Reclaiming Democracy: The Case for Direct and Participatory Democracy

The latest post in The Revolution Will Be Televised series

[Please note: My recent documentary feature film, How to Save Democracy, is the precursor for this series, The Revolution Will Be Televised. Learn more about the film and how you and/or your organization can host a screening at the film’s website, https://savingdemocracyfilm.com/]

The prior essay I wrote in this series, The Revolution Will Be Televised, was entitled Why Revolutions Start Long Before They Begin. It talked about how we are in urgent need of a nonviolent revolution in the U.S. now because of the reality that the democratic principles the U.S. was founded on are crumbling.

We need systemic change before we reach the point of no return, and even if Donald Trump doesn’t bring us to the point of no return, the pieces are in place for it to occur after Trump is gone from the political scene.

In What Kind of System Do We Want?, I outlined what the features are of a true and egalitarian democracy that works for all. In that essay I also stated that a true democracy is one that is a direct and participatory democracy. So with this essay, I dig deeper into what that specifically means.

Democracy Interrupted

We live in a paradox. Americans are told we live in the world’s greatest democracy — yet most people feel powerless. Approval of Congress hovers near historic lows. Policies supported by vast majorities — universal background checks for guns, paid family leave, affordable healthcare, climate action, abortion, and more — die in legislative gridlock, under the weight of corporate lobbying, or because of edicts from the Supreme Court.

This isn’t a system of self-rule, in which we have a say or the desires of the majority matter—it’s a tyranny of the minority. It’s a system in which elections act as rituals of legitimacy, while real decisions are shaped by wealth and influence behind closed doors. If democracy means “rule by the people,” then we have to face the truth: what we have isn’t working.

But democracy is not a finished product; it is a living practice. And in moments of crisis, people return to its roots: direct participation, collective deliberation, shared decision-making. From ancient citizens’ assemblies to modern digital platforms, the idea of participatory democracy has resurfaced whenever people refuse to be reduced to passive spectators in politics.

What I am doing with this essay is making a call to take participatory and direct democracy seriously — not as utopian dreams, but as necessary foundations for a democratic renewal in the 21st century.

Democracy Before the Nation-State

Political scientists often trace democracy’s origins to Athens or to European Enlightenment thinkers. But as the late anthropologist and writer David Graeber has shown, democracy has far deeper and broader roots. Across cultures, councils, consensus-based decision-making, and assemblies have been core to how communities governed themselves long before parliaments or constitutions existed.

In my film, How to Save Democracy, one of the interview subjects, Michelle Shenandoah, a member of the Oneida Nation, talked about how the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (of which she is a citizen) practiced participatory democracy centuries before the U.S. Constitution.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s democracy was structured around matrilineal authority, consensus, and a duty to consider the impact on the seventh generation. Historians and the U.S. Senate have acknowledged its influence on early American political thought and the framing of the U.S. Constitution — even if it is still marginalized in official histories.

David Graeber’s insight was radical in its simplicity: democracy is not a Western invention. It is humanity’s natural experiment whenever people gather and decide together without kings, bosses, or oligarchs. Seen this way, participatory democracy is not new — it is a return.

From Movements to Models: The 20th Century

The U.S. has seen bursts of participatory energy whenever movements have demanded more than token representation.

• The civil rights movement relied on mass meetings and grassroots assemblies to set agendas, rather than top-down directives.

• The feminist movement experimented with consciousness-raising groups and collective decision-making.

• In the 1960s, activists at Port Huron called for “participatory democracy” to replace the alienation of bureaucratic politics.

Perhaps the most concrete modern example is participatory budgeting, pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where citizens directly allocate portions of city budgets. Since then, participatory budgeting has spread to cities worldwide, giving ordinary people a direct hand in spending decisions that affect their lives.

These models prove a crucial point: direct and participatory democracy are not fringe experiments. They can shape institutions, allocate resources, and guide entire cities.

Digital Democracy: Taiwan’s Experiment

The internet promised democratic renewal — but so far, all it has given us is a toxic brew of misinformation, surveillance, and extreme polarization. Yet in Taiwan, digital tools have been harnessed to expand participatory democracy rather than corrode it.

The initiative known as vTaiwan uses Pol.is, a digital platform that crowdsources opinion by mapping areas of consensus and disagreement. Instead of amplifying conflict, Pol.is encourages people to build consensus statements that cut across partisan lines.

Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first Minister of Digital Affairs, has said of Pol.is, "Pol.is is quite well known in that it's a kind of social media that instead of polarizing people to drive so-called engagement or addiction or attention, it automatically drives bridge-making narratives and statements. So only the ideas that speak to both sides or to multiple sides will gain prominence in Pol.is."

