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Category Archives: Rethinking book

Rebuilding Democracy

Posted on August 1, 2025 - 2:34 pm by
Space shuttle starting, picture by NASA

Rebuilding Democracy: From Insight to Movement

The Strategy to Restore Efficacy in a Fragmented World

Democracy is in retreat. Across much of the world, citizens feel disempowered, misrepresented, and frustrated with how politics works—or doesn’t. A growing number no longer believe that voting every few years for distant politicians can shape their lives or solve urgent problems. Trust is eroding, populism is rising, and the stakes—from climate breakdown to social cohesion—have never been higher.

Yet this crisis is not inevitable. It is the result of institutions that no longer fit the societies they were built to govern. Democracy has not failed because people lost interest in freedom, but because its inherited form—based on collective blocs and party systems—no longer reflects how individuals live, work, and connect today. What has failed is a structure, not a principle.

Rebuilding Democracy is the strategy for renewal.
Building on the book Rethinking Democracy, it turns the framework of Civil Democracy into a practical roadmap for rebuilding democratic efficacy—step by step, from understanding to new institutions.

The New Framework: Civil Democracy

Civil Democracy provides the institutional architecture for restoring the link between participation and impact. It enables citizens to act responsibly together—individually empowered, collectively effective.

At its core are two freedoms:

  • Meta-decision freedom: the right of every citizen to choose how to participate—directly, through trusted delegates, or through combinations of both.
  • Actor openness: the inclusion of all actors who earn public trust—civil society, academia, associations, communities—rather than confining representation to political elites.

Digital tools make this flexibility scalable and transparent. Citizens can see how their trust shapes outcomes, and open actors must make their reasoning visible. The result is a living circuit of accountability and efficacy—a democracy that works because it restores responsibility where it was lost.

From Understanding to Movement

If democracy is to be rebuilt, insight must become action. Civil Democracy offers the model; the Movement of Movements provides the method.

Across nations and systems—democratic or authoritarian, local or transnational—citizens can begin the same journey: turning awareness of failure into agency. The process unfolds through seven steps that transform disillusionment into structured renewal.

The Seven Steps of Democratic Renewal

  1. Understanding – Recognize that the roots of democratic failure are institutional, not cultural. The problem is structural—and therefore solvable.
  2. Awareness – Realize that each of us has participated in a culture of delegation and must now reclaim responsibility as citizens.
  3. Outreach – Turn insight into connection. Build networks of trust by speaking openly about dysfunction and possibility.
  4. Platform – Create shared digital infrastructure for deliberation and decision-making at scale, governed by citizens rather than capital.
  5. Political Capacity – Learn to act together: develop collective intelligence and coordination to make decisions that matter.
  6. New Institutions – Translate movement into governance. Embed Civil Democracy into hybrid, federal, and participatory institutions that restore accountability.
  7. Better Life – Experience democracy as a living system of cooperation and shared purpose—where trust replaces resentment and governance serves the common good.

A Living Dynamic

These steps do not describe a campaign with an endpoint but a rhythm of renewal. Each local initiative can become a node in a broader movement of movements, exchanging experience, tools, and legitimacy. The goal is not uniformity but connected responsibility: autonomous communities linked through shared learning and mutual trust.

Civil Democracy thus becomes both an institutional and cultural transformation. It turns spectatorship into co-authorship, complaint into contribution. Responsibility becomes the new form of freedom: not freedom from others, but freedom with others—to shape our shared world.

Learning, Responsibility, and Hope

Every act of participation generates knowledge. Through interoperable digital systems, Civil Democracy transforms this experience into a living science of democracy—learning loops that make governance self-correcting and self-improving.

This union of hope and realism defines the project’s moral core. Hope, because citizens can again govern themselves; realism, because structural irresponsibility can be changed only through structural reform. Rebuilding democracy is not about idealism—it is about competence, trust, and responsibility.

Join the Movement

Rebuilding Democracy is an invitation—to citizens, students, institutions, and movements—to make democracy real again. Each of us can begin where we stand: forming deliberative circles, connecting initiatives, testing Civil Democracy in practice.

Together, these actions will build the first planetary infrastructure for responsible governance.

Click on “Learn” to read more and create an account to join this emerging movement of movements. You find the full paper under https://civil-democracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Scholtz-Movement-of-Movements-7-Steps.pdf.

The children of tomorrow will ask: “Why did you let the old system keep failing?”
Let our answer be: “We didn’t. We built something better.”

 

The Uniting Element in Reconciling Divided Societies and Building Global Governance

Posted on July 30, 2025 - 5:56 pm by
Presentation title Democratic Efficacy: The Missing Link in the Too-Long Unsuccessfully Tried

Recently, the possibility opened up to present the Civil democracy approach to Rebecca Shoot, Co-Convener at the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court (WICC) and former Executive Director at Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS). I was especially happy because Rebecca’s recent work with CGS was aimed at global governance, while her ongoing one at the WICC has a focus on divided societies and intractable conflict, a wide areas with cases as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, the recently reheated conflict between India and Pakistan, with cases currently seen as more historically conflictive but with ongoing potential for violence as Bosnia/Herzegovina, Cyprus, or Rwanda, or cases of societies in continuous struggles to build peaceful relations among their members and social groups, as Lebanon or South Africa. Her work thus bridges two fields in which the demand for better institutions is most present. I have worked on both areas, but at that time my theoretical conceptions seem not yet have been clear enough, so that none of that work has been able to publish so far, and I was thrilled by the challenge to present both vastly different fields under one uniting perspective and eager to see whether I would be able to communicate the advantages of Civil democracy in both fields better this time.

Presentation slide with the text: Two Long-Time Riddles Global Governance The current global institutional system is in legitimacy crisis because people don’t see themselves as political agents in global governance. Private actors and informal multi-stakeholder arrangements in global governance disempower ordinary citizens. Global institutions fail to build democratic agency from below. Divided Societies In many conflict zones, people need to escape conflictive narratives and passive defense for common problem solving. Current attempts build on politicians facing the incentive of building internal legitimacy conflictively. Peace is made by people, not by politicians. Two different areas, one common problem:

The second slide introduces the common perspective in form of the common problem of democratic efficacy:

Democratic Efficacy The fact that people feel heard and part of the political process through their formal democratic participation Needed for democratic global governance as well as pacifying divided societies Once partly realized, today mostly lost, plus a table that describes democratic efficacy in the Second half of 20th century in Western societies (+few others) as Realized through group homogeneity norms, in most non-Western societies as Unrealized, globally in this period as Realized through national representation, and in the 21st century in Western societies (+few others) Increasingly unrealized through individualization, in most non-Western societies as unrealized, and globally as Increasingly unrealized through globalization.

Slide #3 introduces how the problem can be solved:

Regaining Democratic Efficacy: Identifying the problem "The one vote on the ballot": "Partitioning representation" Demands people to join non-overlapping groups for representation Works only if such groups exist: pre-media counties, pre-1968 classes Regaining democratic efficacy is possible Decision orientation Individualizing participation Individualizing representation For areas as global governance and divided societies Vision: Long-term democratic efficacy builds peace and prosperity Strategy: Implementation possible through small-starting movements

Slide #4 dives deeper into the “How” of regaining democratic efficacy:

How Does It Work? Decision orientation Making important decisions with individualized participation and representation, rendering representative positions less important. Accepting complex decisions with many (incl. compromise) options Retrieving option rankings from all citizens without overload Individualizing participation Mixing direct-democratic participation and representation through the 'meta-decision freedom' to either participate of be represented Indirect ranking as decision proposal or for representation Individualizing representation Splitting and specifying the vote allows to include all political actors from traditional actors to specialized civil society organizations Named 'Civil democracy' for empowering citizens and civil society

And the fifth slide is already the last, describing the current perspective:

What Next? Spreading the word Rethinking Democracy to be launched late 2025 Search for cooperation partners in five areas Western societies, public media, urban governance, Middle East, global (esp. climate) governance Funding and (re-)building a platform On existing but non-scalable prototype Starting the 'Movement of movements' e.g. for global governance: Connecting transnational climate NGOs for democratically mandated civil society representation and own collective decision proposals at upcoming COP negotiations. For further information: hanno.scholtz@uzh.ch, +41.79.755.3227

Let me know what you think of the presentation!

Rethinking Democracy: The Brainstorming Canvas

Posted on June 26, 2025 - 9:22 am by
A large creative brainstorming session about democracy, set in a modern, light-filled room with people of diverse backgrounds engaged in animated discussion, sticky notes and sketches of institutions, arrows, and big questions on whiteboards and glass walls

When writing Rethinking Democracy, I began with a simple but challenging premise: that the crisis of democracy we are living through is not just political, but intellectual. To respond, we need more than critique—we need creativity.

This page presents a piece of the creative process that helped shape the book but ultimately didn’t make it into the final chapters: a deliberately open-ended, generative brainstorming canvas. It emerged from a mix of my own thinking, conversations with colleagues and friends, and experiments with generative AI tools. You could call it the “divergent phase” of the project, where I explored—without judgment—a wide range of directions for how to rethink democracy from the ground up.

The result is a long, eclectic list of possible avenues: some theoretical, some practical, some focused on new institutional designs, others on neglected historical or cultural perspectives. It includes wild ideas and sober ones. What unites them is their starting point: the belief that our current democratic systems are structurally out of sync with the needs and capacities of today’s societies—and that we must begin to imagine better ones.

While the book itself moves forward from this brainstorming phase into the more focused and convergent process of building a new theoretical framework around democratic efficacy, this list remains a valuable reference. It serves as both a map of early exploration and an invitation: to think more freely, to go wider before going deeper, and perhaps to spark ideas of your own.

Whether you arrived here by following a link in the book or simply browsing the Civil Democracy blog, I invite you to browse the list with curiosity. Use it in workshops, share it with students, debate it in your organization. Most importantly, feel free to contribute your own ideas. Rethinking democracy is not a task for one mind alone.

