The Demarchy Manifesto: How to Enlighten, Articulate and Give Effect to Public Opinion

Description

Organising completely open but focused discussion, culminating in final assessment.One of the books that first stimulated interest in sortition was John Burnheim’s Is Democracy Possible?: the alternative to electoral politics (1985). That book showed how a thoroughgoing use of sortition to decentralise decision-making might work, assuming that the necessary constitutional changes could be made. In that sense it was Utopian, lacking a practical program.Demarchy exploits the possibilities of modern communications to give new role to public discussion. It takes the initiative in formulating policy on each specific problem out of the hands of political parties and into the hands of those most strongly affected by that particular problem. John Burnheim explains why this needs to be done and how it can be done by voluntary initiative without constitutional change.Burnheim’s new book The Demarchy Manifesto: for better public policy (2016) suggests first steps towards crucial changes that do not require any constitutional or legislative prerequisites. It suggests a practical way to enlighten, articulate and give effect to public opinion. The book backs its practical suggestions with discussion of the importance of a dynamic in which public discussion is focussed on specific practical problems at each level from local to global decisions, rather than on vague and dangerous ideological generalities. It argues for a way of organising completely open but focussed discussion to give anybody and everybody the opportunity to have a say, ensuring that all the relevant considerations are discussed, but the final assessment is made by a sample of those most substantially affected, favourably or unfavourably by the measures recommended.John Bernard Burnheim (20 April 1927 – 26 October 2023) was an Australian philosopher who was Professor of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney.