II. The Geneva Roots of Direct Democracy: A Leap across Centuries

Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753

What is most remarkable about Rousseau is his forthright articulation of the principle that citizens and voters control governmental decision-making and implementation. He asserted that every individual is born with inherent birth rights that cannot be transferred or abrogated.

The inherent rights of citizens include the non-transferable right to determine "the general will" in "assemblies" in which they participate and control. While they can assign "magistrate" roles to bodies that transform the decisions into laws, these roles are perfunctory and logistical only.

These views diverge from what is occurring in traditionally democratic forms of representative government in the 21st century. Critics claim they have been altered to transfer to lawmakers and governments prerogatives that belong to voters.

Rousseau foresaw this writing on the wall when he advocated the adoption of the direct democracy practices emerging in the regions that coalesced to form the Swiss Confederation. They include the rights of citizens at the grassroots to conduct initiatives and referendums that were binding on lawmakers.

The Direct Democracy Global Network is designed to provide voters worldwide the direct democracy tools and services needed to create the decentralized "assemblies" recommended by Rousseau. Modern digital technologies make it possible for them to function democratically and be interconnected across election districts. These assemblies can function simultaneously at local, regional, and cross-national levels. By reaching out to build consensus across partisan lines, they can acquire sufficient voting strength to elect lawmakers of their choice. They can address any demands, crises, and emergencies they wish, and formulate any policies and laws they desire.

So where did these unique advances in political thinking originate? Key sources of modern democratic principles and doctrines, according to many historians and analysts, can be traced back to ancient Greece, and renowned philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Yet others consider Switzerland and the 18th century Geneva born Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be just as influential, and possibly more so. For example, Yale University Professor of Political Science Stephen Smith considers Rousseau's unique conceptualizations of human nature, inalienable human rights, "the general will" and the social contract to have exerted an unparalleled influence on political doctrines right up to modern times. (See lectures 18. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Discourse; 19. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau’s Discourse; and 20. Democracy and Participation: Rousseau's Social Contract. I-II).

Born in Geneva in 1712, he was a pioneering advocate of fundamental principles of democracy, who vigorously argued in favor of inalienable individual rights and popular political sovereignty. Specifically, he declared that citizens’ possess the sole power to determine the "the general will", and irrevocably control governing bodies in order to implement their will. Simultaneously, he vigorously refuted the views of wealthy "patrician" families,

Rousseau’s unique and expansive ideas about individual liberty were well-known in the 18th century. His doctrines advocating self-government were also well-known, especially his insistence that government officials are “servants” of the people. He authored the famous Social Contract in which he provided a multi-faceted rationale and numerous prescriptions for building political institutions capable of empowering individuals to use government to protect their liberty. Given the simultaneous emergence of Switzerland’s popular sovereignty doctrines and direct democracy principles, he urged European countries to emulate them.

Although Rousseau’s life was caught up in turbulent cultural, economic, and political upheavals inside and outside his native city, his writings displayed dogged determination to make sense of these upheavals, as Swedish historian and American university scholar describes in Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to The Social Contract, 1749–1762.

As a consequence, Rousseau’s pro-democracy] views were controversial and widely condemned during and after his lifetime, even by those who considered him an unparalleled genius. Although he is regarded as one of the world’s most influential thinkers and authors, the following critique was written by historians Will and Ariel Durant:

“How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths, repudiated by society and civilization, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédie and the Age of Reason, driven from place to place as a dangerous rebel, suspected of crime and insanity . . . how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced . . . the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century?"

He pursued this avocation even when his idiosyncratic formulations for reversing growing inequality evoked criticism from wealthy patricians and aristocratic proponents of social, political, and economic hierarchies. And while he read widely and familiarized himself with the renowned authors of his time, and met many of them in his travels, especially to Paris, his eclectic views were idiosyncratic and non-conformist.

He opposed the censorship of intellectuals’ views and writings by members of both patrician families and aristocrats in Geneva. In retaliation, they frequently banned works and their authors, who could be beaten, and even killed if they deviated from orthodoxy. Nonetheless, even though Rousseau could mince words if necessary to propagate this views and avoid censorship, he rarely went out of his way to conform, even though he often found himself unwelcome in many places throughout his life.

On occasion, Rousseau did try to immerse himself into other ways of thinking aligned with more patriarchal and aristocratic views. They included those espoused by prominent French intellectual Voltaire and prominent partisans in nearby France, which was ruled by an oppressive monarchy ended by a revolution lasting from 1789 -1799. But soon thereafter he repudiated Voltaire and these views, and re-aligned his views with those of the people with whom he grew up in his native city of Geneva, and in surrounding regions that later coalesced into the nation-state of Switzerland.

He delved into ancient history and immersed himself in works written centuries before his time, including those of the Greek philosopher Plutarch. His purview extended from inherent birth rights to institutions and processes he considered indispensable to ensuring ordinary people remain the sole, sovereign decision-makers.

In arguing that lawmakers in government are the servants of the people, he was countering long-standing patriarchal and aristocratic views that were being relentlessly affirmed to create a highly stratified and rigid system of social classes. Undaunted, he painstakingly identified, described, and prescribed specific ways and means by which sovereign citizens can determine the general will, such as gathering together to make decisions, and thereafter voting in elections to decide which "servants" of the people will hold positions in governing institutions."

