transition towards a more resilient, fair and sustainable society. Read here: >>>>> |
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TYPES OF DEMOCRACY
Representative Democracy
Direct democracy
Deliberative democracy
Liquid Democracy in simple terms (video) >>>>>
What is deliberate democracy?
Local Government Reflections on 25 years of local government reforms in Europe Harald Baldersheim Read here >>>>>
DEMOCRACY CRITERIA
The EIU Democracy Index The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, that measures the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 165 are UN member states. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes countries as one of four regime types; full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes Five categories: Electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture Here are the 60 indicators at the end of this document. It is from 2007 so this might have changed but it gives a picture of what defines democracy in their mind:
Global Democracy Ranking:
Democracy Barometer
OECD Better Iife Index
These indexes seem to ignore local democracy, participation, and work place democracy. The measurement of democracies in practice seem inadequate.
Comment: Norway is ranking number 1 on several of these rankings. However, this does not mean that there is no room for a lot of improvement. Some suggestions for fields to work with are: Information. How to help the population to understand society? How to understand the political system? Many people are not aware of their rights and possibility to influence in local democracy. How to understand the economic system in an age of globalization? Etc. Long-term decision-making. How can design help with making long term decisions tangible and long-term consequences of short-term decisions transparent? Local democracy and participation. Typically, the indexes mostly concern high-level government and voting. Democracy exists also between the voting and addition to voting. This is probably where democracy can be developed the most and where it is the most needed.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. We provide a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. The V-Dem project distinguishes between seven high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, egalitarian, majoritarian and consensual, and collects data to measure these principles. Democracy for all, the V-DEM report
Designing democracy
Victor Margolin: Democracy and Design in a Troubled World, 2012 Complete text of the lecture >>>>>
How undemocratic can Design Thinking get? Its time to take how we think and work back from the IDEO Stanford D-school simplification commercial pacjaging and exploitation. Here is a wonderful article by Maggie Gram
Policy Labs: Government laboratories to improve govrnment as service design. MIND LAB in Denmark one of the first and with a agenda relevant for Design for Democracy
DESIS: Democracy and Design: What do you think? Ezio Manzini Read here: >>>>>
Democracy and Design Platform
TuDelft Design for Democracy
RSD6 Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together Systemic Design Conference, Oslo 18th-20th October
Making Futures. Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy Pelle Ehn et. Al. Prologue Laura Watts, Pelle Ehn, and Lucy Suchman Read here: >>>>>
Thomas Binder et. al Democratic design experiments: between parliament and laboratory Read here >>>>>
The Democracy of Objects – October 31, 2011 by Levi R. Bryant (Author)
Per-Anders Hellgren http://forskning.mah.se/en/id/k3pehi gave an excellent key note speak at the ServDes conference in Copenhagen (http://www.servdes.org/keynote-speakers-2/#Per-Anders-Hillgren). He is preoccupied with democratic processes and grounds his work with Living Labs in Malmö by making connections between participatory design, infra-structuring, Agonism and the creation of agonistic collaborative spaces, strategic design and maker spaces. I talked to him briefly after his talk and mentioned the SOD course and that it might be of interest for him to contribute somehow.
Stafford Beer: Designing freedom: Here: >>>>>
Design for Democracy lecture Dori Tunstall (2009) startfrom min 41:09 – 56:00 (15 min).
Designing democracy How designers are changing democratic spaces and processes Book by Design Commission.
Democratising the future: How do we build inclusive visions of the future? https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/democratising-future-how-do-we-build-inclusive-visions-future
IDEA
An AI-Based Direct Democracy Outsources Votes To A Predictive Algorithm
What holds America together By David Brooks
OECD iLibrary | Systems Approaches to Public Sector Challenges Working with ChangePARTICIPATION, EMPATHY, WORKING AND LIVING TOGETHER
PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY Igor Koryakov and Timothy D. Sisk
Peter Jones Dialogic Design Archive for participatory democracy
Foundation for Human Rights On participatory democracy
Multiple Views of Participatory Design Henry Sanoff North Carolina State University
The GocLab Democracy demos
Missions Publique France
Participatory democracy VS deliberative democracy ANTONIO FLORIDIA
The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants - The New York Times
How politeness became a tool of radical democratic politics | Aeon Essays
Catalyzing Empathic, Engaged Citizens:The leadership needed now must be integral, facilitative, and creative.
