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Democracy`s Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World`s Most Popular Form of Government

Michael Mandelbaum, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
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 DA:rE
 
Democracy Ahead:
resolve for Europe
"DA:rE - Democracy Ahead: resolve for Europe” is a Multilevel Platform on the Future of Democracy. DA:rE  is much more than just a new interface onto an old paradigm. It’s a way of thinking, a new perspective on the entire democratic processes - from concept through delivery, from communication through support.
The history of Europe - the EU and its member states - has much to do with the struggle for freedom, equality, participation, and ultimately with the building of democracy. The scope of DA:rE  is to facilitate the widest-based consensus specific to breaking the segregation of interests and to democratizing the beneficiaries' engagement.
 
DA:rE is a users-developed, open, re-search, debate and information area. The DA:rE Platform integrates collaborative -  WikiBee - and community - Be-a-Bee -  applications.


The Democratic Recession

by Thomas Friedman, NYT

There are two important recessions going on in the world today. One has gotten enormous attention. It’s the economic recession in America. But it will eventually pass, and the world will not be much worse for the wear. The other has gotten no attention. It’s called “the democratic recession,” and if it isn’t reversed, it will change the world for a long time.

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Democratising engagement
by Andrea Cornwall for Demos
Citizen engagement has become an essential part of modern government. Gone are the days when the best that citizens could expect was to be told what was good for them.
democ0.jpg Governments around the world are starting to realise that engaging their citizens more in shaping the decisions that affect their everyday lives improves both legitimacy and the quality of public services. In the UK, addressing the democratic deficit is high on the political agenda. But the current model of consultation does not bring in the diversity of voices and perspectives that would make citizen engagement genuinely democratic.
This pamphlet draws on the Institute for Development Studies research project Spaces for Change, examining international attempts to democratise citizen engagement. The case studies show that genuine, inclusive engagement requires investment to create an enabling environment and to support society’s least vocal and least powerful people to find and use their voices. As other countries lead the effort to involve the public in meaningful conversations about policy, the pamphlet argues that the UK has much to learn from their experience.
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Medina @ MIT Media Lab
Medina is a social-networking site based around the idea of exchanging knowledge. The project explores new interfaces for visualizing connections between people and ideas. Knowledge and interests are valuable in and of themselves, but also provide useful structures for traversing the network. The site constantly measures the interactions between people and their interests in order to provide a more accurate picture of what relationships and information are important. The goal is to build an interface that more accurately represents the state of the network.

The word Medina, literally meaning "city" in arabic, is commonly used to describe the original historic part of a Moroccan city. These old historic centers are still extremely active marketplaces. Sociable Media - MIT Media Lab
 
Web 2.0 in the Public Interest
Today’s media system is not a top-down environment, but a “web 2.0” world where each of us can create the content and tell our own story. The key to cultivating this space, is to take our digital destiny into our own hands, by working together in communities across the country to help build a digital media system where democracy, fairness, creative opportunity and social justice are key measures for success.
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