Concepts

A reference collection of concepts relevant to open democracy — from foundational ideas to specific mechanisms and organisational forms.

These pages are discovery aids — brief orientations to help you find better sources, not authoritative explanations. Content comes from DOD member discussions and events where noted, and points outward to external sources for depth. DOD is nonpartisan and agnostic to any specific democratic model; inclusion of a concept here is not an endorsement.

Democratic theory and critique

Article	Summary
Accountability Sink	Structural feature of organisations that absorbs consequences so no one can be held responsible — and why it matters for democratic design
Cognitive Division of Labour	Schumpeter and Gruen's concept: not everyone can have views on everything — democratic systems need mechanisms for navigating who decides what
Cybernetic Governance	Applying Stafford Beer's Viable System Model to diagnose and redesign governance — feedback loops, complexity, and adaptation
Isegoria	Ancient Greek principle of equal political voice — and why elections undermine it while citizens' juries restore it
Tribal Epistemology	When group identity determines what people believe rather than evidence — and the implications for democratic deliberation
Vanguardism and Consultative Democracy	The theory that a disciplined party can represent collective interests better than unmediated popular will — and how this produces a distinct model of democratic legitimacy
Utopian Realpolitik	A working disposition for democracy practitioners engaging across systems — holding idealistic goals while finding genuine common ground in good faith with systems that hold very different democratic values

Core democracy concepts

Article	Summary
What is Democracy?	An overview of democracy as a concept and system
Democracy	Definition, types, and principles
Direct Democracy	Citizens vote directly on laws and policies
Representative Democracy	Citizens elect representatives to decide on their behalf
Liberal Democracy	Representative democracy with protected civil liberties
Constitutional Democracy	Democracy governed by a constitution limiting state power

Democratic mechanisms

Article	Summary
Citizens' Assembly	Randomly selected citizens deliberate on policy questions
Consensus Mapping	Surfacing areas of public agreement at scale rather than amplifying disagreement — used in Taiwan's vTaiwan process
Issue-Based Direct Democracy	The Flux Party's mechanism — voting on individual bills with delegable votes and political capital for abstaining
Radical Transparency	Governance practice of making all processes and decisions public by default and in real time
Liquid Democracy	Voting system combining direct participation with transitive, revocable delegation
Prediction Markets	Markets where participants bet on policy outcomes to aggregate dispersed knowledge — applied to democratic deliberation
Sortition	Selection of officials or jurors by random lot
Mixed-Member Proportional Representation	Electoral system combining constituency seats with proportional top-up seats
End-to-End Verifiable Voting System	Voting systems where voters can verify their vote was counted correctly
E-Government	Digital delivery of government services and participation
Organisations of World Citizens	Global civic organisations and world citizenship concepts

Workplace and economic democracy

Article	Summary
Economic Democracy	Extending democratic principles into economic institutions — cooperative and mutual forms vs. shareholder-primacy structures
Workplace Democracy	Democratic decision-making structures within organisations
Worker Cooperatives	Businesses owned and governed by their workers
Community Business	Enterprises owned and run by local communities
Cooperative	Member-owned organisations governed on a one-member-one-vote basis
Decentralized Autonomous Organization	Blockchain-based organisations governed by smart contracts
Employee Ownership Trusts	Trust structures enabling employee ownership of businesses
Employee Stock Ownership Plans	Plans giving employees ownership stakes in their employer
Equity Compensation Plans	Structures for sharing company equity with employees