Abstract
This chapter frames one of the greatest challenges of our time: the invention of methods and technologies that harness the collective intelligence and wisdom of thousands of stakeholders working together on a complex societal systemic problem. The worldwide failures of democracy to respond to global challenges, especially in the domain of governance, call for such massive but still authentic and democratic participatory systems. The authors assert that the need to reinvent democracy is urgent and that it can be done using co-laboratories of democracy. It concludes with a presentation of key findings of co-laboratories that aim to reinvent democracy using structured dialogic design methodology applied in small group settings and an introduction into the challenges of scaling up this process to engage thousands.
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Notes
- 1.
The term Triggering Question is used by practitioners of the SDDP methodology to describe a question formulated by the Knowledge Management Team of a particular dialogue with the aim to trigger short and concise responses by the participants.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the facilitators, participants and supporters of the co-Laboratories of Democracy cited here with special mention to the President of the 21st Century Agoras Tom Flanagan and the young people who initiated and kindled some of them with special mentioning of Mrs. Elia Petridou, Mrs. Eleni Michail, Mrs. Maria Fotiou, and Mrs. Zoe Apostolidou. Special thanks go to Mrs. Maria Georgiou for investing countless hours in the analysis and preparation and publishing of the reports. Two dialogues have been supported by the Youth in Action program of the European Commission (Contracts: CY-13-03-2011-R5; CY-51-06-2011-R5).
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Laouris, Y., Dye, K.M.C., Michaelides, M., Christakis, A.N. (2014). Co-laboratories of Democracy: Best Choices for Designing Sustainable Futures. In: Metcalf, G. (eds) Social Systems and Design. Translational Systems Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54478-4_7
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