Direct democracy

OpenAid is promoting the idea of letting local beneficiaires and stakeholders of development projects participate in the development policy debate regarding their region. This element of our proposed Public Online Monitoring initiative is a form of direct democracy and we feel part of the international movement for direct democracy.

From an organisational point of view, it is easier for a small group of insiders decide on policy, approaches and processes in development aid, just like in any other endeavour. From a knowledge point of view numerous studies on crowdsourcing are pointing to the high quality of crowd decisions if diversity, decentralisation and independence of crowd members are guaranteed. From a democratic point of view, participation of an civil society in policy decisions is not an merely an option, it is the essence of democracy. The movement on democratic participation has been growing slowly and consistently in the last decades. Prominent examples of democratic participation have been the referenda in different European countries on the Lisbon treaty.

All around the world direct democracy initiatives are spreading, promoting referenda and other forms of civic involvement. In Germany Mehr Demokratie is active on local, regional and national level. In Europe the European Citizens Initiative and its open consultation process is a prominent example. A very specific form of direct democracy and participation are participatory budgets, where citizens of villages and cities participate in budget planning of their local government. Participatory budgeting is for example on the agenda of Africities, the Pan-African local government days conference held in Marakech in December 2009. The network Bürgerhaushalt  in Germany is connecting a large number of German communes experimenting with participatory budgeting.