newDemocracy Foundation
newDemocracy is one of Australia's most active organisations in the deliberative democracy space. It conducts real-world trials using random selection and deliberation — the jury model — to show that citizens, given good information and time to deliberate, can reach considered decisions on complex public issues.
The foundation is non-partisan and works across government, community, and institutional settings. It publishes research on what works, what doesn't, and why — with the explicit goal of making deliberative methods a normal part of democratic governance rather than an experimental curiosity.
Approach
newDemocracy's core argument is that the adversarial, partisan nature of representative democracy produces poor decisions on long-term or complex issues, and that randomly selected citizens' assemblies and juries consistently outperform what elected bodies produce when given the same brief. Their work is empirical — they run trials, document outcomes, and publish findings.
Key people
- Luca Belgiorno-Nettis — founder and principal funder of the newDemocracy Foundation. A Sydney-based infrastructure developer and philanthropist who became a significant advocate for deliberative democracy in Australia after growing disillusioned with conventional politics.1
- Nicholas Gruen — prominent economist and longstanding collaborator, who has presented to DOD on deliberative democracy and the concept of isegoria. One of newDemocracy's most visible intellectual contributors. See 2017 presentation
Links
- Website: newdemocracy.com.au
See also
- Citizens' Assembly
- Sortition
- Isegoria
- Cognitive Division of Labour
- Citizens' Democracy: Presentations and Q&A — Nicholas Gruen and Hubertus Hofkirchner present to DOD, 2017
- Isegoria: The Way Citizens' Juries Deliver It, How Elections Destroy It — Nicholas Gruen in conversation with DOD, 2020
- G1000
- MASS LBP
- DemocracyNext