“Rousseau believed in a legislative process that necessitates the active involvement of every citizen in decision-making through discussion and voting. He coined this process as the “general will”, the collective will of a society as a whole, even if it may not necessarily coincide with the individual desires of each member.” [141] Wikipedia

"Throughout his life he kept returning to the thought that people are good by nature but have been corrupted by society and civilization. He did not mean to suggest that society and civilization are inherently bad but rather that both had taken a wrong direction and become more harmful as they became more sophisticated." Encyclopedia Britannica

Paradoxically, Rousseau signed his original works “J.J. Rousseau, Citoyen de Geneve”. But later, after Geneva elders condemned his books and they were ordered to be destroyed, he renounced his citizenship. Interestingly, he maintained his independent, idiosyncratic views even after they were roundly condemned, and he was declared persona non grata in one place and one country after another. He simply moved on to other less hostile environments where he could find influential people who would protect him.

What makes Rousseau’s 18th century work especially relevant to the Direct Democracy Global Network in the 21st century is its emphasis on the source of political liberty — people’s rights at birth, and the institutions and processes required for them to exercise it -- not on constitutions, laws, court decisions, cultural mores, etc.

What he railed against were the external forces and factors that obstructed this exercise, and limited the possibilities for people to live their lives in their own way, as part of self-defining and self-determining communities.

Rousseau's political views and entreaties exhort us today to re-invent such self-defining communities -- a primary goal of the consensus building, agenda setting, and political organizing technology embedded in the Direct Democracy Global Network. As described in the next section, Rousseau's Geneva-based philosophical and political enlightenment was intertwined with the wisdom of indigenous mountain dwellers in regions that coalesced to became Switzerland, who created and defended unique pathways to exercising and retaining their self-defined political sovereignty.

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III. Swiss Roots of Direct Democracy

Outside the region that eventually coalesced into the nation-state Switzerland, in earlier centuries, neighboring France and the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty were rife with internal and external conflicts and attacks. But one notable exception within the region were people living high in the mountains who co-operated to build peaceful, agrarian communities. They were well-armed and capable of fending off external attackers.

As early as 1291, fiercely independent farmers and peasants banded together to provide each other mutual aid and protection against foreign invaders. As the formal structure of the nation took shape, governing laws were written. They included the insertion of self-governing laws into Switzerland’s evolving governmental structure that entitled Swiss citizens at the grassroots living in “communes” and “cantons”. They created a “direct democracy” form of government that included “initiatives” empowering citizens to directly propose laws to lawmakers, and “referendums” empowering citizens to directly mandate amendments and revocation of existing laws.

Peasants living high in the Swiss mountain ranges banded together to provide each other mutual aid and protection against foreign invaders. They were strong and well-armed, and included the legendary William Tell. He was "an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow", who is credited with slaying a tyrannical Austrian duke. According to the legend,

"Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy. Tell was considered the father of the Swiss Confederacy."

Due to the successes of these early inhabitants of Switzerland in repelling external attackers, more and more of their neighbors in nearby regions joined their mutual aid alliance.

As the formal structure of the nation took shape, governing laws were written. They included self-governing laws inserted into the country’s evolving federal structure by Swiss people living at the grassroots in “communes” and “cantons”. Among the fundamental laws inserted into the constitution, creating a “direct democracy” form of government, are "initiatives" that empower citizens to directly propose laws to lawmakers, and "referendums" that empower citizens to directly mandate amendments and revocation of existing laws. These actions are legitimized by nationwide votes by Swiss citizens to accept or reject specific proposals formulated by Swiss citizens, which mandate implementing actions by federal lawmakers.

What is most impressive in the evolution of the Swiss nation-state is that the people living at the grassroots succeeded in maintaining their autonomy and authority to launch and vote in initiatives and referendums during the several centuries when Switzerland’s statehood was being formalized.

Eventually, a bicameral federal legislature was created, with the lower level comprised of lawmakers representing the population, and the upper level comprised of lawmakers representing the cantons, all subject to implementing the results of referendums and initiatives. Wisely and presciently, rules have been made to prevent any elected lawmaker from serving more than one-year term as president, and prevent any of the multiple Swiss political parties from placing one of their elected lawmakers in the presidency for more than one year.

An important consequence of Switzerland's historic "direct democracy" roots, and evolution into a formal nation-state, is the emergence of political and cultural norms that favor compromise and consensus building to reconcile divergent views. The emergence of these norms was motivated in all likelihood by common recognition of the need to reconcile the internal diversity existing within Switzerland, reflected in distinct, geographically-based cultures; four different languages; and two major religions.

In the early years of forming the Swiss Confederation, the Swiss people most likely agreed that in order to unite internally to build a common front to repel external adversaries, their survival might well depend on their ability to reconcile diversity and avoid being internally divided by domestic quarrels and conflicts. A small country like Switzerland, existing in environments dominated by far larger, well-armed, and often aggressive countries, needed to be as free as possible of internal confrontations in order to circumvent external confrontations with foreign countries. On many occasions in the early days of its existence, what saved the day were the high Swiss mountain ranges which few foreigners could climb better or faster than the Swiss themselves.

