Democracy Builders Charter

Democracy Builders is an online group for democracy and civic engagement practitioners and experts.

The purpose of Democracy Builders is to facilitate professional information exchange among democracy and community engagement practitioners and experts at all levels of governance on an international basis. Democracy Builders is not a space to debate abstract political philosophy or for political advocacy itself. It is designed for those knowledge and information sharing among those in government, academia, and non-governmental organisations engaged in democracy building activities within developed and developing democracies..

Democracy Builders opened (will open with 500 members) and will run on an ongoing basis..

Membership and Roles

Membership in Democracy Builders is open to interested participants. Those in non-democratic countries are encouraged to join under an alias if such protection is required.

You are not currently a member of Democracy Builders.

The forum manager of Democracy Builders is Steven Clift.

Participation Guidelines

Participants in Democracy Builders agree to:

Use of the forum for ongoing advocacy related to one country is not allowed. Initiatives may be announced and updates provided, but copies of legislative-oriented advocacy alerts are not appropriate
Participation in the forum by individual citizen activists is allowed, but only within the professionally-oriented scope of the forum.
Using the forum to repeatedly advocate an abstract political philosophy or "ideas" not grounded in actual practice is outside the scope of this forum. In short, use your own blog if you need a soapbox to say something multiple times.
Those interested in focusing on direct democracy, should join the Continuing International Congress on Direct Democracy YahooGroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cicdd/
Aspects of participatory democracy, citizen engagement in public
problem-solving, and enhancing representative democracy are well within scope
contribute value publicly via forums and to not reply to other participants off-line with commercial solicitations (you must share value publicly so people come to you if you provide services)
follow the effective participation practices in the Participation Guide

All public and private forums hosted by Democracies Online seek to make a positive contribution to democracy, good governance, and citizen participation. Participants using a forum outside the scope of their stated purpose may have their access to a forum limited upon notification by a representative of Democracies Online. If you are aware of a violation of the spirit of this charter and these guidelines, please contact us.

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