Hi All,

I've been pondering on democracy.

What is a democracy - From a dictionary I find -

"government by the people; especially : rule of the majority. b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections."

What is its nature -

In a stable democracy, the majority has the power of decision. Minorities have a duty to accept the majority decision.
(I paraphrase Thomas Jefferson)

I would assume that most members here are proponents of Direct Democracy.

It seems to me that the introduction of Initiative, Referendum and Recall, in any society, give the people the means to affect decision-making in their communities and to implement further enhancements in their governance.

We know the Swiss have such a system, as do about 28 states of the US, in some form or other.

Could it be a project/goal of WDDM, to research how and when I,R&R was implemented in these communities and who was responsible for amending their constitutions.

We could further research the feelings of these communities, before and after implementation of I,R&R.

My point here, is that we have existing, recent models, that we could describe in detail, for the benefit of communities who wish to find a way of integrating any parts of DD into their systems.

A project such as this avoids the need to discuss individual preferences or terminologies or definitions. Everything described would be in context.

WDDM could be saying - Here are some examples of communities, who have some form of DD.

These are the reasons they did it.

This is how they went about it.

This is how they feel about it.

These are some of the things they have achieved.

These have been the disadvantages.

Here are some arguments against DD.

And here is the evidence to support or refute these arguments, using real-world examples of communities that practise some form of DD.

Regards to you all.

Roy