Talk:Liquid democracy

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Previous Deletion
it appears that a similar article was deleted approx. three years ago. The central confusion was whether or not "delegate democracy" was a generally recognized concept. It is. It is central to understanding libertarian socialism as a political theory, especially anarchism and the 1905 Soviets.

I have started a stub of sorts here, but I'm tired right now and can't contribute much. I will be back tomorrow morning to add more content and citations before I re-link this page to any template items. Joel.a.davis (talk) 04:35, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Overlap with Proxy voting
This article covers the same topic as Proxy voting. --Chealer (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:SOAP
I do NOT think this article should be deleted, but it clearly needs a lot of work so that it isn't WP:SOAP. In fact, given that this basic concept has been proposed many times (asset voting, liquid democracy, delegated proxy....) perhaps the name here should be changed to something more generic, to cover all such proposals. Homunq (talk) 12:50, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Delegative democracy > liquid democracy
Liquid democracy seems to be a special case of delegative democracy where votes are delegated in (preferrably) real time and (preferrably) every voter can function as delegate for other voters without needing a special procedure. --90.191.166.161 (talk) 03:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Karl Marx in The Civil War in France and Marsilius in Defensor pacis also suggest delegative democracy in a sense. --90.191.166.161 (talk) 12:44, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Guillermo O'Donnel's delegative democracy
There is a quite widespread notion of delegative demoracy coined by Guillermo O'Donnell and this has the meaning of president or other ruler governing as a delegate for the people, usually with majority of votes and uniting/expressing the nation's intentions. --90.191.166.161 (talk) 11:22, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This is now described in a distinct section, at the bottom of this article. There should be two articles, really, one about O'Donnell's ideas, while the bulk of this article should be moved to and article titled "liquid democracy" (which is what everyone actually calls it, these days). 67.198.37.16 (talk) 16:37, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Examples of implementation
The Flux Party in Australia seems a very good example of implementation of liquid democracy on a blockchain. Maybe should be quoted in the text ? Lyapounov (talk) 06:50, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Added. Justin (talk) 09:37, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I removed Adhocracy, witch does not do any kind of liquid democracy: "(although we are called "Liquid Democracy") we do not offer the function of voting delegation in Adhocracy+, because Adhocracy+ is not a software for preparing and conducting democratic elections." --Arnaudlevy (talk) 14:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Proportional Representation
There should be mention of how Delegative democracy results in Proportional Representation, or at least it could be proportional depending on how much say each delegate has in the decision making process. The delegative voting is proportional at least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.76.218.184 (talk) 04:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

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Advice wanted for planned changes
I plan to add more on Blockchain as the article only focuses on it in Australia. Someone earlier stated that liquid democracy is a form of delegated democracy, I plan on doing more research on that as well. The sources I am currently looking at:
 * https://muse.jhu.edu/article/225426/pdf
 * http://procaccia.info/papers/liquid.pdf
 * http://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/old_files/documents/172_0.pdf
 * https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-democracy-for-the-21st-century-7c66f5e53b6f
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8

I would love any advice you guys have for me, especially if someone has any more sources in mind he/she thinks I should take a look at. I also plan on adding citations for the information that is not cited in the article. If I cannot find the source I may have to resort in deleting the uncited information. Ahiredits (talk) 02:23, 13 March 2018 (UTC)ahiredits


 * I'd like to see a list of all the block-chain variants, how they differ, what their status is. Note that, for example, Jim Rutt wants to create a political party, here in the US, for liquid democracy. Apparently, this is possible, without any particular impediments (other than the usual, of starting a new party...) I think he wants to start on the east coast. https://medium.com/@memetic007/liquid-democracy-9cf7a4cb7f 67.198.37.16 (talk) 16:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Paragraphs on the Origin of Liquid Democracy and criticism
Hi! I added a couple of paragraphs on the Origin of Liquid Democracy and another section on Criticisms. As well as divided more clearly the example section as well as added a few examples more. I the first part about the definition and the Delegative form I took the liberty on adding a couple of lines that explain how the system works and how it was conceived. These edits are a result of months of investigation and have been cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vero ALO (talk • contribs) 01:44, 14 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The problem with your contribution is that it mixes up two completely different concepts, both called "delagative democracy". In particular, this is what Guillermo O'Donnell is analyzing: a certain form of quasi-dictatorship-with-democratic-elements, which he calls "delegative democracy", but is totally, completely unrelated to what the rest of this article describes. It just accidentally happens to have the same name. (This should become very very clear, if you actually read what O'Donnell writes). 67.198.37.16 (talk) 16:08, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Split proposal (May 2019)
Per WP:NOTDIC, articles should be about things, not terms. As such, it doesn't make sense to cover O'Donnell's concept of delegative democracy in this article just because the two are called the same thing. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to rename this article "liquid democracy" and use "delegative democracy' for the O'Donnel term and use a clarifying hatnote on both articles. Thoughts? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 16:12, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with your suggestion and don't really have anything else to add. LokiTheLiar (talk) 22:57, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 18 June 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. No objections to the split. (non-admin closure) —  Newslinger   talk   08:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Delegative democracy → Liquid democracy – making way for split, per talk — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 04:09, 18 June 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. Iffy★Chat -- 21:53, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Object to speedy move There were only two participants in the split discussion. This move request should instead be posted as a full request to gather more participants. -- 70.51.201.106 (talk) 04:57, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:03, 18 June 2019 (UTC)


 * queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:04, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Is there an actual objection or is this just about procedure? If so, it should be a discussion about a split, rather than a move. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 06:18, 18 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm assuming if it splits it will be to Liquid democracy, yes? Primergrey (talk) 05:53, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes. I thought I had done that correctly. There shouldn't be anything weird with capitalization. I've fixed it up top. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 06:18, 18 June 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Liquid vs delegative democracy
Just for the clarification, I would say that delegative democracy is broader term than liquid democracy, although all liquid democracy systems we currently know use some form of delegative democracy or proxy voting. For example, the soviets currently referred in the article had delegation mechanism which has hierarchical levels of delegation, which makes it not liquid and more comparable to nested councils of parpolity. It is not liquid in the sense that participant can not freely choose a role in the system and therefore there is no liquid dynamics for the participants where they can take the role of delegate and dynamic chains of delegation appear. One might argue, that the councils are the main elements of liquidity in this sense, because they can form delegation chains, but usually there is hierarchy of councils in these systems which nulls the liquidity. But there is no liquidity for individual participants anyway and this might be prerequisite of liquid democracy (see further down for explanation). If we presume that any delegative system is liquid democracy, then also most political parties have regional branches which select delegates for the general assembly. If we add levels of delegation for villages, cities, counties etc, this would be basically the council system of early soviet system, but we certainly would not call all of these kinds of delegative or council systems liquid democracy. Therefore I suggest that the definition should be corrected and liquid democracy should be differentiated from generic delegative democracy (and proxy voting) systems. It might be not totally clear what are the specifics of liquid systems, but I think it's clear that most systems using delegates and councils are neither historically nor contentwise bound to liquid democracy, which is a term that appeared in 2000s and extrapolated from properties which digital systems provide. Basically, I think that delegated voting subsection in proxy voting has it right, that liquid systems have transitive, recursive, non-hierarchical (or non-discriminatory) delegation as a prerequisite. Maybe you could also say that liquid democracy is considered as part or improvement of generic liberal democracy which is based on autonomous individuals with equal rights making decisions in elections which are free, universal, uniform, direct and secret as described in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights article 25. --Märt Põder (talk) 06:42, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * What you're saying makes sense. I wonder, though, if your claim that delegative democracy contrasts with liquid democracy in its rigidity of hierarchies is true. This source makes it clear that they are synonymous. I find nothing in this work that indicates that delegative democracy is any different from liquid democracy. Do you have something that indicates this distinction is at all salient in the literature? If not, we may want to remove the reference to soviets. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 16:02, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Bryan Ford seems to have independently published some influential articles and unfinished PDFs on web, which might be not enough to consider him a valid source for terminology or history of ideas. For example professor Bart Cammaerts contends in "Respublika!" (page 131):


 * "'The idea of delegative democracy was discussed by Marx and Engels (1971) when they wrote about the 1871 Paris uprising and the subsequent establishment of the Paris Commune (see also Carpentier 2011, 28-9). As such, it is not entirely unsurprising to observe that liquid democracy, which is a form of delegative democracy, is being foregrounded today as an alternative way of decision-making by current progressive protest movements such as the Indignados in Spain, the Occupy Movement or Momentum, the left-wing campaigning organisation loyal to Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. It was, however, above all the Pirate Party movement that has adopted the language and practice of delegative democracy in their political discourse as well as decision-making processes and procedures.'"


