The recent outcome of a Swiss referendum in which a majority have voted in favour of a minaret ban has helped to highlight a few important issue around the question of direct democracy.
Dan Hannan says that – while direct democracy is a great idea, this particular result is regrettable.
Make of that what you will. For [...]
Posts under ‘Participatory budgeting’
Minarets, trade offs and direct democracy
Empowerment research – yes – actual research….
I went to an interesting seminar last week at the CLG (yes – unusual!) where Prof. Lawrence Pratchett and Dr Catherine Durose from De Montfort University talked about a recent systematic review they have carried out of a number of different empowerment tools. You can find the full report on the CLG site and [...]
The disenfranchisement of the willingly unwired
Reading this post – as good a round-up of the progress and the opportunities I’ve seen made me think about the OfCOM research, published earlier this week that indicated that 43% of ‘unwired adults’ are happy to stay that way.
There’s a parallel, I believe, with the push to create new participatory spaces. Like broadband, the [...]
Participatory budgeting – radio programme
Here’s a radio programme about participatory budgeting in the UK. I’m not sure where it went out first (Tiago Peixoto pointed me towards it via Facebook).
It’s quite short and worth listening to just for the note of joy in a council officer’s voice when she says that people were asking for council tax increases once [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
