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Iran Human Rights: Events of the last few years have made the future of the Islamic Republic more uncertain than ever. The economic crisis has pulled a large sector of society into poverty and exposed systematic corruption and the authorities’ incompetence in solving people’s daily problems. Faced with discontent, the Islamic Republic’s only recourse has been to violently repress popular protests. The question is no longer "when” but "how" Iran will transition from authoritarian rule. An unaddressed question that requires an exploration of the alternative models that may fill the power vacuum following the collapse of the Islamic Republic.
Iran Human Rights has invited experts and academics to start the discussion on "Iran in Transition" from their respective specialist fields.
Read more about the aims of "Iran in Transition"
In this essay, Michael Karlberg explores "the Future of Governance in Iran: Beyond Western Liberal Democracy." You can watch Michael presenting his paper at the end of the essay at the "Iran in Transition" online conference held on 31 January-1 February 2022.
Michael Karlberg is a professor of Communication Studies at Western Washington University. His interdisciplinary scholarship examines prevailing conceptions of human nature, power, social organization, and social change – and their implications for the pursuit of peace and justice. He authored the books "Beyond the Culture of Contest" and "Constructing Social Reality: An Inquiry into the Normative Foundations of Social Change" as well as numerous articles on related themes, including the need to move beyond the limitations of prevailing Western liberal models of democracy.
Abstract: As growing numbers of Iranians aspire toward an authentically democratic system of governance, they might do well to set their sights beyond the limitations of prevailing Western liberal models of democracy. As a modest contribution to such efforts, this paper explores core limitations of Western liberal democracy, discusses insights that can be gleaned from recent innovations in democracy, and encourages Iranians to embark on a process of systematic learning and capacity building by which they can construct a more mature system of democratic governance. Such a system could serve as a model from which even long-established Western liberal democracies might learn in the coming century.
Keywords: Iran, Governance, Democracy, Liberalism, Competition, Nonpartisan, Alternative
After the outpouring of discontent in 2009, it became clear that growing numbers of Iranians long for a transition to democracy – especially young people. They aspire to elect those who govern them through transparent, fair, and inclusive processes. They aspire toward reasonable freedoms of conscience, belief, speech, and association. They aspire to be heard by a government that thoughtfully considers the diverse experiences, views, and concerns within the population and takes these into account in its decisions. They aspire toward the rule of law and due process before the law, based on a constitution that recognizes the rights of all Iranians. These hallmarks of democracy are legitimate aspirations of all peoples. Wherever they have been authentically established, they represent remarkable historical advances over the autocratic forms of government that have preceded them. Wherever they have been authentically established, they have widened the circle of those who can contribute to the advancement of a nation and the prosperity of its peoples.
At the same time, all those who care about the future of Iran would do well to reflect on the conditions under which democracies can flourish and on what can be learned, in this regard, from other experiences with democracy. Beyond merely emulating long-established models of democracy – many of which are plagued with dysfunction and abuse, unable to manage the affairs of state in a just and responsible manner – Iran should seek to advance the practice of democracy. In this regard, the people of Iran would do well to set their sights beyond the corrupting and increasingly dysfunctional contests for power that characterize many Western liberal democracies today.
Beyond Western Liberalism
Western liberal models of democracy are frequently presented as the only rational alternatives to political violence or tyranny. The problems inherent in these models are thus widely accepted as necessary evils. Of course, variations on the Western liberal theme are often explored at the level of campaign financing, electoral procedures, and so forth. But the core assumption that democratic governance requires a contest of power is rarely questioned. Rather, competitive democracy is widely implicitly assumed to represent ‘the end of history’ when it comes to political innovation.[i] These triumphalist notions presume that deeper processes of democratic innovation have largely come to end. According to this view, the political experiments that characterized so much of human history have largely played themselves out and variations on the theme of Western liberal democracy have emerged as the most just and sustainable models of political organization.
Yet Western liberal models have proven patently incapable of addressing the increasingly complex domestic and international problems now facing humanity. Thus, it would be more plausible to say that the history of humankind as a community of inextricably interdependent nations, inhabiting a common homeland, grappling with shared existential crises and threats, is just beginning. Under these conditions, brought on by our reproductive and technological success as a species, nations have barely begun to experiment with just and sustainable models of political organization.
