Delegative Democracy
= Delegative democracy is a new paradigm in democratic organisation which emphasizes individually chosen vote transfers ("delegation") over mass election.
URL = http://open.coop/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=12
Definition
"Delegative democracy combines the best elements of direct and representative democracy by replacing artificially imposed representation structures with an adaptive structure founded on real personal and group trust relationships. Delegative democracy empowers individually and encourages widespread direct participation in democratic organisation, without unduly burdening or disenfranchising those members who, for lack of time, interest, or knowledge, would prefer to take a more passive role."
Description
Bryan Ford:
"Delegative democracy attempts to make direct democracy scale, by allowing anyone who cannot participate directly in a particular vote to delegate their vote to someone they trust to participate and vote on their behalf. This process may be viewed as a mechanized equivalent of seeking advice from a friend and voting based on that advice. Delegative democracy differs from representative democracy in the principle that each voter should have free, individual choice of their delegate — not just a choice among a restricted set of career politicians — just as we already make a free, individual choice of our friends. Further, voters may choose to participate in some meetings directly, overriding their delegate’s choices in those meetings, and voters may revoke or change their delegation at any time.
While corporate governance practice often allows the related idea of proxy voting, a proxy vote often amounts to a “pre-packaged mandate”: e.g., a directive to cast an unconditional YES or NO vote on my behalf regardless of what new information might be presented at the meeting or what discussion might ensue. The spirit of delegative democracy is closer to representative democracy, in that delegation is not about delivering my “canned decision” but about asking my trusted delegate to participate in the full deliberative process on my behalf. My delegate can and is expected to listen and engage in the debate, consider the information available, and make what his views as the best decision on that basis. If I dislike his decision, I can choose a different delegate before the next vote."
(https://bford.info/2014/11/16/deleg.html)
History
Bryan Ford:
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was only one of many people to think along these lines over the decades. In Lewis Carrol’s Principles of Parliamentary Representation of 1884, candidates could “club” their votes together, allowing a candidate who received more votes than required to win a seat to delegate the “excess” votes toward the election of other candidates. James C. Miller in 1969 foresaw electronic voting and proposed a delegate proxy voting scheme, to enable more widespread — and more propoportional — representation in political decisions.
Starting around 2002 the Internet exploded with reinventions of this and similar ideas. Besides my Delegative Democracy proposal, there was Dennis Lomax’s Beyond Politics, Jio Ito’s Emergent Democracy, Sayke’s Liquid Democracy and voting system, Mikael Nordfors' Democracy 2.1, James Green-Armytage’s delegable proxy system, and Mark Rosst’s Structural Deep Democracy. The idea of allowing voters to delegate their participation to individually-chosen representatives is central to all of these proposals, though details differ."