What is also salient is about the pervasive, long-standing consensus-building norms is that Swiss federal lawmakers strive to avoid provoking Swiss citizens into launching and passing initiatives and referendums mandating federal lawmakers to change what they have done, or are planning to do. In effect, these fundamental rights, which that empower Swiss citizens at the grassroots possess to decide what laws are passed, revoked, or amended, are reported to exercise an inhibitory influence on lawmaking at the federal level.

Significant benefits of Switzerland's accrued from its internal and external circumstances and environments, however. One such benefit, dating back to the early 1800s, is Switzerland's decision to declare its political neutrality and refusal to take sides in external conflicts. This neutrality has contributed to internal and external stability. In contrast to countries where internal and external conflicts are endemic, and political violence is frequent, the politically neutral, consensus-building Switzerland is internally peaceful, by comparison, and can play a uniquely helpful international role as conflict mediator and peace builder.

In addition, the country has become the home of numerous humanitarian organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and as one of the four major offices of the United Nations. In the difficult times characterizing the first two decades of the 21st century, Switzerland can also serve as an encouraging role model illustrating ways and means to use "direct democracy" to reverse the global decline of democracy.

Although Rousseau urged European countries whose governments were in formation to adopt Switzerland’s model of popular sovereignty based on “direct democracy” model, it was fully functioning and vibrant only in Switzerland.

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III. Political Parties Versus Voters

In Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt recently published book , Tyranny of the Minority: How American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. (Crown, 2023.), they argue the following:

“Democracy is supposed to be a game of numbers: The party with the most votes wins. In our political system, however, the majority does not govern."

"When political leaders realize they can no longer win at the ballot box, they begin to attack the system from within, condoning violent extremists and using the law as a weapon. Unfortunately, our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable."

“It is a pernicious enabler of Minority Rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies — from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand — have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.”

The conclusions reached by Levitsky and Ziblatt are supported by voluminous research conducted outside the US. The advantages of election systems and voting laws and regulations used throughout the world primarily aim at enabling specific political parties political parties to win elections, not at enabling voters to increase their well-being and future prospects. These pro-party systems number in the hundreds, with most designed to enable parties and their candidates to gain control of legislative bodies, and institute various forms of "Minority Rule".

Their main goal is not to help voters determine and express their priorities, nominate candidates, and influence legislation. Rather, their objective is to stir up partisan dissension among a sufficient number of voters and induce them to cast their ballots to vote their candidates into office. Once they hold office in legislative bodies, they enact laws that all too often ignore and even controvene the needs and demands of their constituents.

What is ironic about political parties, especially those that function like the two major parties in the US, is that their competitive, socially divisive norms have been widely criticized as retrograde. They move backwards to undo global progress made in developing norms that increase cooperation and social cohesion.

Evidence of this progress is provided by the research conducted by UC/Berkeley Professor Keltner, which demonstrates the evolutionary strengthening of mutually beneficial norms of cooperation within societies around the world.

Optimistically, his research suggests that the retrograde actions of contemporary political parties, and their self-serving behaviors and conflict-producing interactions, may well be a passing blip in the forward march of humankind, leading towards "the greater good".

Pessimistically, the first US president George Washington feared the opposite, as he warned in his Farewell Address to the American People:

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.""

"The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty."

Cumulative evidence supports Washington's prophetic fears, rather than Keltner's optimism, if we look at exhaustive research about political parties in Europe. For example, research conducted a century ago by German-Italian sociologist Robert Michels focuses on what he refers to as an Iron Law of Oligarchy in which parties are taken over by elites:

"Political parties, including those considered socialist, cannot be democratic, because they quickly transform themselves into bureaucratic oligarchies."

In spite of these antecedents and warnings, political parties largely controlled by elites have become commonplace in representative forms of government.

They claim to provide a bridge between the populace at large, by discerning their needs, transforming them into legislative priorities, and infusing them into electoral processes and decision-making in legislative bodies.

However, numerous indications attest to counteractive purposes and consequences. They include the financial influence of US elites, such as wealthy individuals and elite groups that finance the campaigns and operations of the two major US parties. The legality of influence has been codified by the US Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision, which made it legal for corporations to contribute virtually unlimited amounts of financing to campaigns, directly and indirectly.

These anti-democratic enhancements of the political power of parties and their benefactors increase the importance of the Direct Democracy Global Network, and a clear understanding of its premises and mode of operation.

A simple and objective understanding of existing anti-democratic electoral systems and voter laws is indispensable. Curious people seeking to understand these systems and laws must have explanatory facts, especially those showing that legal bulwarks supporting them are as complicated as the most complex on the planet!

Fortunately, the Direct Democracy Global Network simplifies the processes and tools enabling voters to control elections and legislation -- once voters understand the difference between what they were previously prevented from doing, and what they will be able to do using the network.

To that end, please bear with me as I summarize below in non-technical language three of the major ways that political parties undermine democracy, with particular reference to the two major US political parties:

1. Minority Rule: How a two party system, and elected party lawmakers representing a minority of voters, can enact laws enforceable on a majority of voters.

2. Gerrymandering: How political parties can choose their voters.

3. Unlimited Terms: How lawmakers can remain in office for decades.

The ways and means I describe below, which political parties use to undermine and dismantle democracy, are intertwined with each other, as well as numerous additional factors.