As we turn our attention toward the future of Iran, we would do well to expand our social imaginary beyond Western liberal contests of power. Of course, Western liberal systems represent significant historical accomplishments. They were reasonable adaptations to the social and ecological conditions prevailing at the time of their emergence – at least when viewed from the standpoint of those whose interests they best served. But these systems were also complicit in many of the greatest abuses and horrors of the modern era, from indigenous genocides and racialized slavery to two World Wars and the holocaust. Moreover, the emergence of the prevailing model of competitive democracy predates the invention of electricity, the internal combustion engine, air travel, broadcast media, computers, the internet, social media, weapons of mass destruction, instruments of mass manipulation, appetites of mass consumption, global capitalism, global pandemics, and global warming. Democratic systems of governance have not kept pace and today they are woefully anachronistic and maladaptive.
Fortunately, processes of social innovation have not come to an end. One of the most compelling proofs of this is a process that, remarkably, had its origins in Iran – and constitutes one of Iran’s singularly important contemporary contributions to human knowledge about governance. This process is the experiment in governance that has been systematically advancing for over a century through the work of the worldwide Bahá’í community, which had its inception in Iran. Though the evolving Bahá’í system of governance is currently banned in Iran, and some of its elected leaders were executed by the regime even before it was banned, all those who are interested in the future of Iran and its transition to democracy would do well to glean relevant insights from this remarkable social experiment. However, before examining some of these insights, it will help to consider, in greater depth, why Iran would do well to set its sights beyond familiar models of Western liberal democracy.
The Limits of Competitive Democracy
Western liberal democracy, at its core, is based on the premise that democratic governance requires individuals and groups to compete for political power. The most recognizable form this takes is the party system. Concerned observers of party systems have long been noting the problem of gridlock, the breakdown in civility, the rise of mean-spiritedness, the spread of corruption and influence peddling, the disregard for truth, and the rise of political extremism. What few recognize, however, is that these developments are not the corruption of competitive democracy. They are its culmination. These developments are the sour fruit inherent in the seeds of competitive democracy.
These seeds, to be more precise, are the assumptions about human nature and social order that underlie political competition. The first assumption is that human nature is essentially selfish and competitive. The second is that different groups of people will naturally develop divergent interests that will invariably conflict. The third is that, given a selfish human nature and the problem of conflicting interests, the fairest and most efficient way to govern a society is to harness these dynamics through processes of interest-group competition.
Based on these assumptions, competitive democracies set up checks and balances to limit the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of any given interest group. They also try to cultivate minimal codes of civility intended to restrain the basest expressions of political competition. But all such measures tend to be undermined by the structural incentives of the system itself. To grasp these incentives, consider the market metaphor that is often invoked to understand political competition. Democracy is conceived as a political marketplace within which political entrepreneurs and their corporate parties try to advance their interests through open competition. The invisible hand of the political market allegedly works to direct this competition toward the maximum public benefit. Within this model, parties incorporate around aggregated sets of interests in order to pool the political capital of distinct interest groups. Contests then determine leadership and control within and among parties as politicians and parties organize to fight and win elections.[ii] This logic ensures that winning elections and extending political careers trumps all other values.
Once leadership is determined through electoral contests, decision making is structured in a parallel manner, as a competitive debate. In theory, debate functions as an open marketplace of ideas in which the best ideas prevail – again through the operation of a hypothetical invisible hand. In practice, political competition transforms debate into a struggle over political capital. Debate thus becomes an extension of the electoral process itself, providing a stage for ‘permanent campaigns,’ or never-ending contests over political capital, in anticipation of the next round of elections.[iii]Furthermore, much political decision making occurs outside of formal public debates. Moreover, public debates often serve as little more than a veneer on complex behind-the-scenes processes of political bargaining, negotiation, and influence peddling – all characterized by similarly competitive dynamics.[iv]
The most obvious problem with such models is their vulnerability to the corrupting influence of money – as virtually everyone recognizes. This is because political competition is expensive. Successful campaigns are waged by those who have the financial support, both direct and indirect, of affluent market actors. This problem is widely recognized, and it largely explains the cynicism and apathy reflected in low voter turnout in many countries. The underlying cause of this problem, however, is seldom examined and even more rarely addressed. We hear occasional calls for campaign finance reform and similar regulatory measures. Yet the root of the problem is organizing governance as a contest for power. From the moment we structure elections as contests, which require money to win, we invert the proper relationship between government and the market. Rather than our market existing within the envelope of responsible government regulation, governments are captured by powerful market actors and forces.
