Consensus democracy

Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterized by a decision-making structure which involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities.

Consensus democracy also features increased citizen participation both in determining the political agenda and in the decision-making process itself. Some have pointed to developments in information and communication technology as potential facilitators of such systems, for example the usage of DemocracyOS being used in Buenos Aires.

Consensus democracy is most closely embodied in certain countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Lebanon, Sweden, Iraq, and Belgium, where consensus is an important feature of political culture, particularly with a view to preventing the domination of one linguistic or cultural group in the political process. The term consociational state is used in political science to describe countries with such consensus based political systems. An example of such a system could be the Dutch Poldermodel. Many parties in Lebanon call for applying consensus democracy (الديمقراطية التوافقية), especially at times of crisis.

In Canada, the territorial governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut also operate on a consensus model, unlike the oppositional political party structure that prevails elsewhere in Canada.

Consensus (non-party) government operates in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Guernsey also operates a non-ministerial system of government in which government departments are headed not by ministers with executive authority, but by committees of five members. Members of the committees are elected by the 47-member States of Deliberation, which is both the parliament and the executive. The States of Guernsey (the island's parliament) last endorsed the system of consensus government by committees in 2002, when it rejected, by a very significant majority, a proposition to replace the system with executive/cabinet-style government. In 2004 Guernsey last made changes to its system of government.

...
Wikipedia