Tagged: Participatory Democracy

Policy is more than a product of process; policy is process itself

The London School of Economics and Political Science blog site carries an evocative – if not provocative – post from a Senior Researcher at the Centre for European Studies, at the University of Oslo.  The post is nine months old, and hasn’t drawn much response – however, the commentary does beg for an audience.  Plato indeed may have set the Western tradition innocently in search of philosopher kings, and technocracy may have now quite fully co-opted Plato’s intentions for inquiry with proclamations from elite-led multilateral economic institutions.  It may be time to begin again. Continue reading →

Elinor Ostrom’s Legacy of the Commons

At this time in history, 78 is still far too young an age to be swept into the future. For four decades, Elinor and her colleagues have been slaying a myth that was breathed into life by Ecologist Garrett Hardin‘s misunderstanding of the nature of “The Tragedy of the Commons.” The myth is that people cannot self-govern … and yet that, somehow, a higher mortal authority is imagined to have the elusive capacity to govern with humane wisdom. Continue reading →

Planet under Pressure

Professor Ray Ison of the Institute for Sustainable Futures reports on a Planet under Pressure

We share Professor Ison’s concerns.  A split in systemic thinking erupted in the origins of the Club of Rome in 1970.  An original proposal by Hasan Ozbekhan and Aleco Christakis offered 49 Continuous Critical Problems (CCPs) and argued for a dialogical method for dealing with them.   This dialogue-based proposal was rejected in favor of an expert-design System Dynamics approach that resulted in the publication of  The Limits to Growth.  As a result of the report and parallel efforts, system dynamics became a dominating example of systemic thinking. Continue reading →

Welcome to the Institute for 21st Century Agoras

People the world over aspire to participatory democracy. Yet the democratic planning and design of social systems, from local urban projects to national health care, is threatened by our institutional inability to engage stakeholders in dialogues that result in effective collective design and commitment.

A Democratic Vision for All Stakeholders
The Agoras Institute promotes a democratic transformation of civil society and government by empowering the capacity of client organizations and educators to produce breakthroughs in the collective confrontation of multidimensional wicked problems. Our immediate mission is to establish and nurture new Agoras of the 21st century – global centers of democratic participatory design and education – in areas of critical socio-political importance or demand. Continue reading →