Participatory Politics Quotes

A town meeting is a legislature of citizens, for citizens, and by citizens. The fact that each citizen of the town is also a legislator separates the New England town meeting from all other forms of democracy.

I'm convinced democracy will grow from the ground up, from the community.

There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.

Democracy, in any active sense, begins and ends in communities small enough for their members to meet face to face.

I believe in decentralized democracy.

Perhaps democracy should be begun at the local level first. America was many local democracies before democracy came to the national level.

We're a movement of many people who are uniting from the bottom up. We don't have structures, hierarchies, bosses, secretaries... No one gives us orders.

Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country.

Politics in America is moving from representative politics to interactive politics.

Participatory complexity may well be the key descriptor of the 21st century - in our economies, in our politics, and in our everyday lives.

The new era of bottom-up politics has had politically paradoxical consequences in China. While it has made the system of governance more participatory, it has made the central government less authoritarian and, therefore, more bureaucratic and cautious.

I want to see a more collective style in how our party operates, in politics as a whole.

It might be a good idea to have government totally by the people - that each person takes four or five hours of the week doing some kind of government job - in other words, along with what you do you also help maintain the government so no one person has total control - I might go down to an office for four hours and do whatever I'm capable of doing - writing out receipts for food distribution in a certain area - but it's all actually a monstrous secretarial job and that's all I think it should be.