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Damaster wrote:
read from wikipedia how the Swiss manage their country. How they apply "direct democracy" through referedums?
Good read, thanks, very interesting
I hear referenda aren't all that succesful in the EU though
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Wikipedia writes:
A fundamental objection to direct democracy is that the public generally gives only superficial attention to political issues and is thus susceptible to charismatic argument or demagoguery.
Another objection to direct democracy is that of practicality and efficiency. Deciding all or most matters of public importance by direct referendum is slow and expensive (especially in a large community), and can result in public apathy and voter fatigue.
It seems that public apathy can also be reached without referenda.
I can't find anywhere in the articles on direct democracy or here on this website that this particular polictical model applies to XOOPS. Or on any other open source project, for that matter.
A recent study from a fellow researcher from Europe showed that most open source communities have meritocratic decision making processes (Linux kernel, postgreSQL, Debian, Apache) (Bonaccorsi & Rossi 2003, Fielding 1999, Markus et al 2000, Moon & Sproull 2000, Egyedi & Van Wendel de Joode 2004). This means that you earn the right to vote based on your merits, what you have contributed to everyone's benefit. The more you contribute, the more influential your vote will be.
Debian has a system based on the Condorcet Voting SYstem, which is fairly complex. Votes are cast to select the best alternative, and everyone indicates their preference by ranking the alternatives. The alternative that is preferred by the majority (not the one with the highest overall score) is then chosen. Debian has hardly ever used it.
The Apache community has a simpler method than that of Debian. A vote is held at every commit. The vote usually does not amount to anything much. The patch will stay in if no-one votes negatively. The contributors participating in the voting process have 3 options: +1 if they agree, 0 if they abstain and -1 if they disagree. If you as a participant vote +1 then you automatically commit
yourself to the patch. You become partly responsible for it. If afterwards it turns out to be faulty, then you have the responsibility to remove it and clean up the code. The voting system is not used to decide on which branch to use (if two alternatives are developed separately), nor is it used to decide on issues bigger than one module.
The study furthermore shows that the results of the voting isn't really important, and can easily be ignored. Decisions get added to the to-do list (PostgreSQL), but everyone can still decide for themselves what they want to do. It is the nature of open source.
And then there are other political systems to consider. There is of course the
representative democracy in which voters choose (in free, secret, multi-party elections) representatives to act in their interests, but not as their proxies—i.e., not necessarily according to their voters' wishes, but with enough authority to exercise initiative in the face of changing circumstances. Another form of representative democracy involves impartial selection of representatives through sortition.
There are many forms of government and governance out there. If there was one that was the ideal form it would be used more often (despite what we Americans say
).
