Liquid democracy

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Liquid democracy is a proposal for a form of direct democracy with proxy representation allowed, supplemented by answer recommendation. Thus it is also representative democracy, but representatives are chosen in each case rather than elected for a given period. In some considerations of liquid democracy, proxy representation is delegable.

The concept evolved out of the sphere of online communities in 2003 and has since been taken up and discussed by a number of political communities.

1 Direct and proxy democracy
2 Answer recommendation
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Direct and proxy democracy

In a direct democracy, if there is a meeting or vote taken, every member has the right to attend or vote. In a proxy democracy, suppose member A designates B as proxy (also called "advisor"). If member A does not attend or vote, then B automatically adds the vote of A when attending and voting.

This can be extended to multiple levels of proxy voting. Thus, in delegable proxy democracy, if A names B, who names C, ..., and A and B do not attend or vote, the vote of C is augmented by the votes of A and B.

Theoretically, a delegable proxy organization could select a superproxy, i.e., someone who alone represents the entire organization, without ever holding an election, simply as a result of the choices made by members as to whom to trust as proxy. However, proxy delegations are revocable at any time.

Delegable proxy has been combined with the concept of the Free Association to form a generic organizational technology, theoretically appropriate wherever individuals freely associate for some cooperative purpose.

[edit] Answer recommendation

Liquid democracy adds the concept of chained answer recommendation to those of the direct and proxy variants. It means that there is a - more or less automated - path how voters are being recommended answers before they decide for an option. These recommendations are to be prepared by experts in the respective fields in the same transparent way.

Thus a voter who is willing to dig into a certain matter can analyze the way the recommendation evolved and decide if he wants to follow it, and possibly recommend it on to others who trust him. Experts one trusts "blindly" - i.e. without analyzing each of their choices - can be assigned the respective status so that further issues will receive this experts choice for the new voting automatically. The concept is thus similar to the web of trust in the technical sphere of encryption.

Liquid democracy claims to offer a more fine-grained and also decentralized and collaborative alternative to direct or proxy democracy. The augmented administration compared to traditional voting is proposed to be handled by electronic media, for example via the internet.