Envisioning Deliberative Democracy
Exploring aspects of life in a deliberative democracy.
- Goal
- Help society understand deliberative democracy.
- Strategy
- Teach professional sectors to use deliberative techniques that enable public judgement on complex issues via sector assemblies.
- Activities
- Essays, networking, podcasts, apps, websites, exhibitions, original research, mathematical models, deliberative events, and deliberation design.
What is Deliberation Gateway? Read the published works Submit a work
- Citizens' Industrial Strategy Report from a set of workshops exploring use of local citizens' assemblies to implement national industrial strategy.
- Festival of Deliberative Accountability A public festival for metabolizing the misinterpretation of fiduciary duty in defined benefit pensions schemes.
- The Pension Paradox: Securing Returns, Eroding Futures Geneva · Building Bridges 2026
Sortition — a live draw
Stratified by housing
- Owns outright
- Mortgaged
- Private rent
- Social rent
The democracy tree in this image is a metaphor for the whole of society; we all live and work in groups, be they families, companies, towns, or faiths, and so on. The tree reminds us that no branch of society can live outside the system.
An effective deliberative democracy draws decision-making cohorts from all parts of society to render judgements on complex issues. Many strategies exist for sampling populations, as well as processes that enable cohorts of strangers to work together well; facilitation ensures that all perspectives are heard, opening the door to the multiple solutions.
Press Draw again to reselect the groups.
Published works, in six series
- Origin 3 works The emergence of deliberation gateway and the arrival of the idea of the sector assembly, in which civic participation guides professional sectors.
- Gateways 4 works Visions for the consequences of deliberative democracy on everyday people and professional careers.
- Proceedings 2 works Each proceeding is a separate attempt to get a sector assembly going: the team we network together, and the workshops and events it holds along the way.
- Conversations 6 works Live explorations of the effect of deliberation in different sectors of society.
- Foundations 1 work Thought experiments linking the physical sciences with deliberative society.
- The Open Table 3 works A doctrine motivated by physical reasoning that views society as a dissipative system. The Open Table presents the decisions individuals must make for themselves, and how those decisions add up to drive society into authoritarian or democratic attractor basins.