Reading & sources

A growing, annotated shelf of the talks, research, and writing we’ve found useful — and the sources behind pages elsewhere in this wiki.

Civic AI & participation

Civic AI — Matt Stempeck (Metagov seminar, 2025) — a tour of how AI is showing up across democracy tech, from the curator of the Civic Tech Field Guide. Grounded, sceptical of hype, and full of real examples. The source behind several of our Concepts pages.
The Civic Tech Field Guide, and why projects succeed or fail — Matt Stempeck (Democracy Innovators Podcast, 2026) — a decade of lessons from running the field’s largest directory: how civic tech is mapped, the patterns behind projects that fail, and the few things that actually work. The source behind our “civic tech field” concepts.
Guide to Digital Participation Platforms — People Powered — a practical guide to when and how to use digital participation tools, including a research section cataloguing how around 30 platforms are already using AI. Comes with an online course and a platform-selection tool.
Civic AI features table — People Powered × Civic Tech Field Guide — the underlying data: which AI-for-participation features appear on which platforms.
“Making sense of large-scale online conversations” — Jigsaw (Google), 2024 — how Jigsaw’s open-source Sensemaker uses Gemini to categorise and summarise Polis-style conversations, grounding each summary in citations. The method behind the Bowling Green run report; enriches our civic listening concept.
Mapping LLM tools for public discourse — Adnan Jaber — a report and accompanying Airtable database mapping the landscape of LLM-based tools used for public discourse and deliberation.
The American Conversation Project — Deb Roy / Cortico (NCoC, 2025) — a clear walkthrough of Cortico’s “talk, understand, share” civic-listening method, and the launch of a nationwide listening effort. The source behind our civic listening concept.
“From Division to Dialogue: How AI Can Save Democracy” — Deb Roy, Life with Machines (2025) — the “dialogue networks” framing (talk-and-highlight, speed of trust, resonance) and the civic-muscle / AI-scaffolding argument. Enriches our civic listening concept.
“The Peacemaking Machine” — Tessler & Bakker (DeepMind), Northeastern GovLab (2025) — the Science study on AI-mediated consensus. The source behind our Habermas Machine concept.
“AI as Social Technology” — Henry Farrell & Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (Knight First Amendment Institute, 2026) — the case that AI is a social technology in the lineage of bureaucracies, markets, and democracy, not an autonomous agent or a “Singularity.” A reframing that changes the civic task from containing AI to governing it. Builds on the authors’ 2025 Science paper. The source behind part of our civic AI and does AI weaken institutions? concepts.
“How to Make AI Serve the Public” — Justin Rosenstein / One Project (2026) — four democratic claims on AI (rules, incentives, wealth, ownership) and a proposed Global AI Assembly (GAIA) modelled on the IAEA. The source behind our democratising AI and public AI concepts.
“Building a Solidarity Ecosystem for AI” — R. Trebor Scholz & Mark Esposito (SSIR, 2026) — the “extraction stack” versus a cooperative, worker-owned “solidarity stack,” across minerals, infrastructure, data, labour, and knowledge. The source behind the cooperative section of our democratising AI concept.
“Zero-Click Government: Omakase or Loss of Agency?” — Beth Simone Noveck (Reboot Democracy, 2026) — an afterword to Gustavo Maia’s forthcoming book on anticipatory governance: why a government that acts on inferred demand risks losing the democratic feedback signal that applications and complaints once carried. A source behind does AI weaken institutions?
“An army of citizens building evals” — Andy Hall (Free Systems, 2026) — rather than ban AI in the classroom, teach every student to build their own evals — turning AI into an object of study and a civic literacy. The source behind our technology’s place is education concept.
“The Use of Digital Tools and AI to Promote Citizen Participation in EU Policymaking” — European Parliament STOA / Futures4Europe (2026) — a foresight study reviewing 94 digital participation tools and 11 case studies; concludes success depends on political frameworks (mandate, visible feedback) more than on the technology. A source behind our why civic tech fails concept.
“Three changes needed to strengthen digital citizen participation” — Antti Lehtinen / Sitra (2026) — convince decision-makers, link platforms to real decisions, and streamline procurement; the practitioner companion to Sitra’s report “European civic technology and citizen participation in the age of AI.” A source behind our why civic tech fails concept.
“How We Shaped 12 Civic Tech Recommendations for Mamdani” — garden3d (2026) — 100 New Yorkers use Polis to imagine better civic technology for the city, distilled into 12 recommendations and a participatory documentary.