 * Which in my mind means that there should be separate article on delegative democracy based on Marx, Engels, Paris Commune and Russian Soviets which might be different from the one based on Guillermo O'Donnell or somehow united with it. Märt Põder (talk) 16:15, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You're right that a separate article might be warranted, but I'm not so sure we would want to title that article "delegative democracy" when it so often is used synonymously with liquid democracy (and since that title is taken up by a third meaning anyway). — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:36, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe start with disambiguation page for "delegative democracy" which has a very generic definition and links to council democracy, liquid democracy and delegative democracy (Guillermo O'Donnell) and maybe even to parpolity, because it uses the same conceptual scheme as council democracy (however AFAIK Stephen Shalom doesn't explicitly compare his model to Marxist concept)? Also clearly stating parallel terms would help. This would maybe clear things up and create a meaningful structure for the relevant articles. But the way, I wouldn't say even Bryan Ford uses liquid democracy and delegative democracy "synonymously", he just is okay with both labels and maybe is not even aware that there is another notion of delegative democracy stemming from Paris Commune, Marx, etc. He is not a political historian after all. I suppose since we are sort of interested in liquid type of delegative democracy, we tend to use the terms like that, but some old Marxists might use the term delegative democracy according to their tradition. Also these readers should be able to make sense of the terms on Wikipedia? --Märt Põder (talk) 14:47, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I like the use of a disambiguation page. I'm not 100% sold on "delegative democracy (Guillermo O'Donnell)" as the title for that article, but if we can't come up with a better name, it should be fine. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:22, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I created a provisional rename request under relevant article and it appears the primary term might actually be delegate model of representation (attributed to Edmund Burke). There is also a quite ambiguous redirect from delegated democracy to proxy voting, which would also need be part of planned disambiguation page if we once get to it. --Märt Põder (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Landemore's "criticism" isn't a criticism of Liquid Democracy
This sentence is either incorrect or it doesn't belong in the "Criticism" section: Helene Landemore, a Political Science professor at Yale University, describes this phenomenon as "star-voting" and argues individuals should have the right of permanent recall whereby voters who have delegated their vote to another individual may, at any time, retract their delegation and vote autonomously. It is actually supportive of Liquid Democracy since Liquid democracy, as described in the introduction, provides at-will, at any time, retraction. Jim Bowery (talk) 19:29, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It isn't a criticism, but rather a response to the criticism. So it still belongs there, but it could do with a little bit of tweaking to clarify that. -CL

Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll (initially the author of the edit wrote "Carrol") sneaked into this article in the revision of 06:00, 24 April 2018 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liquid_democracy&diff=next&oldid=837898958). I think that's a joke. The paper "The Principles of Parliamentary Representation" (https://archive.org/details/ThePrinciplesOfParliamentaryRepresentation/page/n5/mode/2up) by Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is not that relevant to Liquid Democracy. --DL5MDA (talk) 05:59, 21 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Agreed - I’m working on a liquid democracy project and I’ve gone through the referenced pamphlet and it is not relevant to the topic. The pamphlet focuses on representation and election of those representatives. There is no reference to delegation of votes. Kmtrip (talk) 17:28, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah - let me change my opinion. I just read the original edit from 2018 linked above and I found the passage in the pamphlet that is a kind of delegation, but weak IMO. Two or more candidates who achieve the quota to be returned can “club” together their surplus votes and given to another candidate. Here’s the text, from pg 37: “Let him further announce the number of votes given for each Candidate, and also announce as ‘returned’ any Candidate who has received the quota needed to return one. If there are still Members to return, let him appoint a time and place for all the Candidates to appear before him; and any two or more Candidates may then formally signify that they wish their votes to be clubbed together, and may nominate so many of themselves as can be returned by the votes so clubbed. They must of course include in their nomination any of themselves who have been already declared to be returned. Let the returning officer add together the votes of these Candidates, and, if the amount be not less than the necessary quota, let him declare to be duly returned the Candidates so nominated.” Kmtrip (talk) 17:58, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

.

Liquid Democracy at a National Scale
I recommend adding a section that illustrates how liquid democracy might work at a national scale. The diagram provides a good starting point. If someone wants to take this up, that will be excellent, otherwise I will add the section myself. Please let me know what you think. Thanks! Lbeaumont (talk) 11:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I added this to a new section "At Scale". Lbeaumont (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)