1. Minority Rule

In the US government, a once widely acclaimed democracy, the two major parties and their candidates win elections, typically without viable competition from third parties. They have figured out how to keep winning elections and controlling legislative bodies even though they are supported by a minority of voters.

The American political party authority, Lee Drutman, analyzes the dissimilarity that differentiates the US electoral system from those of nations abroad, concluding that:

"The overwhelming majority of today’s democracies are multiparty democracies... With just two parties, the United States is the strange and different democracy.

"The United States maintains the rare two-party system, but not because Americans affirmatively want just two parties. For almost three decades, most Americans have said they’d like more than the usual two choices. The United States is a two-party democracy because America still uses the same simple plurality system of elections the Framers unthinkingly copied from the British. This antiquated electoral system contributes strongly to maintaining two parties . . . because plurality elections render votes for third parties as “wasted,” and thus few resources go to third parties as a result."

So what is a "plurality election"?

While there are many explanations, the one I find most useful is that a "plurality election" can result in a candidate being declared the winner without receiving a majority of votes cast, namely more votes than any other single candidate, referred to as a "plurality.

How does this work?

Election laws require that when all the votes cast for all the candidates are counted, the candidate who receives the highest number cast is attributed all the votes, even if it is not a majority, and all the seats the election is allocating. None of the other candidates receiving votes is entitled to any seats at all!

This is a very different system -- a quite undemocratic system -- compared to a "multi-party" system, termed a "proportional system".

What is a "proportional system", and why does it enable multiple parties to gain seats in an elective body:

A "proportional system" is one in which several candidates can be allocated seats in a legislature, depending on what proportion of votes they received in an election. In my view, it is understandable why this is the chosen system of most pro-democracy nations, and the anti-democratic US plurality system is used only in the UK and Canada!

2. Gerrymandering

One of the most consequently anti-democratic practices, utilized by both of the two main US political parties, is to change the official boundaries of election districts, using their control of state legislatures. They redraw district boundaries to concentrate voters likely to vote for their candidates, determined by past votes and surveys, and remove voters unlikely to vote for them.

They exclude voters unlikely to vote for their candidates by moving them inside the boundaries of other districts. They can even split up these opposing voters and scatter them among multiple districts where their numbers are too small to elect their candidates.

The two parties have been able to manipulate the election district boundaries in 85% of all Congressional districts nationwide. This assures the party that has redrawn a district's boundaries to favor its candidates that they will win, creating what the parties consider "safe" districts.

They may be "safe" for the party that controls the seats, but they are not "safe" for the voters that oppose their candidates. The resulting 15% of election districts that are not highly "gerrymandered" can elect candidates, but they tend to be elect too few delegates to alter the overall distribution of "safe" seats between the two major political parties.

3. Unlimited Terms

One hallowed democratic tradition is that there should be a steady rotation of elective office holders. It gives aspiring office holders opportunities to be elected to office. Rotation also prevents government officials from holding remunerative and powerful jobs for long periods of time, where they can use the prerequisites of their office to build patronage systems enabling them to remain in office.

For this reason, term limits have been favored by many, as well as opposed by many. Unfortunately, according to a 2020 analysis:

"Nearly one in four incumbents who face term limits seek to circumvent the term limits through various strategies, including constitutional amendments, working with the judiciary to reinterpret the term limits, let a placeholder govern for the incumbent, and cancelling or delaying elections.

Yet no term limits have been placed on the number of terms a lawmaker can hold office in the US Senate and House of Representatives. The result is members can remain in office until they reach seventy, eighty, and ninety years of age. As a result, significant discrepancies have been documented between their priorities and those of their younger constituents and younger generations of voters.

The absence of Congressional term limits adds to the anti-democratic impact of Minority Rule and Gerrymandering. What is clear is this absence is intentional, not accidental. It results from decades of manipulations by political parties of election systems and voting systems, which dismantle institutions and processes essential to fully functioning democracies.

My preceding review of three ways that political parties weaken and dismantle democracy is a simplification of a complexity of factors. Many of them are outside the immediate purview of political parties, but exacerbate their anti-democratic practices. These include the US Electoral College and the representational structure of the Senate, among others such as the US Supreme Court.

Levitsky and Ziblatt refer to the anti-democratic institutions involved as "counter-majoritarian institutions" because they can controvene and contradict the needs and demands of majorities of voters, and even the population at large. In my view, this conceptualization correctly defines the nature of government in the US. It is dominated by counter-majoritarian institutions, processes, and office holders that impose "Minority Rule", which ignores and often counteracts the needs and expressed demands of majorities of voters and even the population at large.

These two Harvard professors convincingly state their case in the following terms:

"Democracy is more than majority rule, but without majority rule there is no democracy. Two domains must always remain within the reach of majorities: elections and legislative decision making. First, those with more votes should prevail over those with fewer votes in determining who holds political office.""

There is no theory of liberal democracy that justifies any other outcome. When candidates or parties can win power against the wishes of the majority, democracy loses its meaning. Second, those who win elections should govern.

