1. Civil democracy works like a very special bank account
Civil democracy is like a bank account on which you and everyone else receive the same “income” of one vote for every decision to be made in your name. Any upcoming decision is always a decision between several options, and you can “sponsor” several options in order to increase their winning probability. Better do not only support your most liked option, as it may not make it into the final round. Better split your vote among several options which you find acceptable, indicating your rank order by different amounts.
If you don’t want to bother with specific decisions, you can give your vote to political actors as political groups or individual politicians that engage in Civil democracy – we call them “open actors” as their preferences are open visible to everyone. You do not need to choose only one actor, you can split your vote among several actors you find trustworthy. They will act on your behalf for decisions that fit their profile and represent you – the fact that they can abstain from all decisions that do not fall into their domain allows that really any person or group aiming to gain trust to influence specific decisions can do so. It constitutes the “actor openness” of Civil democracy.
From your direct support of actors for open actors and their support for options results an indirect support that you give to options. You can review this indirect support and either turn it unaltered into a direct-democratic decision, or adapt it to the views you hold differing from your trusted open actors’ positions, but if you do nothing and leave your represented indirect support as it is, you may suffer from a loss in influence, but you will never be ignored. This ability to choose between direct-democratic decision and being represented constitutes the “meta-decision freedom” of Civil democracy.
2. Civil democracy has a rational relation to equality.
Civil democracy aims to include every person on the planet into global collective decision-making, but it acknowledges that this takes time. Civil democracy starts with digital democracy but is not confined to it. As imperfect as current institutions are, Civil democracy builds on the view that a more efficient instutional channel building on global civil society is an improvement even though it starts with being confined to that half of world society that currently has access to the internet. We look forward to the establishment of offline access chances, but we do not wait for them to be implemented to start.
3. Civil democracy has a rational relation to privacy
Civil democracy aims to protect every voter’s voting privacy, but it acknowledges that a perfect guarantee cannot be given. As imperfect as current institutions are, Civil democracy builds on the view that a more efficient instutional channel building on global civil society is an improvement even though hackers may from time to time be able to get access to some of the private voting data. We expect that the threat of hacking can be handled, and we do not let it deter us to start.
4. Civil democracy is about accepting ambivalence
We tend to make our opinions quickly. But this leads us to block information that does not comply with it. For making good collective decisions to create a better world for us and our children, and for understanding what creating a better world demands in terms of our individual decisions, we need the openness to information that points in different directions. We need to overcome the assumption that there are political actors that are able to fully represent us in every possible aspect.
5. Civil democracy is cultural change
As mankind, we are in this 21st century faced with the question whether we can leave 8’000 years of domination and lacking sustainability behind us. Even if the globe can nurture a 9th billion of us, it won’t be able to nurture a 20th billion of us, so the question is not if we have to move to a sustainable life style but when and how. We need to end our growth-based cultures both in terms of our environmental footstep and in terms of our demography. The direct-democratic aspect of Civil democracy makes clear to every world citizen that they have to be part of this change process, even though that entails the acceptance of painful cultural change.