"Online platforms for participatory democracy are flourishing in Italy and they are being initiated by civil society and local governments alike. Some of these tools are limited to 'social reporting,' where citizens are asked to recount problems and disruptions; others strive for empowering people with some sort of liquid democracy that allows people to debate and even propose legislation. But all of these platforms grew out of a deep dissatisfaction toward Italian politics and politicians, as shown by the high level of abstention in the 2013 national elections as well as the contemporary success of the Five Star Movement, an anti-establishment party that suddenly became the second most popular in the parliament's lower house. In the last few years, the economic crisis, the corruption scandals and the governments' inability to make structural reforms - such as changing the current electoral law, which establishes a proportional voting system that does not allow citizens to vote directly for individual candidates - fueled anger as well as political will among the public to demand that government give them a say on all levels of decision-making. "
"This book gives an in-depth insight into the philosophical, political and technological aspects of decision making using the internet and the "secrets" of LiquidFeedback, a computer software designed to empower organizations to make democratic decisions independent of physical assemblies, giving every member of the organization an equal opportunity to participate in the democratic process."
"You can browse what's happening in this test system. If you like to actively participate in this test system, please send your request to test20120629@public-software-group.org and we send you an invitation code with further instructions."
"Liquid Democracy is one of the boldest contemporary innovations in democratic decision-making. The idea uses web technology that allows users to interact in new ways. Its primary innovators are located in Berlin, and Germany has been the first to adopt and apply Liquid Democracy systems in the context of political parties, parliamentary processes, and some organizations."
"In this post we will show some practical examples of how liquid democracy can be understood in terms of, and make use of results from spectral graph theory. For more background please see [Vigna2009]. Wikipedia says:"
