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.
What are Agoras?
With each shift in human social communication and technology, the means for wise engagement must evolve. In ancient Athens, all citizens could meet face to face in the public arena. Today, our arenas are globally distributed, with unmanageable relational and problem complexity. The Institute supports client organizations with tools, practices, and training to support engagements for addressing projects of high sociotechnical complexity.
At this critical juncture of the evolutionary process of humanity, there cannot be conscious evolution without the capacity to explicate through dialogue the wisdom of the people in the Agoras of the 21st Century Global Village.
Alexander Christakis
