Participatory politics

Participatory politics or parpolity is a theoretical political system proposed by Stephen R. Shalom, professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

It was developed as a political vision to accompany participatory economics (Parecon). Both Parecon and Parpolity together make up the libertarian socialist ideology of Participism; this has significantly informed the International Organization for a Participatory Society. Shalom has stated that Parpolity is meant as a long-range vision of where the social justice movement might want to end up within the field of politics.

The values on which parpolity is based are freedom, self-management, justice, , and tolerance. The goal, according to Shalom, is to create a political system that will allow people to participate as much as possible in a face-to-face manner. The proposed decision-making principle is that every person should have say in a decision proportionate to the degree to which she or he is affected by that decision.

The vision is critical of aspects of modern representative democracies arguing that the level of political control by the people is not sufficient. To address this problem Parpolity suggests a system of Nested Councils, which would include every adult member of a given society.

In a parpolity, there would be local councils of voting citizens consisting of 25–50 members (number of represented citizens should not exceed approximately 300 per council member). These local councils would be able to pass any law that affected only the local council. No higher council would be able to override the decisions of a lower council, only a council court would be able to challenge a local law on human rights grounds. The councils would be based on consensus, though majority votes are allowed when issues cannot be agreed upon.

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