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Participatory democracy is a process emphasizing the broad participation of constituents in the direction and operation of political systems. Etymological roots of democracy (Greek ''demos'' and ''kratos'') imply that the people are in power and thus that all democracies are participatory. However, participatory democracy tends to advocate more involved forms of citizen participation and greater political representation than traditional representative democracy. Participatory democracy strives to create opportunities for all members of a population to make meaningful contributions to decision-making, and seeks to broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities. Since so much information must be gathered for the overall decision-making process to succeed, technology may provide important forces leading to the type of empowerment needed for participatory models, especially those technological tools that enable community narratives and correspond to the accretion of knowledge. Effectively increasing the scale of participation, and translating small but effective participation groups into small world networks, are areas currently being studied.〔Shirky, Clay ''Here Comes Everybody''〕 Other advocates have emphasised the importance of face to face meetings, warning that an overreliance on technology can be harmful. Some scholars argue for refocusing the term on community-based activity within the domain of civil society, based on the belief that a strong non-governmental public sphere is a precondition for the emergence of a strong liberal democracy.〔Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, edited by Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka (Princeton University Press, 2002)〕 These scholars tend to stress the value of separation between the realm of civil society and the formal political realm.〔The Idea of Civil Society, by Adam B. Seligman (Princeton University Press, 1992)〕 In 2011, considerable grassroots interest in participatory democracy was generated by the Occupy movement. ==History== Participatory democracy has a long history. One instance is the Iroquois confederacy (also known as the Haudenosaunee confederacy) which operates under the oldest surviving constitution in the world. In 8th and 7th century Ancient Greece, the informal distributed power structure of the villages and minor towns began to be displaced with collectives of Oligarchs seizing power as the villages and towns coalesced into city states. This caused much hardship and discontent among the common people, with many having to sell their land due to debts, and even suffer from debt slavery. Around 600 BCE the Athenian leader Solon initiated some reforms to limit the power of Oligarchs and re-establish a partial form of participatory democracy with some decisions taken by a poplar assembly composed of all free male citizens. About a century later, Solon's reforms were further enhanced for even more direct involvement of regular citizens by Cleisthenes. Athenian democracy came to an end in 322BC. When democracy was revived as a political system about 2000 years later, decisions were made by representatives rather than by the people themselves. A minor exception to this was the limited form of direct democracy which flourished in the Swiss Cantons from the later Middle Ages. In the late 19th century, a small number of thinkers, including Oscar Wilde〔Principally in The Soul of Man under Socialism.〕 and Emma Goldman,〔 〕 began advocating increased participatory democracy. It was in the 20th century that practical implementations of participatory democracy once again began to take place, albeit mostly on a small scale, attracting considerable academic attention in the 1980s.〔 During the Spanish civil war, from 1936–1938, the parts of Spain controlled by anarchist republicans, was governed almost totally by participatory democracy. In 1938 the anarchists were displaced after betrayal by their former republican allies in the Communist party and attacks from the loyalist forces of General Franco. The writer George Orwell, who experienced participatory democracy in Spain with the anarchists before their defeat, discusses it in his book ''Homage to Catalonia'', and says participatory democracy was a "strange and valuable" experience where one could "breathe the air of equality" and where normal human motives like snobbishness, greed, and fear of authority had ceased to exist.〔 The mystic and philosopher Simone Weil, who had helped the Spanish anarchists as a combat soldier, would later promote participatory democracy in her political manifesto ''The Need for Roots''. In the 1960s the promotion and use of participatory democracy was a major theme for elements of the American Left.〔 〕 In the 1980s, the profile of participatory democracy within academia was raised by James S. Fishkin, the professor who introduced the deliberative opinion poll. Experiments in forms of participatory democracy that took place within a wider framework of representative democracy began in cities around the world, with an early adopter being Brazil's Porto Alegre. A World Bank study found that participatory democracy in these cities seemed to result in considerable improvement in the quality of life for residents.〔 In the early 21st century, low profile experiments in participatory democracy began to spread throughout South and North Americas, to China, across the European Union and also to Great Britain.〔(UK participatory budgeting homepage: a church sponsored charity that supports participatory budgeting in numerous local communities. )〕 A partial example in the USA occurred with drawing up the plans to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with thousands of ordinary citizens involved with drafting and approving the plan.〔 In 2011, participatory democracy became a notable feature of the Occupy movement, with Occupy camps around the world taking decisions based on the outcome of working groups where every protestor gets to have their say, and by general assemblies where the decisions taken by working groups are effectively aggregated together. Those involved with the Occupy movement have been described as very much attached to their forms of participatory democracy, even to the extent of "fetishizing it." .〔 〕 Their decision process was an attempt to combine equality, mass participation, and deliberation, but caused slow decisions. By November 2011 the movement had been frequently criticized for not yet coalescing around clearly identifiable aims,〔〔 though many have argued that the experiment with participatory democracy was the only plausible aim. Shortly thereafter, the movement disbanded to a large extent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「participatory democracy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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