Civil Democracy – Key Publications at a Glance

Over the past years, Civil Democracy has grown from an idea into a comprehensive model for renewing democracy’s ability to solve urgent problems. Along the way, we have published key contributions—academic, practical, and accessible—to build the case for this new approach.

Here is your guide to core publications on Civil Democracy:

1. Why Polarization Persists—And How We Can End It
Polarization and Partitioning Representation: How an Overlooked Aspect of Contemporary Democracy Leads to Polarizing Societies / https://civil-democracy.org/1603-2/
Published in Sociology Compass, this article reframes polarization not as a cultural or psychological inevitability, but as the result of a mismatch between today’s individualized societies and the outdated “partitioning representation” model of democracy. It shows how this structural flaw disconnects voters, radicalizes party members, and rewards division—and how Civil Democracy’s flexible, actor-open model can restore representation and reduce polarization.

2. Civil Democracy and the Polycrisis
Tackling the Polycrisis Needs Democratic Innovation / https://civil-democracy.org/tackling-the-polycrisis-needs-democratic-innovation/
This article argues that the overlapping crises of our time—climate change, inequality, pandemics, geopolitical instability—are symptoms of a deeper failure in collective decision-making. Existing institutions have been designed to fit Western industrial societies but are unable to govern in societies with a structure not built on homogenous groups, be it in non-Western societies, in the West after decades of indivualization, or on the global scale. Civil Democracy is presented as a structural innovation capable of mobilizing broad expertise and participation to break through institutional gridlock and address the “polycrisis” at its roots.

3. Scaling Participation Without Losing Quality
How to Democratize Policy Design at Scale / https://civil-democracy.org/how-to-democratize-policy-design-at-scale/
Large-scale participation often means sacrificing depth for breadth. This piece explores how Civil Democracy can overcome that trade-off, enabling millions of citizens and thousands of organizations to contribute meaningfully to complex policy design. By combining flexible trust storage, actor openness, and meta-decision freedom, it offers a model for scaling deliberation without overwhelming participants or reducing decision quality.

4. The Upcoming Book – Rethinking Democracy
Rethinking Democracy / https://civil-democracy.org/rethinking-democracy/
Due from De Gruyter in late 2025, this book examines why democracies once worked, why they are now failing, and how Civil Democracy can restore what the author calls “democratic efficacy.” It blends historical analysis, institutional theory, and practical strategy to outline a path from today’s democratic malaise to a renewed system capable of solving the urgent problems of our age.

5. Reclaim Responsibility with Civil Democracy
Reclaim Responsibility with Civil Democracy / https://civil-democracy.org/reclaim-responsibility/
This earlier book, written in 2022 and available here in the shop, connects Civil Democracy to three interlinked global goals: saving the climate, fostering democracy, and ending violence. Through a mix of personal narrative, institutional analysis, and historical insight, it shows how outdated political structures block responsible collective action—and how Civil Democracy can give individuals and organizations the tools to take back responsibility for our shared future.

The world today seems caught in a spiral of overlapping crises—climate breakdown, institutional erosion, inequality, migration, war, and political polarization. Some call it a polycrisis, others a metacrisis. Some try to ignore them, but others are caught in trying to fight each of so many of them. But that’s the wrong approach.

In my new open-access article in Discover Global Society, titled
👉 “Global Polycrisis Can Be Tackled by Institutional Innovation Towards Democratic Efficacy”,
I argue that behind today’s many crises lies one single, solvable problem: our institutions of democracy are out of sync with the structure of modern societies.

The Core Argument

From a historical and institutional perspective, the democratic model we still rely on—“partitioning representation”, where citizens vote once every few years to delegate all decisions to a few—is no longer fit for purpose. It was effective in a specific historical window (Western industrial societies, mid-20th century), but it no longer provides citizens with the efficacy—the sense that their participation shapes political outcomes—that democracy needs to function.

We now live in individualized, globalized, and mediatized societies. And yet, we still rely on political mechanisms designed for group-based identities and slow-moving class structures.

