DEMOCRACY 2.0: Rules of Order for Everyday Democrats: The Voting Member's Handbook
Book Details
Author(s)C. D. Madson
PublisherThe Solon Academy
ISBN / ASINB00QXFN8V4
ISBN-13978B00QXFN8V4
Sales Rank2,152,339
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
The Keep-It-Simple-Stupid alternative to Robert’s Rules of Order, for practical use by ordinary people facing everyday realities.
**FEATURING EXTENSIVE INTERNAL HYPERLINKS**
Published by The Solon Academy
www.TheSolonAcademy.com
EXCERPT FROM THE PREFACE:
Our society is losing the art of participatory democracy. Strata councils, volunteer clubs, non-profit societies, corporate boards, unions, NGOs, co-ops, parent advisory councils, service clubs, charities; all of these are suffering with the same general malaise. We, as a society, as a body of individual citizens, have forgotten how to do democracy.
In our busy lives no one has time to read the 700+ pages of Robert’s Rules of Order just so they can attend their strata condo AGM. Most people haven’t even heard of Robert’s Rules, yet “Bob’s Book” is the overwhelmingly dominant rules system. Alienated and disenfranchised from the process, many just stay home. In that vacuum our democracy is floundering.
Recently some have tried with noble intent to reverse this slide. Experiments in “consensus” models by the Occupy movement and others, while laudable, have suffered from the fatal naiveté of idealism divorced from pragmatic experience. By abandoning the principle of Majority Rule their attempted surgery to save democracy cut too deeply into the skeleton of the patient, creating a system that can not survive a collision with the messy facts of everyday reality.
The failure of both Robert’s Rules of Order and the Consensus models in the everyday world leaves the void of participatory democracy unfilled. The Democracy 2.0 rule system is designed to fill that void, as a democratic system for everyday use by everyday people facing everyday realities. It is pragmatic and simple. It keeps what works and throws out the rest. At only 39 pages, it’s the accessible, user-friendly, Keep-It-Simple-Stupid rules of order system that anyone can navigate with about as much investment as learning to operate that TV remote, or installing the latest social media app on your smartphone. Each of us has learned harder things for more trivial reasons.
Democracy 2.0 will not grind to gridlock the moment someone asserts their individual rights or refuses to bow to groupthink. Nor is it so formal and convoluted that it requires a degree in law or political science to navigate. It preserves the essential lessons learned from 2500 years of democratic trial and error, making it robust enough to channel strident disagreement into productive discourse while rigorous enough to insure the process is simple, efficient and decisive.
In short, the two-and-a-half-millennia year-old operating system of everyday democracy needs an upgrade to make it work for today's citizens. The Democracy 2.0 rules of order system is that upgrade, but it is more. It is an attempt to restore our cultural birthright: the lost art of participatory democracy.
**FEATURING EXTENSIVE INTERNAL HYPERLINKS**
Published by The Solon Academy
www.TheSolonAcademy.com
EXCERPT FROM THE PREFACE:
Our society is losing the art of participatory democracy. Strata councils, volunteer clubs, non-profit societies, corporate boards, unions, NGOs, co-ops, parent advisory councils, service clubs, charities; all of these are suffering with the same general malaise. We, as a society, as a body of individual citizens, have forgotten how to do democracy.
In our busy lives no one has time to read the 700+ pages of Robert’s Rules of Order just so they can attend their strata condo AGM. Most people haven’t even heard of Robert’s Rules, yet “Bob’s Book” is the overwhelmingly dominant rules system. Alienated and disenfranchised from the process, many just stay home. In that vacuum our democracy is floundering.
Recently some have tried with noble intent to reverse this slide. Experiments in “consensus” models by the Occupy movement and others, while laudable, have suffered from the fatal naiveté of idealism divorced from pragmatic experience. By abandoning the principle of Majority Rule their attempted surgery to save democracy cut too deeply into the skeleton of the patient, creating a system that can not survive a collision with the messy facts of everyday reality.
The failure of both Robert’s Rules of Order and the Consensus models in the everyday world leaves the void of participatory democracy unfilled. The Democracy 2.0 rule system is designed to fill that void, as a democratic system for everyday use by everyday people facing everyday realities. It is pragmatic and simple. It keeps what works and throws out the rest. At only 39 pages, it’s the accessible, user-friendly, Keep-It-Simple-Stupid rules of order system that anyone can navigate with about as much investment as learning to operate that TV remote, or installing the latest social media app on your smartphone. Each of us has learned harder things for more trivial reasons.
Democracy 2.0 will not grind to gridlock the moment someone asserts their individual rights or refuses to bow to groupthink. Nor is it so formal and convoluted that it requires a degree in law or political science to navigate. It preserves the essential lessons learned from 2500 years of democratic trial and error, making it robust enough to channel strident disagreement into productive discourse while rigorous enough to insure the process is simple, efficient and decisive.
In short, the two-and-a-half-millennia year-old operating system of everyday democracy needs an upgrade to make it work for today's citizens. The Democracy 2.0 rules of order system is that upgrade, but it is more. It is an attempt to restore our cultural birthright: the lost art of participatory democracy.
