Collaborative and participatory decision making is essential to a healthy democratic culture, but our political institutions still don’t seem to reflect this.

This paper explores some ways in which participatory approaches to decision making are being used outside of these traditional political spaces. Some of these are found in the setting of local politics, but others are flourishing in other places. The paper is not meant as an exhaustive account of these practices but rather as a starting point to broaden the way we think about democracy and democratic culture in everyday life.