The result? Citizens feel unheard, political decisions miss the mark, trust erodes—and crises escalate.

The Path Forward: Civil Democracy

The article outlines a clear way out of this institutional dead end: a new model I call Civil Democracy, built on two key innovations:

• Meta-decision freedom: Individuals choose when and where to participate, or whom to delegate their voice to—issue by issue.
• Actor openness: Any trustworthy civil actor—NGO, expert, local organizer—can earn citizens’ delegated trust and become part of the decision-making process.

This model uses digital tools to scale democratic efficacy, allowing for meaningful input even in complex policy debates, while still managing the realities of cognitive and time scarcity.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just a political theory paper. It’s a proposal to replace the core mechanism driving the global democratic crisis. It applies to:

• Western democracies struggling with polarization and apathy
• Post-authoritarian societies disillusioned with democratic promises
• Global governance processes crippled by inefficiency and nationalism

In each case, democratic renewal requires more than participation—it requires institutions that let people see their voice matter.

Read the Full Article

🔗 Access the article (open access) here:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-024-00134-9

If you’ve been asking why our political systems can’t seem to solve anything anymore, or what it would take to restore faith in democracy, I hope you’ll find this article useful. Let’s move beyond fear and design the institutions we need.

In times of polycrisis—climate change, inequality, institutional mistrust—there is no shortage of calls for more democratic policymaking. But how can we actually involve whole populations in shaping policies that affect everyone, without overwhelming the system or the citizens?

In my newly published article in Policy Design and Practice, titled “Large Scale Democratic Policy Design: Including Populations in Policy Design Processes”, I take up this challenge head-on. The piece offers a conceptual roadmap for scaling up democratic participation in policymaking, moving beyond the limits of small, elite-controlled deliberative “mini-publics” and toward a model that allows entire societies to participate in complex decision-making.

What the Article Argues

• The Problem: Participatory policy design has hit a wall. While it holds immense promise, current methods are too narrow, too small, and often tokenistic. Efforts to include the public remain stuck in formats that don’t scale.
• The Diagnosis: The core issue is the lack of scalable deliberation. Mini-publics work only in small groups. As a result, participatory processes often suffer from limited legitimacy—excluding many from input, reducing the quality of deliberation (throughput), and producing outcomes (output) that fail to carry democratic weight.
• The Proposal: We need to disaggregate deliberation into measurable elements—decisions, options, rankings, and arguments—and then structure the process so it can work at scale. Drawing from how large organizations (like party conventions) already structure complex decision-making, I propose a model in which policy design becomes a series of manageable steps—augmented by digital platforms that support delegation and trust.
• The Model: Citizens can choose to participate directly or delegate their influence to trusted “open actors”—from civil society organizations to subject-matter experts—using individualized trust storage. This maintains both agency and scalability, creating a system I call Civil Democracy.

Why This Matters

In a time of widespread frustration with existing institutions and rising polarization, the answer isn’t less democracy—it’s more effective democracy. But that requires more than good intentions: it requires new structures, new processes, and new technologies.

This article outlines one such structure—a way to enable mass participation without sacrificing depth, inclusiveness, or accountability.

If you care about democratic innovation, participatory design, or the future of governance, I hope you’ll take a look.

🔗 Read the full article (open access):
https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2025.2502201

When we look at today’s headlines—climate breakdown, democratic backsliding, rising inequality, armed conflicts—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The problems seem too many, too big, and too intertwined to solve.

Reclaim Responsibility with Civil Democracy starts from a simple but often-overlooked truth: these crises are connected by a common institutional flaw. Whether we’re voting every four years, participating in occasional referendums, or trying to influence politics from outside, our ability to take responsibility for collective decisions is constrained by systems that force us into rigid, non-overlapping groups. This “partitioning” structure—once useful—has become a barrier to solving today’s interconnected problems.

The book’s argument is both personal and political. I share why responsibility is not an abstract value for me but a lived necessity, rooted in early experiences of conflict and the insight that better communication could have transformed the situation. That same lesson applies at the global scale: we can master our shared dangers if we create institutions that let all of us take responsibility together.

