The Future of Self-Governing, Thriving Democracies

This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves. Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the 'democratic spirit' going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavor by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in. This book is of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens' perspectives, aspirations and preferences.

Brigitte Geissel is Professor of Political Science and Political Sociology and Head of the Research Unit 'Democratic Innovations' at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.

Introduction: A Visionary Thriving Democracy Part 1: Thriving Democracies: Principles of self-governing 1. Citizens decide on how they govern themselves 2. Citizens monitor continuous adaption 3. Citizens' will-formation is tightly connected to decision-making Part 2: Why existing democracies fail to realize self-governing 4. Self-governing: citizens' preferences and competencies 5. No established practice suffices to realizing self-governing 6. No existing experiment suffices to realizing self-governing Part 3: Thriving Democracies: Visionary setups for realizing self-governing 7. Practices for will-formation and decision-making 8. Procedures connecting will-formation and decision-making 9. Novel public agencies and legal norms. Conclusion: Thriving Democracies - our future