From a democratic standpoint, supermajority rules that allow a parliamentary minority to permanently block regular, lawful legislation backed by the majority are difficult to defend. Supermajority rules like the Senate filibuster are often cast either as essential safeguards for minority rights or as mechanisms for compromise and consensus building. But such rules provide partisan minorities with a powerful weapon: a veto. When such vetoes extend beyond the protection of civil liberties or the democratic process itself, they allow legislative minorities to impose their preferences on the majority.

Following Levitsky and Ziblatt's eloquent defense of how elections and legislation should work in an authentic democracy, let's turn to the eloquent defense of multiparty democracy by Lee Drutman (pp. 207-2312):

"Multiparty democracy with proportional representation is the norm among advanced industrial nations."

"Multiparty democracy provides fairer representation and generates more voter engagement."

"Multiparty democracy leads to more complex political thinking, more policy-focused and positive campaigning, and more compromise-oriented politics."

"Multiparty democracy leads to more broadly legitimate, inclusive, and moderate policymaking."

"Multiparty democracies represent racial minorities much more fairly."

"The case for two-party democracy promises majority control and accountability. It delivers neither."

"The case for two-party democracy promises moderation. Three decades of American politics belie that promise."

"Authoritarian populism is a threat across Western democracies. Multiparty democracy is better equipped to handle that threat."

"A multiparty Congress would be a stronger Congress. This would rein in the runaway power of the American presidency."

It is important to keep in mind the advantages of multiparty democracy emphasized by Drutman, in light of the role the Direct Democracy Global Network can play in providing voters direct democracy tools for creating multiparty democracies.

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V. Why Voters Will Re-Invent Democracy

The dramatically increasing global loss of trust in politics and governments around the world will motivate voters to re-invent democracy, and take advantage of the direct democracy tools of the Direct Democracy Global Network.

Motivating factors are documented in the 2024 report of U.S. based Freedom House. It concluded that global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The breadth and depth of the deterioration were extensive. Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in 52 countries, while only 21 countries made improvements. Flawed elections and armed conflict contributed to the decline, endangering freedom and causing severe human suffering. Widespread problems with elections, including violence and manipulation, drove deterioration in rights and freedoms.

According to the University of Gothenberg’s Varieties of Democracy Institute, the number of nations becoming more authoritarian is twice the number of nations becoming more democratic. Authoritarian regimes now comprise nearly 75% of the world’s population – roughly 5.7 billion people.

This global loss was documented in a 2025 cross-national analysis of political trust. It surveyed over 5 million respondents to 3,377 surveys conducted in 143 countries between 1958 and 2019. It was noteworthy that "political trust has been rising in a few smaller countries: Denmark, Ecuador, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland."

US data on trust of trust is particularly worrisome. According to a survey by YouGov.com, more than 50% of US respondents stated they lacked trust and confidence in all three branches of the US government.

The US-based Pew Research Center survey, entitled, “Most Americans Don’t Feel Well-Represented By Congress", contains these findings:

Following the 2018 U.S. mid-term elections, half of registered voters expressed the view the newly elected Congress did not represent their views, including Democrats, Independents and Republicans. So, we . . . asked a broader question: how well Americans felt that Congress represented “people like them.”

By this metric, nobody feels particularly well-served, a result that ties neatly into Americans’ long-standing general dislike of Congress as a whole. Just 5 percent of Americans say that people like them are very well-represented in Congress, and only about a quarter say that they’re even somewhat well-represented. The majority, 59 percent, say they’re not represented so well, or at all.

On this question, men and women are about equally likely to consider themselves poorly represented ― and those over age 65 are among the least happy about it. Self-described conservatives are among the most positive, although the majority still say they’re not being well-served.”

These views date back several decades, according to Pew Research, reported in “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007:

Americans feel increasingly estranged from their government. Barely a third (34%) agree with the statement, “most elected officials care what people like me think,” nearly matching the 20-year low of 33% recorded in 1994 and a 10-point drop since 2002.

Equally concerning is recent research by university scholars addressing US voters' perceptions, demands, and disillusionment, reported by Joshua Kalla and Ethan Porter in a New York Times article, entitled “Opinion | Politicians Don’t Actually Care What Voters Want” (2019)":

Over the past two years, we conducted a study to find out [what voters want]. We provided state legislators in the United States with access to highly detailed public opinion survey data — more detailed than almost all available opinion polls — about their constituents’ attitudes on gun control, infrastructure spending, abortion, and many other policy issues. Afterward, we gauged the willingness of representatives to look at the data as well as how the data affected their perceptions of their constituents’ opinions.

What we found should alarm all Americans. An overwhelming majority of legislators were uninterested in learning about their constituents’ views. Perhaps more worrisome, however, was that when the legislators who did view the data were surveyed afterward, they were no better at understanding what their constituents wanted than legislators who had not looked at the data. For most politicians, voters’ views seemed almost irrelevant.

A case in point of what leads voters' to adopt extremely pessimistic attitudes regarding their potential to reverse their political impotence is the failure of a majority of Americans to compel lawmakers to enact gun control legislation.

Lawmakers belonging to both of the two major US political parties have accepted financial support from gun manufacturers and their lobbyists. American civilians in a population of 340 million have been allowed to purchase and stockpile 400+ million guns, including 20+ million military assault rifles.

Since 1968, more than 1.5 million Americans have died in gun-related incidents, more than in all of the wars in U.S. history, according to data from the U.S. CDC. Thousands of children have been mass-murdered in their schools. Yet this gun violence continues unabated, even after members of Congress have been shot.Yet their colleagues have refused to enact effective gun control legislation.

