What size is unwieldy for direct democracy?

[Traitorfish]

The Dunbar number ?

Dunbar explained it informally as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar".

The appropriate size of a direct democracy is zero people.

 

[Grisu]

For a pure direct democracy the number is very low. It works in Switzerland for small communes, but beyond that it doesn't make much sense. For actual pracical direct democracies (basically representative democracies with elements of direct democracy) there isn't really a size limit.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The appropriate size of a direct democracy is zero people.

It's two if I'm sober and around twenty if I'm already drunk.

 

[Kyriakos]

A key parameter of a functional democracy is an engaged demos. Eg in ancient Athens the state actually paid you to go vote.
Moreover in a direct democracy (ancient Athens) you had some awesome laws like forcing any citizen above some wealth to do public projects as a patron. Those patrons were the ones paying for the drama festivals, and had triremes built - to help spread democracy

 

[Hrothbern]

A key parameter of a functional democracy is an engaged demos. Eg in ancient Athens the state actually paid you to go vote.
Moreover in a direct democracy (ancient Athens) you had some awesome laws like forcing any citizen above some wealth to do public projects as a patron. Those patrons were the ones paying for the drama festivals, and had triremes built - to help spread democracy

yes... engaged demos
One of the angles to look at what is possible with democracy, and what at what scale size, is the amount of time a citizen is willing to spend on it.

Higher scale size from village to country means in reality also higher scope of kind of topics you need to be informed about.
Higher developed and more complex economies and societies means more and more complicated topics.

And there will likely be a kind of classic Input-Output response curve, where the higher benefits (output) of more efforts (input) will start to saturate.
The other curve is scale size on the X-axis and needed effort for full engagement, meaning adequately informed and thought-through on the Y-axis.

Even in a representative democracy parties have usually split up the members of their party as specialists on specific topics, and when that party has her internal meetings, where the party specialist explains the why's of his proposal on certain plenary parliament votes, there is little time for discussion, unless it is some topic that got much attention from the newsmedia. Even MP's have too little time to dig in in all topics for their personal well informed and thought-through opinion.

I think 1 hour per week to fully engage in some form of democracy for each citizen is already a lot.

Imagine that it would be your citizen's duty to attend one evening per week in your plenary democracy meeting, and doing your prep homework as well.
How would that fly ?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

It is 99 according to Spanish law, since only towns with less than 100 inhabitants can organise in concejo abierto (open council), a form of direct democracy dating back to medieval times.

 

[Kyriakos]

If the state paid you, you could make time

 

[Yeekim]

There is no such limit. It is merely a question of what are appropriate issues to be resolved by general vote, and on which level.
To paraphrase an old saying - you can have someone deciding everything or everyone deciding something, but you can't have everyone deciding everything.

 

[Hrothbern]

If the state paid you, you could make time

There is no such limit. It is merely a question of what are appropriate issues to be resolved by general vote, and on which level.
To paraphrase an old saying - you can have someone deciding everything or everyone deciding something, but you can't have everyone deciding everything.

I think that's where the pyramid of counties-regions-states-(semi)federation with a meaningful scope of self-determination comes in and along the other track participation democracy comes in the equation.

County politicians, region politicians, state politicians, federal politicians are all paid. And if you have enough representative democratical support for participation democracy the buildings, postage & stationary, trainers, etc are all paid to faciliate bottom up volunteer participation associations. Union and workers councils members getting paid time from their employers, etc.

Instead of a single point of entry democracy, you get by that a matrix how and where citizens can exercize their demos. And how much time and when in their lives and on what.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that's where the pyramid of counties-regions-states-(semi)federation with a meaningful scope of self-determination comes in and along the other track participation democracy comes in the equation.

County politicians, region politicians, state politicians, federal politicians are all paid. And if you have enough representative democratical support for participation democracy the buildings, postage & stationary, trainers, etc are all paid to faciliate bottom up volunteer participation associations. Union and workers councils members getting paid time from their employers, etc.

Instead of a single point of entry democracy, you get by that a matrix how and where citizens can exercize their demos. And how much time and when in their lives and on what.

It still is not a real democracy; eg ancient athenians were acting (each when his turn came) in most offices of the state. Including as judges. One has to assume that a positive there is that you have to care for others in the demos being ethical and as educated as possible; cause each may possibly decide what happens to you in a trial.
Judges werent as easily bought, cause they were not fixed positions. But the general sense is that you have to care about political life.
Afterall, the english term "idiot" is etymologically the opposite of demotes (citizen) ; meaning one who is focused on private matters.

That said, it was already an issue in Athens of the time, to not care about political life. The main reason plato wrote "the republic" was to argue against apolitical life for philosophers

 

[Hrothbern]

It still is not a real democracy; eg ancient athenians were acting (each when his turn came) in most offices of the state. Including as judges. One has to assume that a positive there is that you have to care for others in the demos being ethical and as educated as possible; cause each may possibly decide what happens to you in a trial.
Judges werent as easily bought, cause they were not fixed positions. But the general sense is that you have to care about political life.
Afterall, the english term "idiot" is etymologically the opposite of demotes (citizen) ; meaning one who is focused on private matters.

That said, it was already an issue in Athens of the time, to not care about political life. The main reason plato wrote "the republic" was to argue against apolitical life for philosophers

TIL where idiot comes from
how befitting for the Trump family

agree on what you say re not being a true democracy
Must have been a fantastic time to live in.... regarding all these developments of new ideas.... and indeed already the struggle with the resilience of human nature to stay more autonome at personal and family scale.
The solution sought in personal development virtues, and in virtues aimed at supporting a good state, your state..... a solution where helping your neighbor was elevated to a social duty to the more abstract state.

There is no system for democracy that can work really well imo without virtues and a sense of social duty.
Although as is being proved in many countries, systems with institutions are like fortifications against people that have none. Fortifications that can erode as well, periods with a better sense repairing the damage.

I see the smallest scale levels, the smallest granular size, of the democracy matrix as the generating source for demos virtues and demos sense of duty for citizens.
Whether that is kind of non-political in being a jury member in court in some countries, or volunteer efforts in the local sportsclub.... or more politically engaged as member of a political party with canvassing, take your turn in the workers council, etc.
It is where you learn to develop yourself in community and personal virtues and values under the stress test of Real Life participation (instead of a Facebook spectator/consumer).

 

[mitsho]

Define Direct Democracy, please.

The passive elements like the power of referendum works very well in all sizes (the ability to stop a decision by parliament or government through a collection of signatures and then a vote). It forces cooperation and stops unpopular legislation.

The active elements are a bit more tricky, since they are designed to bring ideas not represented in parliament into the public. Since in a functioning democracy, everybody should be represented in parliament, this power of initiative gets coopted by parties and populists to frame the public discussion. On the communal level, this might be helpful, as the questions are very straight-forward (do we want that bridge, yes or no). but on the national, it's just dangerous.

So, size isn't that important, unless you are talking of the active elements where they get more dangerous the bigger the unit is due to bad politicians and increasing complexity.

EDIT: ok, I now had the time to read the thread and I stay by my points above. There is no pure system rather we have elements of all of them. One that hasn't been mentioned so far in here and which has some interesting elements worth looking at is deliberative democracy.