Civil Democracy is such an institution. It combines the strengths of representative and direct democracy while overcoming their weaknesses. It gives citizens meta-decision freedom—the choice to participate directly or delegate on an issue-by-issue basis—and actor openness—the ability to trust and empower a wide range of actors, from political parties to NGOs to individual experts. These principles are made workable by today’s digital technologies, allowing us to store and adapt our trust flexibly.

The book takes you on a journey:

• Part I explores our human capacity for responsibility and how democracy has enabled it in the past, from ancient Athens to postwar Western democracies.
• Part II shows why those past success models no longer work in the individualized, interconnected societies of today.
• Part III details six urgent arenas—climate, public discourse, inequality, violence, democratization, and community—where Civil Democracy can make the difference.
• Part IV calls for action: building a movement to make Civil Democracy real.

The core message is summed up in the formula: Sustainability needs responsibility needs Civil Democracy. In a world where information is everywhere and challenges are global, only institutions that engage all citizens in responsible decision-making can deliver the stability and good governance we need.

If you care about democracy’s future—not just surviving, but becoming capable of solving the problems that threaten our planet and our societies—I invite you to read Reclaim Responsibility with Civil Democracy. Let’s take back our ability to decide, together.

The Jena Declaration is an important step toward recognizing that sustainability is fundamentally a societal challenge. From my own work on developing the political institutions necessary to take on this eminent challenge, I welcome the declaration and look forward to collaborating with its initiators and signatories in turning its principles into actionable change.

You find the declaration under https://www.thejenadeclaration.org/declaration/we-declare-that. It states that

(1) Accelerating the progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and implementing the UN “Decade of Action” successfully, requires a move from talking about sustainability to living sustainably. Such a shift implies the need to focus especially on peoples’ everyday practices. This includes developing policies that enable, promote and support radical change in peoples’ everyday actions.
(2) Many sustainability policies stem from a human-nature dichotomy, understanding nature as humanity’s surrounding environment. Yet with our body we are ourselves an integral part of nature, and we also incorporate it into our practices in specific ways, depending on what we are doing. This premise inverts the perspective on sustainability from a nature-society opposition to a society-nature interdependent relation.
(3) Most of the present crises find their roots in unintended, often foreseeable, problematic consequences of human actions that are, ultimately, of global significance. This implies the need to frame the crisis as primarily a societal rather than purely an environmental issue, and to expand what is understood to be its knowledge base.
(4) Establishing long-term sustainable ways of living requires recognizing everyday practices as key drivers of the transformation. This calls for respecting those practices’ cultural, social, and regional diversity, as well as past experiences of adaptation. In this context, the social sciences and the humanities must play a central role in shaping sustainability policies.
(5) Transformations towards living sustainably will be broadly accepted if they are co-developed by everyday people, specific stakeholders, and policy-makers at all levels working together with academic experts and scientists. This implies a radical paradigm-shift away from imposing “one size fits all” top-down strategies and towards specifically tailored approaches.
(6) Cultural, social and natural dimensions of everyday practices are all inherently connected, locally embedded, and globally interrelated in specific ways. This insight requires scholarship that transcends disciplinary silos while benefiting from each discipline’s findings, and is supported by new forms of research organization.
(7) Genuine transdisciplinary research should provide information and insights in an accessible form, and facilitate participatory knowledge production. This requires supporting bottom-up movements among relevant communities, allowing them to offer effective contributions and to take action.
(8) A deep societal transformation across generations requires that young people are especially strongly involved in this shift from the start. This demands that they have access to robust information and education, civic involvement, as well as political participation.
(9) To establish culturally and regionally diverse ways of living sustainably, creativity and a new aesthetic are necessary. How we do things depends very much on what they signify to us, how we see the world and our place in it. The arts in all their forms, together with the humanities and social sciences are crucial for expanding mindsets, providing new perspectives on ways of living. This shall allow humankind to move from the age of extraction towards cultures of regeneration, to reach the SDGs with increased speed and depth, and to ensure measurable success.
(10) To that end, we call upon all relevant political and scientific institutions, including funding agencies, to use the UN “Decade of Action” as a time to ensure that the cultural dimension is at the core of sustainability programs. This includes the need to:
• Reframe the basic perspective from an environmental issue to a societal challenge
• Complement solution orientated top-down strategies with more inclusive, regionally differentiated problem-avoiding bottom-up approaches
• Promote participation of younger generations in decision-making processes
• Reform sustainability research, its funding and organization
• Strengthen transdisciplinary cooperation in all domains of research
• Revamp the curricula of all educational institutions, focusing on global social emergencies and their mastering
• Establish universities, research and educational institutions as authentic examples for societal transformation
• Integrate the arts, as well as findings from the humanities and social sciences into the co-design of future, culturally and regionally diverse “ways of living sustainably”.)

The fact that you can today use this first demo implementation of Civil democracy is due to six colleagues who over more then two years with me to turn the idea into reality. On borrowing from my life insurance and with a kickstarter crowdfunding, I had secured some funding and added some personal resources, but that was all. Luckily, Wali Hassan (left), the CEO of Ropstam, Inc., in Toronto, Islamabad, and Delhi, saw the great potential of the idea and agreed to a fixed-sum project within the bounds of the small resources I had been able to gather, and his colleagues joined the project, to build a first working Civil democracy demo on the base of WordPress, both to keep cost down and to easily integrate my existing blog.

I have to say that on the outset we all completely underestimated how much this project was different from all the other hundreds of WordPress projects Ropstam is working on in their daily work. Most software projects take longer than expected, but not many grow from two months to two years! That was often my fault. Among the things we had hugely underestimated was the amount of feedback I would have to give. As an former hermit ivory tower academic and still involved incontinuing to write papers to communicate the idea, although being used to break down things for my students, I often needed a lot of time to load all what had been done into my brain. I am endlessly greatful that finally the journey of creating this initial Civil Democracy platform has been completed through the dedication, vision, and relentless effort of these six exceptional individuals: Dinesh Subramani, Wali Hassan, Suhail Ahmad, Moaz Ellahi, Arslan Arshad, and Muqsit Aziz. Each of them played a pivotal role in turning the ambitious vision of Civil Democracy into reality.

  Dinesh Subramani: The Creative Force

Dinesh Subramani, an Indian designer, was the creative genius who transformed the initial wireframes into an eye-pleasing and user-friendly interface. His ability to translate abstract concepts into tangible designs was crucial in ensuring that the platform was not just functional but also intuitive and accessible to users. Dinesh’s designs served as the foundation upon which the entire platform was built, providing a clear, visual representation of the Civil Democracy concept. A wholehearted promotion: If you want to work with Dinesh, visit his accounts. (https://dribbble.com/DineshMessi, https://www.behance.net/dineshmessi1 and https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01b7ba6bfc0029c2b6; unfortunately this WordPress theme doesn’t allow for links in posts.)

Wali Hassan: The Visionary Entrepreneur

Wali Hassan, based in Toronto, is the owner and CEO of Ropstam. He saw the potential of Civil Democracy for the non-Western world and agreed to a fixed-price contract for the project’s development. Although we both vastly underestimated the project’s complexity, Wali remained committed through all the time. His perseverance and willingness to see the project through, despite numerous challenges, were instrumental in sustaining momentum when things seemed overwhelming. His belief in the Civil Democracy model as a tool for global change was a driving force that kept the team motivated.

Suhail Ahmad: The Unwavering Project Manager

Suhail Ahmad, the senior developer and project manager, grew with the project. Initially a backend developer, Suhail took on the role of project manager as the complexity of the platform increased. He was the linchpin in communication, ensuring that all team members were aligned and that the project stayed on course. The endless Slack communications and Zoom calls I had with him are a testament to his dedication. Suhail was always friendly, motivated, and succinct, keeping the team’s spirit high and focused on the goal.