Plurality, radical markets & digital democracy

Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy — the open book by Audrey Tang, E. Glen Weyl & a large community (the ⿻ project): the fullest statement of plurality — technology designed to help people cooperate across difference rather than race toward a single super-intelligence.
“Conversation Networks” — Deb Roy, Lawrence Lessig & Audrey Tang (2025) — the paper behind our conversation networks concept: the media shape that replaces broadcasting.
Good Enough Ancestor release conversation — Audrey Tang × Matt Prewitt, RadicalxChange (2025) — a 90-minute conversation spanning Taoism, the Sunflower Movement, bandwidth-and-latency democracy, and pluralism. A source behind our plurality, uncommon ground, and conversation networks concepts.
“How Pro-Social Technology Is Saving Democracy from ‘Big Tech’” — Audrey Tang, The Great Simplification w/ Nate Hagens (TGS 169, 2025) — the clearest single tour of Tang’s work: singularity vs plurality, the deepfake Alignment Assembly, pre-bunking, Polis, and pro-social media. The main source behind our plurality cluster and the Taiwan Alignment Assemblies run report.
“From Taiwan to Germany: How Radical Participation Leapfrogs Public Trust” — Audrey Tang & Zarah Bruhn, DLD26 (2025) — a short panel on exporting Taiwan’s “presidential hackathon” and Alignment Assembly models to Germany via SPRIND.
Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society — Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl (Princeton, 2018). The book behind quadratic voting, funding & Harberger taxes and the RadicalxChange movement.
“Designing for Plurality” — Audrey Tang & Glen Weyl, Tokyo (2024) — the three futures (technocracy / libertarianism / plurality), the three principles, and “protest is the fuel, demonstration is the engine.” A source behind our plurality concept.
“Collective Decision Making with Matt Prewitt” — Green Pill #25 (2022) — a lucid deep-dive on quadratic voting/funding and Harberger taxes with the president of RadicalxChange. The source behind our plural mechanisms concept.
“Network Societies, Civic Tech & Democracy” — Glen Weyl & Timour Kosters, Edge City Austin (2025) — why “network state” misreads what a network is. The source behind network societies and the Anno Tokyo run report.
“Salon IV: Plurality in Practice” — Protocol Symposium (2024) — a rare quantitative, sceptical look at how plural voting mechanisms behave in real use, and how easily they mis-calibrate.
“Europe Doesn’t Need Its Own Big Tech. It Needs Protocols Nobody Can Capture” (The Plural Stack) — RadicalxChange (2026) — a manifesto for European digital sovereignty through open, uncapturable protocols rather than national tech champions or more regulation; four tenets across technical, economic, and social layers. A source behind our interoperability & standards concept.

Self-governance & democratic culture

Cecile Green & Seth Frey on the Commoning Standard — Democracy Innovators Podcast (2026) — a wide-ranging conversation on self-governance as a universal literacy, the forms of power, and where technology fits. The source behind our Commoning Standard and related Concepts.
Cecile Green, Collaboration that Works: A Ruthlessly Practical Handbook for a Generative World — a practical handbook of power-sharing practices, summarising the research behind the Commoning Standard’s “Collab.”
Council of Europe — Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture — an official European framework of the values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge people need to take part in a democratic culture.
US Army — ADP 6-22, Army Leadership and the Profession — the “be, know, do” leadership doctrine; a striking example of an institution treating leadership as something to teach everyone, not just those at the top.
David Bollier on the commons — Team Human w/ Douglas Rushkoff (2025) — a clear, wide-ranging conversation on what the commons really is, why the “tragedy” was a myth, enclosure, and the OntoShift. The source behind our commons concepts and two Stories.
David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner (2nd ed.) — a short, accessible introduction to commons thinking and practice.
David Bollier & Silke Helfrich, Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons (2019, open access) — the fuller treatment; source of “relationalised property” and the OntoShift.
Robert C. Ellickson, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (Harvard, 1991) — how Shasta County cattle ranchers resolve disputes by informal social norms rather than the law: self-governance in the wild.
Deep Democracy — Leen Schelfhout (introductory session, 2024) — a hands-on introduction to deep democracy: the “wisdom in the no voice,” the resistance line, and consent-based decision-making. The source behind our deep democracy concept.
Arnold Mindell, The Deep Democracy of Open Forums (2002) — the founding text, applying Process Work to group conflict and collective decision-making.
Myrna Lewis, Inside the No: Five Steps to Decisions That Last — the practical Lewis Method of deep democracy, developed in 1990s South Africa and now taught worldwide.
Margaret Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (2017) — on relationships as the heart of any organisation, cited as the closing note of the deep-democracy approach.

