User:Svody/sandbox

Being bold is important in academia.

= Article evaluation: "Direct democracy" = - In the beginning of the article, some assertions about direct democracy and its relationship to other forms of democracy are neither explained nor referenced: "Two leading forms of direct democracy are participatory democracy and deliberative democracy."This sentence is not sufficiently clear in order to understand the relationship between direct democracy on the one hand, and participatory and deliberative democracy in the other. Participatory democracy and deliberative democracy can accommodate with representative democracy, and are not exclusive to direct democracy.

- Some examples are under-explained and under-developed compared to others. Indeed, mainstream examples like Switzerland and the United States (the ones that accommodate with representative democracy) are explained at length, but more marginal examples like the Paris Commune and Rojava, which represent experiences of direct democracy that completely refused representative government and the state are not sufficiently elaborated. Other examples (contemporary and historical) of direct democracy, like the Zapatistas (this is in the to-do list of the talk page), the soviets, the workers' council during the Hungarian revolution, the several Paris sections during the French Revolution, are not developed at all.

- There is no paragraph on some forms of direct democracy, for example the one which happen at the local level, while there is an extensive section on electronic direct democracy.

- The articulation with other forms of democracy is unclear (it is also in the to-do list of the talk section).

= Possible topics =

- Direct democracy:

The section on the Paris Commune and Rojava are underexplained, and it is not clear how these experiences of direct democracy relate to other experiences mentioned in the article: what are their differences, and what do they have in common apart from being categorized as direct democracy.

Moreover, important contemporary examples are overlooked, which is stated in the talk page: "Expand examples to include Zapatista Army of National Liberation and Landless Workers' Movement". Historical examples like the soviets, the workers' council during the Hungarian revolution, the several Paris sections during the French Revolutionare not mentioned at all.

Experiments of direct democracy among social movements, like Occupy Wall Street, are not developed either (merely mentioned), while its purpose was to bring direct democracy at the center of politics.

- Communalism:

As discussed in the talk page, the article on communalism does not place this political philosophy in the broader trend of thought that is social ecology, which may lead the reader to understand communalism in a decontextualized way.

Moreover, it does not state any example of communalist experience, whether historical or contemporary, whichcould lead the reader to think communalism is only a political philosophy, while it is actually applied by many movements throughout the world.

- Municipalism:

There is actually no article on municipalism, only a reference to Murray Bookchin's understanding of municipalism as libertarian municipalism (or communalism). But there actually are many different understanding of municipalism, that do not all fit with communalism.

= Draft paragraphs for the article "Direct democracy" = In Syrian Kurdistan, in the cantons of Rojava, a new model of polity is exercised by the Kurdish freedom movement, that of Democratic confederalism. This model has been developed by Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, on the basis of the Kurdish revolutionary experience and traditions, and of the theory of Communalism developed by Murray Bookchin. At the opposite of the Nation-State model of sovereignty, Democratic confederalism rests on the principle of radical self-government, where political decisions are taken in popular assemblies at the level of the commune, which will send delegates to the confederate level of the district and the canton. This bottom-up political structure coexists with the democratic self-administration, as organized in the Charter of the Social Contract adopted by the cantons of Rojava in 2014. These two structures constitute a situation characterized as one of dual power by David Graeber, though a peculiar one as they are both formed by the same movement.
 * Paragraph to add in the section "Rojava" (maybe before the already existing one, as it is more general?):

Compared to other experiences categorized as ones of direct democracy such as OWS, the Rojava experiment presents only several elements of direct democracy, namely the organization of the self-governing communes in popular assemblies where everybody can participate, the confederation of these communes through imperative and recallable mandates, the rotation of charges (often biannually) and the absence of a centralized power. In theory, Öcalan describes the principle of Democratic Confederalism as follows: "In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power confederalism poses a type of political self-administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils." . In practice, Rojava is organized on a system of "Four Level Councils": the Commune, the Neighborhood, the District, and the People's Council of West Kurdistan. Each level nominates delegates for the next level with imperative mandates as well as recallable mandates.

The revolution for democratic autonomy in Rojava led by the Kurdish freedom movement is considered as indispensable with that of the women's liberation. The women's liberation movement starts from the principle that "without the liberation of women, a truly free society is impossible". Indeed, as democratic autonomy rests on the equal political engagement of members of the community, the Kurdish women's movement aims at changing the historical exclusion of women from the public sphere as well as at educating women, creating space where they can participate and produce their own decisions. This commitment to women's liberation is instantiated in the principle of dual leadership and 40 percent quota and in the many political spaces created for women's education as well as their political and economic emancipation. Women are therefore fully included in the project of direct democracy. In order to contribute to their political emancipation, Kurdish women created a new science, Jineologî or "women's science", in order to give to women access to knowledge, the very foundation of power in society. Moreover, political emancipation is not seen as sufficient to ensure women's liberation if it does not rest on the possibility of women for self-defense. Therefore, Kurdish women created the the Women's Protection Units (YPJ) which forms, along with the People's Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish armed forces.

Rallied under the slogan “We are the 99%” to protest against the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the 1% (Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, By the 1%, and For the 1%”), Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was also a political project of experimenting how a group could organized itself under the paradigm of direct democracy. The commitment of OWS to direct democracy stems from an understanding of social change as prefigurative politics, which consists in putting the means of social change in coherence with its ends and in the enactment of its political vision through mechanisms of direct democracy. Indeed, OWS followed mechanisms of direct democracy to organize the encampment, to prepare the direct actions and to form collective claims. Largely inspired by anarchist principles of absence of coercion, horizontality and non-hierarchy, these mechanisms were already developed and used during the alter-globalization movement, and OWS is in this tradition of neo-anarchism.
 * Sections to add in the section "Examples" after Rojava:
 * "Occupy Wall Street"

The main mechanism of direct democracy used during OWS was the General Assembly (GA), which constituted a place of political discussion for people traditionally excluded from the political sphere. The GA allowed anyone to participate in OWS, whether newcomers or original participants, to speak to the entire group, and to be part of the decision-making process. Two “facilitators” (always gender-mixed) animated the meeting by keeping track of the “speaking stack”, composed of anyone who wish to speak (they also used “progressive stacks” to allow people from marginalized groups to have more voice). As they could gather hundreds of people, general assemblies were often facilitated by hand signals denoting messages that needed to be voiced but did not deserve to interrupt a speaker (consent, objection, lack of understanding, technical/logistical point, clarification, proposition to move forward, language issues, etc.), consultative straw polls (called “temperature checks” to have an idea of what the group thinks at a moment in time, without going through a consensus process) and “human microphone” (the speaker on front of the GA would hear her words repeated by the entire crowd until they reach the people who are the farthest away from the center).

The technique of decision-making within the OWS GA was consensus. Contrary to the majority rule, deciding by consensus entails that no decisions can be made if there is no general consent, preventing the minority to be submitted to the majority's will. Consensus decision-making starts with a proposal for which the facilitators ask for demands of clarification, then for concerns (which can lead to friendly amendments of the proposal), potentially punctuated by consultative straw polls at any of the three steps. Once the proposition is finalized, the facilitators operate the final check for consensus, allowing people either to consent, to stand aside (not taking part to the execution of the decision but not preventing others from doing do), or to block, that is to veto, the proposition; and to justify their chosen position. Some sympathizers have voiced criticism about the fact that OWS was a truly horizontal and leaderless movement.