The organisation being discussed in this blog (see all relevant posts together) has the working title of the Athenian Society. I thought I would take some time to explain why I chose that name, and what I do and don't mean by it.
Trying to give a name to wider democratic involvement is quite hard. Democracy itself would be a good word, except for the fact that it is used by parties of the left, right and centre around the world, and no-one can agree what it means.
Qualifying "democracy" with words like "representative" and "participatory" creates lumpy mouthfuls of words like the anarcho-syndicalist-Trotskyites of old. In any case, terms like "representative democracy" or "participatory democracy" are covered in academic book-dust, and are an instant turn-off for most people.
The term "e-democracy" doesn't cover it either, partly because it also covers a multitude of different activities, and partly because I believe that online and offline democratic activities have far more similarities than differences, and can be combined in the same structure without difficulty.
So the answer, I think, is to coin a new word, and thereby have the liberty of defining it as "whatever the society is". I chose Athens as the base of that new word for a few reasons:
- Athens was, and is widely known to be, the first democratic government
- It is also widely known that the government included all citizens (even if citizenship was very limited in modern terms)
- Democratic participation in Athens was seen as part of a ongoing bargain between individual and state, rather than as a duty or a chore.
It also doesn't hurt that Pericles's Funeral Oration sets out a mission statement a lot more inspiring than the normal corporate vision.
10:01:49 PM 
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