Deliberative democracy & citizens’ assemblies

Hélène Landemore — Democracy Innovators Podcast (2026) — the Yale theorist on open democracy, sortition, and what citizens’ assemblies can (and can’t) do. The source behind our Deliberative democracy concepts.
Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, 2020) — the case for a democracy founded on lot rather than elections.
Hélène Landemore, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton, 2013) — the epistemic argument: why inclusive, diverse groups make better decisions.
Hélène Landemore, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (2026) — open democracy told through the stories of real citizens’ conventions.
Politics Without Politicians — Hélène Landemore × DemocracyNext (2026) — a wide-ranging interview on binding citizen power, governing the assembly, the “civic love” at the heart of deliberation, and where AI fits. The source behind several of our newer Deliberative democracy concepts and the Michigan & Connecticut Run Reports.
Michael A. McCarthy, The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It) (Verso, 2025) — the case for using sortition to bring democratic mandates to public banks and pension funds. The source behind our democratising finance concept; see also the interview with Claudia Chwalisz.
Martin Wolf, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023) — the FT’s chief economics commentator on why the marriage of democracy and capitalism is breaking down, with a chapter sympathetic to a sortition-selected chamber. A source behind our people’s branch concept.
“How citizens can take back power” — Nicholas Gruen, Martin Wolf & Claire Mellier (Nesta, 2024) — the panel making the case for a privately-funded standing assembly as a “people’s branch.” The source behind our people’s branch and institutionalising deliberation concepts.
David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections: The Case for Democracy (2016) — the short, influential book that put sortition back on the agenda for a generation of advocates. A source behind our sortition in organisations concept.
Terrill Bouricius, Democracy Without Politicians (Routledge, 2026; open access) — the case that elections inherently skew toward elites, and a worked-out design for a legislature of several lottery-selected bodies. The source behind our multi-body sortition concept.
The Year in Deliberation — Democracy R&D — the network’s annual review of deliberative democracy; the 2025 edition draws out five field trends (from AI to funding cuts) through 13 member conversations and 16 case studies of assemblies and juries.
“Sortition goes back further in Brussels than many people think” — Hugh Pope — how medieval Brussels chose its aldermen by lot from 1375 and extended the system to the craft guilds in 1421. A source behind our sortition concept.
“Blueprints for Democratic Wellbeing” — Oliver Escobar & Stephen Elstub (Carnegie UK, 2026) — four concrete designs for embedding citizens’ mini-publics in parliaments, from on-demand panels to a lottery-selected second chamber. A source behind our institutionalising deliberation concept.
“Everyday Democracy: A new democratic operating model” — Miriam Levin (Demos, 2026) — the case for making participation routine rather than one-off, to break a “democratic doom loop” of low trust and weak government. A source behind our institutionalising deliberation concept.
Good examples of citizens’ assemblies — Mehr Demokratie — a curated, regularly-updated list of mostly-German assemblies and their real policy outcomes (e.g. Baden-Württemberg’s G8/G9 school reform, the Forum against Fakes). Maintained by Germany’s leading participatory-democracy NGO.
“Deliberative Polling: Changing the Tides of Democracy” — Alice Siu (TEDxStanford, 2024) — a crisp introduction to James Fishkin’s method, the problems with ordinary polls, and America in One Room. The source behind our deliberative polling concept and America in One Room run report.
Assembling an Assembly: A how-to guide — Ieva Česnulaitytė & Claudia Chwalisz (DemocracyNext, 2023) — the canonical practical guide to commissioning and running a citizens’ assembly, phase by phase, with downloadable templates (in English, Spanish, Basque, and Japanese). The source behind our how a citizens’ assembly is run concept.
Spaces for deliberation: Eight spatial qualities for designing deliberative assemblies — Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen & James MacDonald-Nelson (DemocracyNext, 2025) — two architects on the physical rooms assemblies happen in, drawn from practitioners across six countries. The source behind our spaces for deliberation concept.
The Citizens’ White Paper — Demos & Involve (2024) — a UK blueprint for participatory policymaking in central government: the four faults in how policy is made, the four ingredients of good participation, and nine recommendations to embed it. The source behind our participatory policymaking concept; see the launch event with senior civil servants.
Tiago Peixoto — Democracy Innovators Podcast (2024) — the World Bank / Southampton scholar on invited vs invented spaces, the participatory-budgeting evidence base, and why power yields to movements rather than the better argument. The source behind our movements, not arguments concept.
Human Development Report 2023/24: Breaking the Gridlock — UNDP — the UN’s diagnosis of a global gridlock (polarization, agency gaps, false realities) and the case for deliberation as part of the cure; see the UNDP × UN Democracy Fund webinar. The source behind our breaking the gridlock concept.
Jürg Steiner et al., Deliberation Across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments (Cambridge, 2017) — case studies of deliberative forums used for healing in post-conflict settings, from Colombia to Bosnia. A source behind our institutionalising deliberation concept.
Simon Niemeyer, Francesco Veri, John S. Dryzek & André Bächtiger, “How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason” — APSR (2024) — builds a Deliberative Reason Index and shows, across 19 forums, that deliberation measurably improves a group’s reasoning when group-building activates deliberative norms. The empirical backbone of our epistemic case and civic love concepts.
Stephen Elstub & Oliver Escobar, “Democratic innovations in the UK: historical trajectories across space and time” — European Political Science (2026) — four democratic innovations across the four UK nations from the 1970s on; finds rapid but asymmetrical recent growth and argues a constitutional convention is needed to embed them. A source behind our institutionalising deliberation concept.
“Of Civic Love and the Beauty of the Lot” — Hugh Pope (2026) — a review of Landemore’s Politics without Politicians that foregrounds sortition, the Athenian mixed system, and the bonds formed in citizens’ assemblies. A source behind our civic love concept.
Goodbye Elections. Hello Democracy. — a documentary by Adam Cronkright following an all-citizen assembly (Michigan, over Zoom during COVID) — among the best captures of the human, emotional dimension of deliberation.
Children & young people’s assemblies — DemocracyNext (2026) — Katie Reed (CRIN) and two former teen assembly members on how under-18s are joining deliberative democracy. The source behind our children’s-assembly concepts and the Ireland & Scotland Run Reports.
Making (Deliberative) Waves — CRIN — the Child Rights International Network on reimagining democracy with and for children.

