Participatory politics

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Participatory Politics or Parpolity is a theoretical political system proposed by Stephen R. Shalom, professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

It was developed as a political vision to accompany participatory economics (Parecon). Shalom has stated that Parpolity is meant as a long range vision of where the social justice movement might want to end up, within the field of politics.

The values on which parpolity is based are freedom, self-management, justice, solidarity and tolerance. The goal, according to Shalom, is to create a political system that will allow people to participate, as much as possible in a face to face manner. The proposed decision-making principle is that every person should have say in a decision proportionate to the degree to which she or he is affected by that decision.

The vision is critical of aspects of modern representative democracies arguing that the level of political control by the people isn’t sufficient. To address this problem Parpolity suggests a system of nested councils, which would include every adult member of a given society.