This has been used for real policy issues — from regulating Uber to drafting digital privacy laws. Citizens debate online; government agencies commit to act on areas where broad consensus emerges. It is a working model of “crowd-sourced governance” — one that demonstrates technology’s potential to deepen, not hollow out, democracy.

Ireland’s Citizens’ Assemblies: Democracy Reimagined

When Ireland faced contentious questions — same-sex marriage, abortion rights, climate policy — politicians did something remarkable: they handed decision-making to citizens’ assemblies.

Randomly selected groups of citizens, reflecting the diversity of the nation, were tasked with studying issues, deliberating with experts, and making recommendations. The results were transformative. Proposals that emerged from the assemblies — later confirmed by national referenda — led to major progressive reforms.

Why did it work? Because ordinary citizens, given time and respect, can reason collectively in ways that politicians — trapped in party discipline and election cycles — often cannot. Citizens’ assemblies have since been replicated across Europe and are gaining traction as legitimate democratic innovations.

Five Principles of Participatory Democracy

To move from experiment to revolution, we need guiding principles. Based on David Graeber’s insights, contemporary experiments, and democratic theory, five principles stand out:

• Inclusivity and Equality – Every voice counts equally; systems must intentionally include marginalized groups.

• Deliberation and Dialogue – Decisions emerge from reasoned discussion, not soundbites or shouting matches.

• Consensus Where Possible, Majority Where Necessary – Aim for broad agreement, but retain practical mechanisms for decisions.

• Transparency and Accountability – Processes must be open, and outcomes binding or clearly acted upon.

• Scalability and Adaptability – Structures must work at the neighborhood, city, and even national level, and evolve with technology.

These are not just ideals. They are the foundation for direct and participatory democratic practices that are free of capture by moneyed interests and bureaucratic inertia.

Toward a Participatory Democracy Movement

What would it mean to take participatory democracy seriously in the U.S. today? It would mean:

• Institutionalizing Citizens’ Assemblies at local, state, and national levels to tackle complex policy issues.

• Scaling Participatory Budgeting so communities, not donors, decide on public spending priorities.

• Building Digital Platforms (like Pol.is or new tools) that are open-source, transparent, and shielded from corporate capture.

• Creating Parallel Institutions — grassroots councils, community assemblies, and networks of mutual aid — that model democratic practices even before the state adopts them.

• Tying Movements to Governance — so protest energy translates into sustainable decision-making bodies.

This is how the revolution so badly needed in the U.S. can happen nonviolently: not by tearing down unjust systems, but by building democratic alternatives that render them obsolete.

Obstacles and Possibilities

Skeptics will argue that direct democracy is naïve in a country of 340 million people, and while it might work in a smaller country such as Ireland or other small nations, it can’t work in a large and diverse nation like the U.S.

But the truth is: representative democracy without participation is what is naïve. It assumes that elites will represent us faithfully, even when money and power pull them elsewhere.

And we are seeing in real time the results of how terribly bad that’s going, as we watch democracy go down the tubes.

The challenge is not scale, but will. We already have tools for large-scale participation — from jury duty (random selection) to online platforms (scalable dialogue). What we lack is the political courage to use them.

Every extension of democracy — from ending slavery to women’s suffrage to civil rights — once seemed impossible. Participatory democracy will face the same resistance. But like past expansions, it is both necessary and inevitable.

Conclusion: Democracy is a Practice

If democracy is simply voting once every few years, then we should not be surprised that it feels hollow and is no longer representing the will of the majority. But if democracy is the everyday practice of self-rule, then it is alive, renewable, and revolutionary.

Participatory democracy is not a utopia. It is a path. One that stretches from Indigenous traditions to modern citizens’ assemblies, from Porto Alegre to Taiwan, from the streets to the digital commons.

The task before us is simple but profound: to reclaim democracy not as a slogan or a historical document, but as a shared practice of power. That is how we turn despair into agency, and how the revolution becomes real.

Later in this series I will come full circle later with this vision, when I delve into how parallel institutions, constitutional renewal, and democratic economies can embed direct and participatory democracy at every level of society — from neighborhood citizen assemblies to the rewriting of our most fundamental rules.

And I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say that we truly need to rewrite the most fundamental rules and ways of practicing democracy.

I’ll be back next week with my next installment, Toward a Conscious Democracy: Integrating Systemic Change with Inner Transformation. In this essay, you’ll learn why Gandhi said that “democracy requires a change of heart.”