The Blindness of Social Wealth by David Brooks The Democracy Project by David Braeber About the occupy wallstreet movement WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY
Workplace Democracy Definitions Wikipedia The international definitions of Work Place Democracy nor the term Corporate democracy covers the legislated work place democracy normal in Scandinavian countries.
Nordic Labour Journal Published by the Nordic Council of Ministers
Ingvaldsen “Democratic Lean?” Doctoral Thesis NTNU 2013 Read here: >>>>>
Interesting statistics on workplaces
The original Norwegian Hovedavtale (Basic Agreement) from 1935, also called the "Working life Constitution" The document is registered as UNESCO cultural heritage.
The Norwegian work environment law TRANSPARENCY AND VISUALIZATION
Knowledge visualization
Risks of visualization
GENERAL TEXTS ON DEMOCRACY
Do Democracy and Capitalism really need each other? https://hbr.org/2020/03/do-democracy-and-capitalism-really-need-each-other
Habermas and Foucault: thinkers for civil society? by Bent Flyvbjerg ABSTRACT Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.
Making Athens Great Again How does a citizen respond when a democracy that prides itself on being exceptional betrays its highest principles? Plato despaired, but he also pointed the way to renewal. Read here >>>>>
AEON: The New authoritarians By Holy Case, associate professor of history at Brown University Read here >>>>>
What is deliberate democracy?
Noam Chomsky: "Why you can not have capitalist democracy"
Can Technology save democracy Fast Company
Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel Ed. (2005) Making Things Public - Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Giulia Parola (2013) Environmental Democracy at the Global Level: Rights and Duties for a New Citizenship. New York, London: Versita.
John Dewey (1916) Democracy and Education
Dani Rodrik (2017) Why nation-states are good
Design and war: The Genius of Design BBC
Karl Marx, right after all? Yogendra Yadav - Diversity and Democracy in India (2011)
ECONOMY
Josef Stiglitz, The price of inequality: Read here: >>>>>
Stiglitz : Its time to become radical on inequality
Lack of control on capitalist economy See Stiglitz
Stiglitz about TTIP
Robert Reich: Inequality for all.
Thomas Pickerty : Capital
Paul Krugman on Pickerty
Inequality.org
ON CITIES AND ENVIRONMENTS
De eier maten vår og ødelegger byene våre, Pål Steigan
Zombie Urbanism, Jonny Aspen
The criticism of urbanism is nothing new See Jane Jacobs
About the death of city centers:
Deliberative Democracy and the environment
THREATS TO DEMOCRACY The Collapse of Complex Societies Lecture by Dr. Joseph Tainter
The Twin Authoritarians Who Are Endangering American Democracy | New Republic
The Rise of the Thought Leader | New Republic
Det uformelle demokratiproblemet Anne Elizabeth Sties kritikk av EUs prosesser.
The Alienated Mind - The New York Times
The Intersectionality Wars - The Chronicle of Higher Education When a theory goes viral
Their Sons Sought a More Democratic Hong Kong, and Got Prison
Our democracy no longer represents people Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig TED talk Explaines US flawed democracy biased by economic wealth: "Tweedism"
How the net destroid democracy Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig TED talk
Tech’s Frightful Five: They’ve Got Us - The New York Times
America First? No, Says Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - The New York Times
Google Doesn’t Want What’s Best for Us - The New York Times
Elitism The Oxford degree that rules Britain
On Bullshit Harry Frankfurt
Mob rule vs democracy, Economiat
The cult of ignorance in the United States
On illitteracy
How do people become informed now?
‘The Death of Expertise’ Explores How Ignorance Became a Virtue - The New York Times
The new dictators
How Autocrats Can Triumph in Democratic Countries - The New York Times Habermas and the Fate of Democracy
The Interpreter: When do democracies die?
Daily chart: Declining trust in government is denting democracy | The Economist
How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’ - The New York Times
How to deal with populism: Snog, Marry, or Avoid?
How to Culture Jam a Populist Andrés Miguel Rondón Yes I know this is from a dubious website but the author makes some really good comments about how false populism is feeding on hate and is dependent on the divide in society. It makes a similar point as I made above. This could be a design project.
Democracy Disrupted Thomas B. Edsall March 2 2017 New York Times
Madeleine Albright’s guide to fascism, past and present.
What is Putinism? M.Steven Fish et. al.
Democracy and Discontent George Weigel
– Det svenske demokratiet er truet
The problem of hyper-liberalism
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