Governance & Democracy Policy in Symbiotic Democracy
Core Principle:
Governance is distributed, transparent, and directly tied to contribution, with layers of decision-making that flow between local, domain, national, and global levels. Communities are the primary political units, and the “state” exists to federate them, not dominate them.
How It Works
Community Charters
Every recognized community (e.g., a cycling club, renewable energy co-op, or healthcare association) must publish a public charter — a living constitution that defines:
Purpose and mission
Decision-making processes (consensus, liquid democracy, delegated authority)
Membership criteria and rights
Conflict resolution processes
Contribution measurement and reward systems
Charters are stored in a National Community Registry in a structured, machine-readable format (schema.org-like) for both humans and AI to reference.
Contribution Ledger
All communities maintain a ledger of member contributions — covering time, expertise, resources, and governance work.
This ledger feeds into weighted voting rights: those who contribute more have proportionally more influence, but with caps to avoid oligarchies.
AI tools assist in verifying and scoring contributions (like GitHub commits for governance and economic activity).
Liquid Democracy
Members can either vote directly on issues or delegate their vote to a trusted representative (for a set time or topic).
This allows flexible representation — for example, delegating your vote on environmental issues to a climate scientist but keeping your own vote on local infrastructure.
Federated Governance
Communities elect or delegate representatives to domain-level councils (e.g., Agriculture, Health, Energy).
Domain councils feed into national federations, which coordinate cross-domain policies and resources.
The national layer exists mainly to:
Maintain interoperability between communities
Ensure constitutional rights are respected
Mediate disputes between communities
Handle national-scale infrastructure & defense
Conflict Resolution & Justice
Disputes within communities are resolved through restorative justice — mediation circles, contribution-based restitution, or arbitration panels.
If unresolved, cases can escalate to federated courts, made up of randomly selected trained mediators from multiple communities to avoid bias.
Transparency & Anti-Capture
All governance actions — votes, budgets, decisions — are logged in a public audit trail unless privacy laws apply (e.g., personal data in mediation).
Term limits and rotation in leadership roles prevent entrenched power.
AI-powered dashboards allow citizens to track governance health (participation rates, diversity, representation, etc.).
Example in Action
A Renewable Energy Cooperative wants to install solar panels across its members’ rooftops.
The decision is posted on the community ledger; members vote directly or delegate to the Energy Domain Council representative.
If approved, the decision and budget are logged publicly, suppliers are selected from the Community Supplier Directory, and the work is tracked for contribution credits.
The success metrics (energy output, cost savings, emissions reduction) feed back into the community’s performance profile — visible to members and potential partners.