Talk:Consensus democracy

Self serving revisionism

This article demonstrates the worst of efforts to use Wikimedia to revise history according to libertarian-utopian designs. It is mostly original research, in which the writers say "Islam is sort of like consensus democracy" and "Switzerland is sort of a consensus democracy." The article offers no sources suggesting the term "consensus democracy" is used self-referentially by any established legal jurisdiction anywhere. The links -- not sources (there are none) -- the "external links" point to an original on-line book that doesn't rise the the level of credible sourcing Wikimedia promised readers, and to an activists handbook.

The introductory premise, that "Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision making to the process of legislation" is not based in any legitimate source. If I didn't know better I would suggest this is an effort to create definition in support of wikipedia's bizarre claim that it is not an experiment in democracy, but rather a working demonstration of consensus democracy. But I know who created the article. Knowing that, I suggest it's continued placement on Wikipedia and three year history with no significant effort to provide sources or delete as original reasearch suggests Wikimedia drives away editors who disrupt the libertarian-utopian dreams of core members, but preserves their work when it lends substance to novel social concepts Wikimedia attempts to advance. Xientist 23:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that this article needs sourcing. I don't think this article is somehow a reflection of wikipedia's own ideology.

What this article suffers from is fluid meaning of the word "consensus democracy". In the U.S. politics it means some form of direct democracy, in Europe and in academic circles, (most notably in the work of Arend Lijphart) it means some form of institutional design that constrains majority rule and finally in the Islamic religious tradition it means some form of rule by islamic scholars. You seem to have an issue with the American political one. I think the best way to solves this articles issues is to split it in three different articles Consensus democracy (United States), Consensus democracy (Europe) and Consensus democracy (Islam).

C mon 09:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

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There seems to be some text missing from the final sentence, or fragments of two sentences have perhaps collided?

Moved from article:

The basic principles are often cited as abstractions of those applied in Islam, since it provides the prototype method that strongly influenced both scientific method and many modern sciences such as medicine. The Four Pillars of the Green Party, for instance, were so named to honour the Five Pillars of Islam.

because it's full of doubtful generalizations which are largely irrelevant to the subject.

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Are there any references to back up the content that says "consensus democracy" is associated with the left and "semi-direct democracy" is associated with the right? -- Stevietheman 21:21, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

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I reversed recent changes that subdivided the general concept of consensus democracy into how it's dealt with regionally. I found the text regarding the U.S. to make little sense. At any rate, if changes like this are to be introduced again, I would hope the author would take a lot more care with easing in the new content. These recent changes came too far too fast... be more incremental, please. -- Stevietheman 03:22, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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I made the changes that were removed. It's rather frustrating too see some much work just removed. The article is currently very US-centered, that doesn't matter, in the US the debate seems to centre around deliberative and semi-direct democracy, but the European view, were consensus-democracy is accepted used term within political science, should be reviewed too. It can't just be removed because it makes too little sense: So I'll put it back in (perhaps a bit clearer).

please, before mercilessly editing my changes out again, explain what you don't understand about european consensus democracy, working together might improve the article. - 31 aug 2004

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All the references to Islam in the last paragraph seem a little out of place. Would it be better to move those to a different article?

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I've moved the piece I originally wrote about the European consensus-democracy to consociational state, where it fits better. - c_mon 12u17, february 1 2006.

Examples?

Not sure if anyone still has this article on his/her watchlist, but are there any examples of consensus democracy? All of the examples mentioned in the text turn out to be just a consensus between a very limited number of voters or organizations. The poldermodel for example is a "consensus" between 3 huge organizations and basically the same as negotiation processes in "non-consensus" systems. How does that ensure that minority positions aren't just ignored ? As of now, none of the examples mentioned is even close to a consensus of all people involved. Malc82 22:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Original Research

This article is scheduled for massive OR deletions unless supported. Citations #1 and #3 are challenged as unreliable sources. Raggz 08:23, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

"Be careful not to go too far on the side of not upsetting editors by leaving unsourced information in articles for too long, or at all in the case of information about living people. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has said of this: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced."

I'm not sure why you removed this citation (diff). "Unreliable" makes no sense - if you look at the source, it is a publication called "Direct Democracy in Switzerland", and "Direct Democracy in Switzerland was published by Presence Switzerland (PRS), an official body of the Swiss Confederation. PRS promotes the dissemination of information about Switzerland worldwide...". Public education efforts by an official government agency in Switzerland would seem to be prima facie reliable sources. If you feel otherwise, or don't think the reference is appropriate to the text citing it, you'll have to make the case. - David Oberst 08:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

All points well taken, thank you for the correction. Raggz 09:28, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

FYI

If people who watch this page are also interested in how Wikipedia is governed, be sure to check out this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Advisory_Council_on_Project_Development . Slrubenstein | Talk 13:22, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

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Proposed merge of Consensus government into Consensus democracy

These appear to be identical in scope and should be merged together, if not both merged into consensus decision-making. czar 07:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 09:49, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

@Czar; @Klbrain: Thoughts on merging this into consensus decision-making? Think the scope still overlaps and I'm unclear as to how "consensus democracy" is distinct enough to warrant its own article. -- Grnrchst (talk) 15:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I think a merger into Democracy#Consensus democracy would work, as it's more a neologism for a subset type of democracy than a facet of consensus decision-making itself. It already has a short section there and we apparently don't have enough for a full article here. czar 15:46, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I would support that. This article could quite easily be reduced into that section. -- Grnrchst (talk) 16:26, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

@Czar: Just looked into the cited sources for this article and only one of them actually discusses "consensus democracy" (Lijphart 1999). The rest either didn't mention consensus at all, mentioned consensus decision-making without describing it in terms of democracy, or are about "consensus government". -- Grnrchst (talk) 19:46, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Czar: I went ahead and merged it. Let me know if you have any objections. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:43, 25 April 2023 (UTC)