Which is the real democracy?

Law under politics versus politics under law.
 

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Home arrow DA:rE - Democracy Ahead: resolve for Europe


The Democratic Recession PDF Print E-mail

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 PDF Print E-mail
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 PDF Print E-mail
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 PDF Print E-mail
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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The Everyday Democracy Index PDF Print E-mail
What are the most democratic countries in Europe? How would we find out? We could look at electoral turnouts. But while elections matter, Demos doesn’t believe that democracy is something that should start and finish at the ballot box.
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