Organizations Studying and Building a Participatory Society

The Participatory Society can already by seen in many areas of society. It is especially apparent in manifestations of "direct democracy," in international development projects, and in efforts of primarily left-of-center activists and theoreticians striving to open up civil society. By no means are all (or even most) examples of participatory decision-making processes ideologically based, however. For example, the business community is becoming more participatory each year. On this page I have provided a preliminary list of organizations studying or implementing participatory structures and processes in a broad range of fields. I'll continue to add more examples in the coming months.

Direct Democracy and Participatory Politics

Initiative and Referenda Institute - A portal to a comprehensive collection of information regarding the initiative and referendum process throughout the world.

Participatory Journalism

"Participatory Journalism Puts the Reader in the Driver's Seat, "J.D. Lasica, OJR Senior Editor. August 7, 2003. Online Journalism Review. USC Annenberg School.

OpenSourceJournalism.org - "The open source movement originated in the world of software development and refers to an environment in which collaboration is open to all and the results (source code, in the case of software) are freely shared with others. The Northwest Voice is applying this philosophy to community journalism by inviting local residents to participate in the collective creation of a newspaper and Web site."

CyberJournalist.net - "CyberJournalist.net focuses on how the Internet, media convergence and new technologies are changing journalism. The site offers tips, news and commentary about online journalism, digital storytelling, converged news operations and using the Internet as a reporting tool."

Participatory Governance & Public Administration

National Neighborhood Indicators Project. "Democratizing Information."

Participatory Poverty Diagnostics - World Bank. "A Participatory Poverty Assessment, or PPA, is an iterative, participatory research process that seeks to understand poverty in its local, social, institutional, and political contexts, incorporating the perspectives of a range of stakeholders and involving them directly in planning follow-up action."

Participation in Nonprofit Organizations

NOVA Institute - "A research and training institute in the Division of Social Work, School of Applied Social Sciences, Eberly College, West Virginia University with a focus on sustained dialogue, public deliberation and other "agentic" approaches to nonprofit organization and voluntary action in civil society.A focus on sustained dialogue, public deliberation and other 'agentic' approaches to nonprofit organization and voluntary action in civil society."

• NOVAWiki. A wiki that "functions as an experimental approach to establishing consensus among readers on what is established knowledge" on nonprofit organizations and voluntary action.

Participatory Processes in International Development

The World Bank Participation Sourcebook. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Participatory Product Development - The "Open Source" Movement

The R Project for Statistical Computing - Similar to Linux, R is open-source freeware. The development of the software is wholly decentralized. Anyone can modify the software -- as a result, literally thousands of researchers from across the globe have participated in the project.

Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a multi-lingual "open content" encyclopedia being written collaboratively by contributors from around the world. In the English version, started in January 2001, there are now well over 300,000 articles. The site is a wiki (pronounced "wicky" or "weeky"), or "a website (or other hypertext document collection) that gives users the ability to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by other users."

The Mozilla Foundation - Home of the Firefox web browser.

California Open Source Textbook Project - The California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP) is a collaborative, public/private undertaking. It has been created to address the high cost, content range, and consistent shortages of K-12 textbooks in California.

Center for Cooperative Research - "The Center for Cooperative Research seeks to encourage grassroots participation and collaboration in the documentation of the public historical record using an open-content model. New technology developed during the last decade has changed the nature of information production and distribution in two very important ways which are both fundamental to the Center's objectives."

Participation in Science and Technology Policy

The Loka Institute - The Loka Institute is a non-profit research and advocacy organization concerned with the social, political, and environmental repercussions of research, science and technology. Their slogan: "Making Research, Science & Technology Responsive to Democratically Decided Social & Environmental Concerns." Projects undertaken by the Loka Institute include:

• The Community Research Network - a trans-national network of research and grassroots organizations conducting community-based research for social change.
• The Kinective Research Management Initiative focuses on the development of management practices specifically for participatory research collaborations.
• Scenario Workshop Project - "[T]his project seeks to develop and pilot test a participatory technology assessment method that incorporates systematic attention to technologies’ effects on democracy."
• Citizen Panels - A manifestation of the "consensus conference" model, a process pioneered in Denmark intended to provide "a context for lay citizens to deliberate on technically complex issues of public policy."
  • Examples of consensus conferences on science & technology policy around the world.

Participatory Culture, Education, and "Targeted Media"

Gregory D. Saxton. 1999. Nation, Nation-Building, and Nationalism in the Catalan-Speaking Cyberspace. American Sociological Association: Collective Behavior & Social Movements Section Working Paper Series, Number 1, Volume 2.  

• In this paper, I explore how the "targeted media" enabled by advent of computer-mediated communications has facilitated the growth of participatory social and cultural movements.

Libre Society - A radical left open source cultural organization: "Libre Society is an assemblage of the creative multitude who are concerned with exploring the intersections between critical thought, technology, art and transformative practice. The Libre Society provides a shared socio-technical field for artistic, cultural, intellectual and political production that is free for use and reuse (copyleft)."

Creative Commons - Creative Commons is "devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share."

Project Gutenberg - "The oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or etexts) on the Internet. Our collection of more than 12.000 eBooks was produced by hundreds of volunteers. Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are older literary works that are in the public domain in the United States. All may be freely downloaded and read, and redistributed for non-commercial use."

MIT's OpenCourseWare "A free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership."

Participatory Budgeting

The DC Fiscal Policy Institute A project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Participatory Budgeting - World Bank

The International Budgeting Project The IBP "builds civil society budget capacity, enhances participation, and combats poverty.

• The Latin American Index of Budget Transparency 2003
  

Participatory Organizational Planning and Learning

Future Search - "An interactive planning process used world-wide in diverse cultures to achieve shared goals and fast action. Future search leads to cooperative planning that lasts for years. portal to a comprehensive collection of information regarding the initiative and referendum process throughout the world."

Open Space - "Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 15 years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity. In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy, group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and work together to create? "

Appreciative Inquiry - "AI was developed by Dr. David Cooperrider and his colleagues as a new paradigm with the potential to replace the conventional problem-solving methods of organization development."