Online communities & governance

Nathan Schneider — Democracy Innovators Podcast (2026) — on implicit feudalism, modular politics, protocols, and AI-interpreted governance. The source behind our online-governance Concepts.
Nathan Schneider, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life (University of California Press, 2024) — the book that names “implicit feudalism” and makes the case for democratic design of online communities (open access).
“Modular Politics: Toward a Governance Layer for Online Communities” — the Metagov paper (Frey, Schneider, et al., 2021) behind the modular-politics framework.
“Nathan Schneider: Contributions to a Glossary of Protocol” — Protocol Town Hall (2025) — protocol as a “pattern of interaction” and a site of creativity, not just control; vernacular protocols and protocol sovereignty. A source behind our protocol concept.

Infrastructure, the commons & the bigger picture

OpenHaven & Civic Intelligence Infrastructure — Brandon Nørgaard (OpenCivics, 2026) — a short Civic Innovator Session on mapping the decentralized protocol landscape and building a connective “intelligence layer” between civic tools. The source behind our decentralized landscape and civic intelligence infrastructure concepts.
OpenHaven — Stakeholder Brief — a community-led “convergence navigator” for the peer-to-peer and decentralized protocol landscape (Collaborative Technology Alliance).
Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Metacrisis — Brandon Norgaard, Nicholas Hedlund & Claudia Meglin (Institute of Applied Metatheory, 2025). The big-picture backdrop behind our metacrisis concept.
The Launch of the Planetary Compendium — Berggruen Institute × Dark Matter Labs (2025) — the launch of the Planetary Compendium, an “evolving wunderkammer of planetary governance”: ten case studies on governing beyond the nation state and beyond the human. The source behind our planetary governance, segmented sovereignty, and more-than-human governance concepts and two Stories.
Jonathan S. Blake & Nils Gilman, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (Stanford University Press, 2024) — the book-length case for institutions that can act at the scale of the planet; origin of the “segmented sovereignty” reading of the IAEA.
Interspecies money is here — Nils Gilman & Mutesi Rusagara (Brookings, 2024) — the short essay behind our interspecies money Story: how a Rwandan pilot gave mountain gorillas a wallet and a trustee.

Neighbouring & relational tech

Metagov Seminar: Locality-to-Locality Spreading with the Relational Tech Project (2026) — Deborah Tien & Josh Nesbit on building “village-scale” tools that strengthen neighbourhoods, and how those tools spread community to community. The source behind our relational tech and locality-to-locality spreading concepts and two Stories.
Building tech that’s relational, place-based, participatory, and ~~weird~~ — Connective Tissue (2025) — a Q&A with the Relational Tech Project’s founders on “building with, not for,” post-platform tech, and a new math of scale.
I wanted to buy less stuff. I ended up bonding with my neighbors — Washington Post (2026) — the column that sent the Community Supplies sharing app to roughly 200 neighbourhoods in three days.
The Protopian Prize — Metagov — Metagov’s fiction contest inviting stories of people building “public AI” and “democratic futures”; part of the same effort to imagine better civic technology.

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