Unfortunately, many of these losses are regarded as instances of what is termed "political violence." What I find most interesting is the increasingly accepted view that "political violence " is caused by the failure of governments, elections, and lawmakers to resolve conflicts and enact laws preventing them. They are also criticized for fuelling them.

Below is a cogent excerpt from Wikipedia describing how the term can also be used to describe politically motivated violence,

"by violent non-state actors against a state (rebellion, rioting, treason, or coup d'état) or it can describe violence which is used against other non-state actors and/or civilians. Non-action on the part of a government can also be characterized as a form of political violence, such as refusing to alleviate famine or otherwise denying resources to politically identifiable groups within their territory.

Due to the imbalances of power which exist between state and non-state actors, political violence often takes the form of asymmetric warfare where neither side is able to directly assault the other, instead relying on tactics such as guerrilla warfare and terrorism. It can often include attacks on civilian or otherwise non-combatant targets. People may be collectively targeted based on the perception that they are part of a social, ethnic, religious, or political group;[5] or selectively, targeting specific individuals for actions that are perceived as challenging someone or aiding an opponent.[5][6]

The preceding references describe actions that analysts think can amount to "civil war". For example, University of California/San Diego professor Barbara F. Walter writes the following in The Guardian ‘These Are Conditions Ripe for Political Violence’: How Close Is the US to Civil War?':

After the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Florida home, Twitter references to ‘civil war’ jumped 3,000%. Trump supporters immediately went online, tweeting threats that a civil war would start if Trump was indicted. . . Perhaps most troubling, Americans on both sides of the political divide increasingly state that violence is justified. In January 2022, 34% of Americans surveyed said that it was sometimes OK to use violence against the government. Seven months later, more than 40% said that they believed civil war was at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years. Two years ago, no one was talking about a second American civil war. Today it is common.

“If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country. Their targets will be civilians — mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated, Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law. The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.”

Along similar lines, Canadian analyst Stephen Marche also writes in The Guardian:"The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it".

The legal system grows less legitimate by the day. Trust in government at all levels is in freefall, or, like Congress, with approval ratings hovering around 20%, cannot fall any lower. Right now, elected sheriffs openly promote resistance to federal authority. Right now, militias train and arm themselves in preparation for the fall of the Republic. Right now, doctrines of a radical, unachievable, messianic freedom spread across the internet, on talk radio, on cable television, in the malls.

The consequences of the breakdown of the American system are only now beginning to be felt. January 6 wasn’t a wake-up call; it was a rallying cry. The Capitol police have seen threats against members of Congress increase by 107%. The United States needs to recover its revolutionary spirit, and I don’t mean that as some kind of inspirational quote. I mean that, if it is to survive, the United States will have to recover its revolutionary spirit. The crises the United States now faces in its basic governmental functions are so profound that they require starting over. . .Once again, as before, the hope for America is Americans. But it is time to face what the Americans of the 1850’s found so difficult to face: The system is broken, all along the line. The situation is clear, and the choice is basic: reinvention or fall.

Marche further states: ‘America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it’. In his 2022 book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, he sounds the alarm:

"The United States is a textbook example of a country headed towards civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little – if anything – is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic. Belief in democracy is ebbing. The legitimacy of institutions is declining. America increasingly is entering a state where its citizens don’t want to belong to the same country. These are conditions ripe for political violence."

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VI. Ten Steps

Key premises of the Direct Democracy Global Network, and ten recommended steps for using it, are supported by several decades of research demonstrating the value and efficacy of crowdsourcing.

They include New York University Professor Clay Shirky, who was among the first to recognize the transformative potential of political crowdsourcing.

He analyzed the web-based activities of self-selecting groups of people without previous organizational ties coming together to solve problems. Shirky’s prescient understanding of the combined power of these phenomena is described in Wikipedia as follows:

In his book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations., Shirky explains how he has long spoken in favor of crowdsourcing and collaborative efforts online. . . . He discusses the ways in which the action of a group adds up to something more than just aggregated individual action. . . The fourth and final step is collective action, which Shirky says is ‘mainly still in the future.’ The key point about collective action is that the fate of the group as a whole becomes important.

Shirky's insights undergird core premises of the Direct Democracy Global Network. One key premise is that voters can and will use network tools to create their own immediately responsive, democratic, and flexible online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions controlled by the voters who build and manage them. The members of these voter-controlled entities can use network tools and technologies, especially the voting utility, to adopt, update, share, and publicize evolving priorities, while functioning democratically on an ad hoc basis.

They do not have to transform their blocs, parties, and coalitions into formal organizations, although they can choose to formalize their existence and operations if circumstances warrant -- e.g. if they wish to officially register their existence in specific election districts in order to obtain official ballot lines in chosen districts. Even then, these parties do not have to replicate the rigid structures, ideologies, agendas, and operations of traditional parties that have been in existence for decades, which may not serve the interests and resonate with contemporary voters and people at the grassroots.

In addition to Shirky’s contributions, the research and work of Nobel laureate and American economist Elinor Ostrom PhD lend empirical support to a core premise of the Direct Democracy Global Network.

