Peer Democracy

Who is the President of the Swiss Confederation? It is a question almost no one can answer. I have put it to many politically engaged people in Sweden. Hardly anyone knows. This year his name is Guy Parmelin, but next year it will be someone else. And there is a natural explanation: in Switzerland, no … Read more

Sunday, October 25, 2026, may become a date to remember. In Serbia, after fourteen years in power, Aleksandar Vučić was forced to concede defeat to the Student List, a movement that emerged from two years of protests against corruption. That same evening, Lula da Silva overturned a first-round deficit to secure a historic fourth term … Read more

The crisis of liberalism in one word: infidelity. The liberal world order is, or was, like a marriage between the market and democracy. Democracy gave the market legal certainty and stability, and the market gave democracy prosperity. But the market began to stray. It found autocracies with faster decision-making, cheaper labour and untapped natural resources. … Read more

Political priorities often begin with a simple question: I want to do what is good — but for whom, or for what, should it be good? The answer usually starts very close to ourselves: me and those I love. From there, our concern can widen to include our community, tribe, or nation, then humanity as … Read more

Most democracies worldwide follow the principle of “one citizen, one vote.” Limited companies follow a different, plutocratic principle: “one share, one vote.” Those who own more have more say. Only cooperatives apply the principle of “one member, one vote”—regardless of how much each individual has invested. We thus live with two systems side by side. … Read more

My father was a forest keeper in a large nature reserve, and as a boy, I accompanied him through the woods he looked after. What I remember is not wilderness, but harmony. Old spruce standing beside young birch; a fallen trunk hosting a whole garden of moss; sparse pine on unproductive patches, where red lingonberries … Read more

Human beings have several ways of solving collective problems due to Thomas W. Malone: Each of these mechanisms can produce remarkable results. But each can also become destructive. Why? A recent perspective by Paul Van Lange and Paul Bergmann offers an important clue. Reviewing decades of research on human cooperation, they argue that cooperation is … Read more

If rules inevitably become outdated, democracy needs a way to update them. But how? Today, changing an important law normally requires a formal political process. Changing a constitution can be extremely difficult. Changing an international treaty can be harder still. This is understandable. Rules should not be changed casually. But there is a danger on … Read more

5 to 7 is the ideal size of the Board. The optimal number of people to make a joint decision, according to any management consultant. Small enough to avoid chaos, large enough for a good discussion, and if you keep the number odd, no tedious ties. Decades of organisational psychology stand behind this rule, and … Read more

Every society lives inside rules inherited from the past. Constitutions, laws, contracts, customs, institutions and treaties are messages from one generation to another. They contain accumulated knowledge about how people have learned to live together. This inheritance is one of civilization’s great achievements. Without it, every generation would have to start again. But inheritance has … Read more