Here is what a mixture of my own brainstorming, discussions with friends, and prompting generative AI brought forward:

The Brainstorming Canvas

Expanding Theoretical Frameworks

  1. 1. Work More Interdisciplinarily – Break the silos between political science, psychology, sociology, history, and even fields like neuroscience and computer science to better understand democratic decline and renewal.
  2. 2. Apply Complex Systems Theory – Treat democracy as a system with feedback loops and tipping points, allowing for predictive modeling and resilience strategies.
  3. 3. Use More Institutionalist Theory – Focus on historical institutionalism to examine how democratic institutions evolve and become rigid, and develop more adaptive institutional designs.
  4. 4. Bring in Individual Human Agency – Shift attention to an individualist, actor-based understanding how individual agency, decision-making, and social identity formation contribute to democratic crises.
  5. 5. Turn from Negative Thinking to Positive Thinking – Instead of fixating on crises, analyze what made democracies work during their most stable periods (e.g., the 1950s–1980s) and how to recreate those conditions today.
  6. 6. Institutional Ecologies Approach – Study democratic institutions as interconnected systems affected by economic, technological, and cultural shifts, rather than isolating them from broader social structures.
  7. 7. Actor-Network Theory in Politics – Consider non-human actors (social media algorithms, climate change, economic structures) as political forces shaping democratic stability.

Methodological Innovations

  1. 8. Longitudinal Psychological Studies – Track how political values and democratic commitments change over time, particularly focusing on younger generations who exhibit declining attachment to democracy.
  2. 9. Big Data & Machine Learning in Democracy Studies – Use AI to analyze large-scale democratic trends, mapping institutional breakdowns, trust erosion, and policy failures across time and space.
  3. 10. Experimental Political Science – Implement real-world experiments testing interventions to restore democratic trust, such as deliberative town halls, digital participatory platforms, and media literacy programs.
  4. 11. Narrative Framing in Democracy Studies – Investigate how different ways of framing democracy (e.g., as a moral duty vs. a pragmatic problem-solving tool) influence public commitment to democratic norms.

New Institutional Designs

  1. 12. Designing Participatory Bureaucracies – Explore ways to make bureaucracies more directly accountable to citizens, such as through citizen juries evaluating policies or rotating citizen advisory councils.
  2. 13. Decentralized Digital Governance Models – Examine blockchain-based voting, digital deliberation forums, and crowd-sourced legislation to enhance participatory governance.
  3. 14. Rethink Political Party Structures – Investigate hybrid models of representation that combine direct democracy, deliberative democracy, party-based systems, or something completely new to better reflect modern societies.

Alternative Historical & Comparative Perspectives

  1. 15. Comparative Studies with Non-Western Democracies – Study successful democratic adaptations outside the Western model, such as Taiwan’s digital participatory democracy or Botswana’s traditional democratic institutions.
  2. 16. Revisit Pre-Democratic Political Systems – Examine governance structures from history (e.g., city-state confederations, tribal councils) to extract lessons on sustainable political participation.
  3. 17. Study the Breakdown of Other Democratic Systems – Compare past cases of democratic collapse (e.g., the Weimar Republic, post-colonial democracies) to find common failure patterns and strategies for resilience.

Public Engagement & Communication Strategies

  1. 18. Rethinking Democracy Education – Move beyond traditional civics courses to interactive, gamified experiences that engage citizens in democratic decision-making from a young age.
  2. 19. Leveraging Pop Culture for Democratic Renewal – Investigate how democracy-friendly narratives in film, TV, and literature can reinforce democratic norms and combat political cynicism.
  3. 20. Make Democracy More Tangible – Develop initiatives that allow people to experience direct democratic impact in everyday life, from neighborhood decision-making to participatory budgeting.

Policy & Institutional Action

  1. 21. Global Democratic Alliances – Study the potential of transnational democratic institutions as counterweights to national democratic backsliding, learning from bodies like the EU or Nordic Council.
  2. 22. Measuring & Benchmarking Democracy Health – Develop more real-time, multidimensional democracy indices that go beyond traditional metrics like election fairness to assess trust, polarization, and participatory health.
  3. 23. Democracy Stress-Testing – Implement structured stress tests for democratic institutions, similar to financial sector stress tests, to identify vulnerabilities before they escalate into crises.
  4. 24. Addressing Root Causes of Democratic Disillusionment – Investigate the structural economic, social, and technological drivers of democratic disengagement, from wealth inequality to algorithm-driven radicalization.
  5. 25. Think in Social Movements – Instead of top-down solutions, explore ways to reinforce democratic participation that can start from small beginnings, possibly at the municipal and regional levels, where people feel the most direct impact.

This list is by no means complete, and based on participants’ predispositions, every collective will come up with another one. One can, however, fairly expect a lot of overlap between the results lists of different groups. (With asking more AI platforms, I received a second list twice as long as this one, but for the purpose of presentation here, this shorter one suffices.)

What are your thoughts about this list? What insights do discussions with your friends spark? Share your ideas in the comments or mail me under hanno.scholtz@civil-democracy.org!