In her article, Are Ordinary People Able to Self-Organize?, she asserts that self-selecting groups of people -- such as crowdsourced blocs of voters using the Direct Democracy Global Network -- are capable of governing themselves and their local communities.

Her extensive fieldwork focused on how people interact with ecosystems such as forests, fisheries, and irrigation systems, challenging the conventional wisdom that ordinary people weren’t able to successfully manage natural resources without any regulation or privatization. She believed that people are perfectly capable of taking control of decisions that affect their lives.” Ostrom described eight design principles that affect the success of self-organized governance systems, for example collective choices, mechanisms of conflict resolution and the recognition of a community’s self-determination by the authorities.” [italics added]

Ostrom's findings support the premise that voters that can effectively and flexibly use the Direct Democracy Global Network without having to build or transform their own votings blocs, parties, and coalitions into formal organizations. They can choose to formalize their existence and operations if circumstances warrant -- e.g. if they wish to officially register their existence in specific election districts in order to obtain official ballot lines in chosen districts. Even then, these parties do not have to replicate the rigid structures, ideologies, agendas, and operations of traditional parties that have been in existence for decades, which may not serve the interests and resonate with contemporary voters and people at the grassroots.

These options and flexibility are inherent in the ten steps described in the infographics below.

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VII. The Global Good News

Collective Intelligence and the Global Brain

In 1982, British intellectual Peter Russell published an unusual book. He was a University of Cambridge graduate in theoretical physics, experimental psychology, and computer science, and his book was entitled The Global Brain. Few people at the time grasped the meaning of the book's title, or the future impact of the connections Russell foresaw between technology and people. I had the pleasure of meeting Russell at that time, but I did not realize how prophetic his concepts would prove to be.

Many years later, informed adherents of the global brain hypothesis assert the following:

"The Internet increasingly ties its users together into a single information processing system that functions as part of the collective nervous system of the planet"

"The global brain is a neuroscience-inspired and futurological vision of the planetary information and communications technology network that interconnects all humans and their technological artifacts. As this network stores ever more information, takes over ever more functions of coordination and communication from traditional organizations, and becomes increasingly intelligent, it increasingly plays the role of a brain for the planet Earth."

This is reassuring news in the face of increasingly uncoordinated and disruptive events that are jeopardizing people's lives and livelihoods around the world.

It is also reassuring that prestigious academic institutions, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed Russell's conceptual lead and created organizations dedicated to taking advantage of the possibilities Russell described:

"The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence explores how people and computers can be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any person, group, or computer has ever done before."

One of the Center's research scientists, Mark Klein, zeroes in on the challenges facing us:

"Humanity now finds itself faced with pressing and highly complex problems – such as climate change, the spread of disease, international and economic insecurity, and so on - that call upon us to deliberate together at unprecedented scale, incorporating the input of large numbers of experts and stakeholders in order to find and agree upon the best solutions to adopt."

"While the Internet now provides the cheap, capable, and ubiquitous communication infrastructure needed to enable crowd-scale deliberation, current technologies (i.e. social media tools such as email, forums, social networks, and so on) fare very poorly when applied to complex and contentious problems, producing toxic inefficient processes and highly sub-optimal outcomes."

I had the pleasure of getting to know Klein and his work years ago, which I found to be inspirational with respect to my own work in developing the Direct Democracy Global Network. I especially appreciate this statement of his goals:

"My research mission is to develop technology that helps large numbers of people work together more effectively to solve difficult real-world challenges. It seems that many of our most critical collective decisions have results (e.g. in terms of climate, economic prosperity, and social stability) that none of us individually want, suggesting that our current collective decision-making processes are deeply flawed. I'd like to contribute to fixing that problem."

"My approach in inherently multi-disciplinary, drawing from artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, data science, operations research, complex systems science, economics, management science, and human-computer interaction, amongst other fields."

Whew! I find it encouraging that forward-looking members of the world's scientific community are focused on resolving technologically the challenges I've described in the preceding sections.

Truth-Telling-Technology and Large Scale Consensus Building

Many of us are familiar with reports of the negative impact of biased social media and misinformation created by divisive algorithms. But astute analysts, especially Oxford University's Polonski, dismiss this bad news and replace it with good news, by emphasizing the positive impact technology can play.

"It is easy to blame AI technology for the world’s wrongs (or for lost elections), but there’s the rub: the underlying technology is not inherently harmful in itself. The same algorithmic tools used to mislead, misinform and confuse can be repurposed to support democracy and increase civic engagement. After all, human-centred AI in politics needs to work for the people with solutions that serve the electorate."

"There are many examples of how AI can enhance election campaigns in ethical ways. For example, we can program political bots to step in when people share articles that contain known misinformation. We can deploy micro-targeting campaigns that help to educate voters on a variety of political issues and enable them to make up their own minds. And most importantly, we can use AI to listen more carefully to what people have to say and make sure their voices are being clearly heard by their elected representatives."

Fortunately, the unbiased AI algorithms and fact-checking technology of the Direct Democracy Global Network enables voters to counteract divisive social media disinformation that obstructs debate, consensus building, and compromise, which democracies require in order to survive attempts to convert them into authoritarian governments.

