Open source politics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Open source politics is a term used to describe a political process that uses Internet technologies such as blogs and email to provide for a rapid feedback mechanism between political organizations and their supporters.

It is most closely associated with the 2004 Presidential Campaign of Howard Dean and to a lesser extent with the Draft Clark movement. It has since become used by a number of activist groups to describe the process of creating input.

There is also an alternative conception of the term which relates to the development of public policy under a set of rules and processes similar to the Open Source Software movement. An experiment in developing policies in this way can be found at the OpenSourcePolitics.org.uk wiki.

[edit] External links

• The Social Science Research Council wiki on The Politics of Open Source Adoption
• Micah Sifry on Open Source Politics
• Slate on Howard Dean and Open Source Politics
• The Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank that brings new voices into the political process
• Garrance Franke-Ruta of The American Prospect on Open Source Politics
• Progressive U -- A blog and discussion forum for progressive students

[edit] Further reading

• Berry, D M.& Moss, Giles (2005). Free and Open-Source Software: Opening and Democratising e-Government's Black Box. Information Polity Volume 10. (2).