Moaz Ellahi: The Frontend Wizard

Turning Dinesh’s Figma designs into a fully functioning frontend was no small feat. Moaz Ellahi, the frontend developer, did this with a congenial spirit and an expert touch. His ability to bring designs to life in a way that was both beautiful and functional was key to making the platform user-friendly. Moaz’s work ensured that the platform was not just a theoretical construct but a practical tool that people could use to engage in meaningful democratic processes.

Arslan Arshad: The Backend Dynamo

When the project was at a crossroads, with complexity overwhelming the team, Arslan Arshad brought new energy and drive. As a backend developer, he tackled the most challenging technical problems, providing innovative solutions that allowed the platform to progress when it seemed stalled. His technical acumen and problem-solving skills were crucial in overcoming some of the most significant obstacles the team faced.

Muqsit Aziz: The Final Puzzle Solver

As the project neared its conclusion, there were still numerous issues to resolve. Muqsit Aziz stepped in with the energy and expertise needed to clear many of the last remaining problems. Working closely with Suhail, Muqsit was instrumental in ensuring that the platform was not just finished, but polished and ready for launch. His contributions in the final stages of development were critical in bringing the project to a successful close.

If you want to work with Wali, Suhail, Moaz, Arslan, and Muqsit, just go to https://www.ropstam.com/. Working with all six is highly recommended!

The Result: A Platform with Global Potential

The Civil Democracy platform aims to cure a long-time overlooked Eurocentrism and Western backwardness of traditional democracy concepts, making the promise of democracy real for everyone in the world. By allowing individuals to entrust their decision-making to civil society actors they believe in, or to participate directly, the platform provides a way for everyone to have an effective say in creating the common good.

The platform’s journey from concept to reality is a testament to what a dedicated team can achieve, even in the face of unforeseen challenges. It stands as a beacon of hope for the future of democracy, proving that with the right people and a shared vision, anything is possible. The six heroes who built this platform have not just created a tool; they have laid the foundation for a new form of global democratic engagement.

Financial corruption in politics is a significant challenge today. Historically, intertwining money and power has often led to ethical breaches and undermined democratic principles and public trust. Today, financial corruption persists in various forms, from campaign finance loopholes over revolving doors between government and industry to offshore tax havens that obscure beneficiaries of political transactions. Financial corruption erodes the foundations of democracy. Power of money equals powerlessness of citizens. Trust in democratic institutions diminishes as citizens perceive their representatives as beholden to special interests rather than the common good. Moreover, corruption fosters a culture of impunity, undermining the rule of law and breeding cynicism among the populace.

Current financial corruption signals that the old democratic system of partitioning representation is no longer working. However, is not a cause but an effect.

As long as people stood united in groups behind parties and politicians, they gave them very clear mandates. As this is no longer the case, parties and politicians have less information about what their voters want and more discretionary freedom, and that opens a much greater door for lobbyists.

Using Civil democracy gives responsibility to citizens and civil society organizations. As we know, people can be corrupted, too. But in giving ongoing responsibility to them, Civil democracy incentivizes to train their future orientation, and that decreases their corruptability. And as for the new representative actors, civil society organizations and individual open actors, three things can be said. First, that are fallible humans, as well, so misconduct cannot be excluded. But second, to bribe them will be not that efficient as bribing politicians today because none of them will have the discretionary power that parties and politicians currently hold. And third, as Civil democracy unfolds, we will have codes of conduct with regards to accepting financial support and ways to easily inform voters which open actors agreed to these codes of conduct, and sanctions if they are violated. Criminal behavior from time to time is a perennial phenomenon, but these institutional precautions shall mostly diminish the current incidence of financial corruption.

Are you used in addressing foundations? Are you yourself working for a foundation, or in contact with one? There are many wealthy individuals who have set up foundations working for the aims Civil democracy is able to address. So far, our approach is always too large to fit in existing funding schemes. But you may be able to change that? Write me directly under hanno.scholtz@civil-democracy.org, we are happy to hear from you!