Recent multidisciplinary research indicates that consensus building is a key piece within the mosaic of pieces required to create fully functioning democracies. Most importantly, consensus building can be encouraged and expanded everywhere.

One successful research project was conducted by Professor Beau Sievers and his teams of researchers at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Their findings demonstrate that settings can be devised that are conducive to consensus building among diverse groups of people who did not previously know each other. (See "How consensus-building conversation changes our minds and aligns our brains". (2024))

"A few years ago, Dr. Sievers devised a study to improve understanding of how exactly a group of people achieves a consensus and how their individual brains change after such discussions."

"The results . . . showed that a robust conversation that results in consensus synchronizes the talkers’ brains — not only when thinking about the topic that was explicitly discussed, but related situations that were not.

"The study also revealed at least one factor that makes it harder to reach accord: a group member whose strident opinions drown out everyone else.”

“The groups with blowhards were less neurally aligned than were those with mediators."

Perhaps more surprising, the mediators drove consensus not by pushing their own interpretations, but by encouraging others to take the stage and then adjusting their own beliefs — and brain patterns — to match the group. . . Being willing to change your own mind, then, seems key to getting everyone on the same page.”

Being able to change one's mind is characteristic of many more people than we are led to believe, as the result of the onslaught of "fake news" disseminated by social media. Research findings indicate that issue stances and legislative priorities of mainstream voters tend towards “the center” of the political spectrum.

Their “centrist” views tend to diverge from those of partisan electoral candidates, incumbent lawmakers, political party activists, and donors, whose priorities tend towards the “right” and “left” of the political spectrum.

While the views of activists on extreme ends of this spectrum are more likely to be polarized, those of mainstream voters are not. This discrepancy dates back to the 1970’s, according to research conducted by Stanford University Professor Morris Fiorina, "Politicians more polarized than voters, Stanford political scientist finds".

These findings enable me to conclude on a positive note, and cite my own work on political consensus building across partisan lines, which has generated the core premises of the Direct Democracy Global Network.

The network enables voters to build consensus across partisan lines, within their home countries and cross-nationally. They can access the network free of charge and use these tools and technologies to build large scale online voting blocs, political parties, and electoral coalitions with sufficient voting strength to defeat and replace unresponsive lawmakers.

Mainstream voters whose critical thinking capabilities and political views are unaffected by social media disinformation can connect online 24//7 to build consensus across partisan lines.

Voters can create cross-partisan electoral majorities, and circumvent Minority Rule candidates, lawmakers and governments that enable partisan minorities to ignore and overrule popular majorities, and even prevent their emergence.

In essence, the network enables voters to re-invent democracy using expanded direct democracy tools inspired by Geneva's Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alpine dwellers in the mountains that formed the nation of Switzerland that pioneered direct democracy practices and laws.

In addition, voters can honor the advice of prescient American presidents, especially George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and heed their warnings. They can take advantage of the breakthroughs achieved by members of the scientific community forging new technological pathways to democracy.

And on a personal level, by joining the Direct Democracy Global Network, they can apply the lessons they have been learning since the dawn of the 21st century: Voters hold the keys to the future. Yes, the best is yet to come!

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Appendices

Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Direct Democracy :

"Direct democracy is one of the special features of the Swiss political system. It allows the electorate to express their opinion on decisions taken by the Swiss Parliament and to propose amendments to the Federal Constitution. It is underpinned by two instruments: initiatives and referendums.

"In Switzerland the people play a large part in the decision-making process at all political levels. All Swiss citizens aged 18 and over have the right to vote in elections and on specific issues. The Swiss electorate are called on approximately four times a year to vote on an average of fifteen such issues.

"Citizens are also able to propose votes on specific issues themselves. This can be done via an initiative, an optional referendum, or a mandatory referendum. These three instruments form the core of direct democracy."

Popular initiative

"The popular initiative allows citizens to propose an amendment or addition to the Constitution. It acts to drive or relaunch political debate on a specific issue. For such an initiative to come about, the signatures of 100,000 voters who support the proposal must be collected within 18 months. The authorities sometimes respond to an initiative with a direct counter-proposal in the hope that a majority of the people and the cantons support that instead."

Optional referendum

"Federal acts and other enactments of the Federal Assembly are subject to optional referendums. These allow citizens to demand that approved bills are put to a nationwide vote. In order to bring about a national referendum, 50,000 valid signatures must be collected within 100 days of publication of the new legislation."

Mandatory referendum

"All constitutional amendments approved by Parliament are subject to a mandatory referendum, i.e. they must be put to a nationwide popular vote. The electorate are also required to approve Swiss membership of specific international organisations."

Swiss Confederation: Political System.

"Switzerland is governed under a federal system at three levels: the Confederation, the cantons and the communes. Thanks to direct democracy, citizens can have their say directly on decisions at all political levels. This wide range of opportunities for democratic participation plays a vital role in a country as geographically, culturally and linguistically varied as Switzerland."

"Since becoming a federal state in 1848, Switzerland has expanded the opportunities it provides for democratic participation. Various instruments are used to include minorities as much as possible — a vital political feature in a country with a range of languages and cultures. The country’s federal structure keeps the political process as close as possible to Swiss citizens. Of the three levels, the communes are the closest to the people, and are granted as many powers as possible. Powers are delegated upwards to the cantons and the Confederation only when this is necessary."

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