Participatory democracy

A process in which broad public inputs are sought for crucial policies. Representative democracies utilize a professional political elite for policymaking; the electorate is relied upon to choose representative who will express their points of view. In contrast, participatory democracy strives to create opportunities for all members of a political group to make meaningful contributions to decision-making, and seeks to broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities. Anticipatory democracy, a variant of this theme, adds predictions of future events to this perspective; first proposed by Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock.