thepaperpilot
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Consensus Democracy
182 words, ~1 minute read.
A form of democracy similar to Direct Democracy but with higher requirements for passing policies, typically requiring unanimity or near-unanimity. This helps reduce (although doesn't eliminate) the possibility of a majority group oppressing a minority group.
Consensus democracy encourages and requires innovative solutions to problems (similar to how Police Abolition) and pragmatic compromises. However, this can make them susceptible to "design by committee" and can make policies impossibly difficult to pass for large groups of people.
Since consensus democracy doesn't scale well, larger governments could be structured as a federation of smaller governments. The smaller governments still use consensus democracy, but the federation only adopts policies that a super-majority of the smaller governments have agreed upon. Alternatively, the federation could specifically ask the local governments for policy proposals, then use Direct Democracy to decide whether to approve it or not, still requiring a super-majority.
For policies that still are unable to pass federally, local governments could form coalitions that organize larger-scale initiatives between several districts. For example, this could empower efforts like transit systems between districts.
Transitioning to a direct democracy will face difficulties in finding an initial set of rules that people can agree with.