2.6. The Pattern for Citizen Led Self-Governance
Context: In the Lionsberg model, governance is based on the principle of subsidiarity, which emphasizes sovereignty and autonomy at all levels, and decision-making at the lowest appropriate level through a distributed network of voluntary associations within a uniting confederation, ensuring that local needs and contexts are prioritized and satisfied.
Problem: Traditional top-down governance structures are often unresponsive to local needs and contexts, resulting in disengaged citizens, inefficient decision-making processes, and wasteful aggregation and allocation of resources and power that does not create individual and local flourishing.
Forces:
- Concentration of power
- Limited citizen engagement
- Inefficient decision-making
- Lack of responsiveness to local needs
- Abdication of responsibility and authority to higher levels of abstraction
Solution: The Lionsberg model promotes a pattern for Citizen Led Self-Governance based on the following steps:
- Cultivate personal responsibility: Encourage citizens to take responsibility for their own lives, well-being, and their role in the community.
- Form Citizen Groups: Facilitate the formation of Citizen Groups, which allow citizens to collaborate on specific needs, problems, and goals within their Domains of Responsibility and Authority.
- Define Domains of Responsibility and Authority: Clearly define every Domain Of Responsibility And Authority, from the Individual, Family, and Local, all the way up through every fractal level to the universal collective.
- Create Fields of Agreement: Forge a defined Field of Agreements for each Domain Of Responsibility And Authority.
- Establish Boundaries: Establish strong boundaries around each Domain, so that participation can occur on the basis of reciprocal and voluntary Consent
- Participation by Consent: Voluntarily organize and federate on the basis of mutual consent to Participation, and agreement to honor and uphold the Field of Agreements in each defined Domain of Participation.
- Access to resources and tools: Provide access to resources, knowledge, and tools that empower citizens to participate effectively in the decision-making process within their domains of responsibility and authority.
- Inclusive and collaborative culture: Foster a culture of openness, inclusivity, and collaboration, where diverse perspectives are valued and respected, and each citizen is encouraged to participate in decision-making within their domains of responsibility and authority.
- Clear communication channels: Establish clear channels for communication and decision-making at all levels of the fractal governance system, ensuring that decisions made within a domain are transparent and can be integrated with decisions made in other domains.
- Evaluation and improvement: Develop mechanisms for evaluating and improving the effectiveness and inclusivity of the self-governance process within each domain, enabling continuous learning and adaptation.
Resulting Context: A responsive and inclusive system of Citizen led self-governance, where citizens are empowered to actively participate in decision-making processes within their domains of responsibility and authority, resulting in more effective, context-specific solutions, from the individual, family, and local levels, all the way up to the broadest collective.
Forward to 2.7. The Pattern for Voluntarily Organizing and Federating
Back to 2.5. The Pattern for Stewarding the Commons
Table of Contents The Lionsberg Approach to Citizen Led Governance
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