As long as governance is organized in this manner, the inverted relationship between governments and markets cannot be fully corrected. Any scheme to tweak the rules here and there will merely cause money to flow through new paths. This is what occurs, for instance, with attempts to reform campaign financing. New forms of contribution merely eclipse the old. Even if campaign financing could be eliminated altogether, money will merely flow through other points of political influence such as broadcast media and social media, which have already become instruments for shaping public opinion formation, electoral outcomes, and other political processes. In a competitive political system, money will always flow to the most effective points of political influence just as water always flows to the point of lowest elevation. We can alter the path of that flow, but we cannot stop it.
This problem is a primary cause of the growing disparities of wealth and poverty we are witnessing throughout much of the Western world. The few exceptions to this are countries with ethnically homogenous and relatively affluent populations willing to spend on social benefits for people they perceive as similar. Such countries have only recently encountered the challenge of sustaining investments in universal social benefits as their populations diversify and as global economic advantages shift. It is not at all clear if the most egalitarian partisan democracies can sustain investments in universal social benefits under such pressures.
Beyond the corrupting influence of money, political competition fails to provide an effective way to understand and solve complex problems because it reduces the diversity of perspectives and voices in decision making processes. Competitive debates are premised on the view that if one perspective is right then a different perspective must be wrong. However, an adequate grasp of most complex issues requires consideration of multiple, often complementary, perspectives. This is because complex issues tend to be multifaceted – like many-sided objects that must be viewed from different angles to be adequately seen and understood. Different perspectives reveal different facets of complex issues. Maximum understanding emerges through the careful consideration of as many facets as possible. This does not assume that every view is valid. Rather, it presumes that diverse views can be complementary, and deliberative processes are needed to sift diverse, valid, complementary views from erroneous or fabricated views, while integrating the former into a more comprehensive understanding. Yet political competition militates against these processes because debates assume the oppositionality, rather than the complementarity, of diverse views. Even when participants do not believe this on an epistemological level, they tend to accept it on a pragmatic level because they cannot gain partisan advantage at the expense of their opponent unless they win and their opponent loses in the court of public opinion. As a result, political competition encourages people to frame complex issues in unnecessarily simplistic, conflictual, and irreconcilable terms.
Partisan politics is also inherently incapable of addressing problems across expanses of time and space. Consider first the problem of time. Complex social and environmental issues generally require long-term planning and commitment, as well as ongoing modes of learning, adjusting, and adapting as insight is gained and conditions change. Competitive political systems, however, are inherently constrained by short-term planning horizons and efforts to impose one-time solutions. This is because to gain and maintain power, political entrepreneurs must cater to the immediate perceived interests of their constituents so that results can be realized within frequent election cycles. Even when long-term political commitments are adopted out of principle, by one candidate or party, continuity tends to be compromised by succeeding candidates or parties who dismantle or fail to enforce the programs of their predecessors in order to distance themselves from policies they were previously compelled to oppose on the campaign trail or as the voice of opposition.
The focus of campaigns and political parties on constituencies-in-the-present therefore undermines commitment to the interests of future generations. Prominent among the interests of future generations is environmental sustainability. Many social problems also require long-term strategies and commitments. Sustained investments in education, the strengthening of families and communities, the creation of economic opportunities, the cultivation of ethical codes and moral values, and other approaches that yield results across generations are required. Yet the competitive pressure to demonstrate visible actions within frequent election cycles tends to lead instead toward investments in things that distract citizens with short-term material enticements or, even worse, a fleeting sense of self-esteem derived from tribalistic self-aggrandizement.
Just as competitive political systems are primarily responsive to constituents-in-the-present at the exclusion of future generations, they are also primarily responsive to the interests of constituents within-electoral-boundaries at the exclusion of distant others. This is especially the case at the level of the nation state due to the absence of effective mechanisms of global governance and coordination. Again, this has significant social and ecological implications. The transboundary nature of many modern environmental issues – such as global warming, the spread of pollution, and the mass extinction of species we are currently witnessing – signals the need for unprecedented levels of global cooperation and coordination. Competitive notions of national sovereignty, however, which are extensions of competitive domestic politics, render the existing international (dis)order incapable of responding to these ecological imperatives. Within the existing international system, cross-border coordination is sacrificed to the pursuit of perceived national self-interests because political entrepreneurs have no choice but to cater to the perceived interests of their own voting citizens. The consequence is an anarchic system of nation states vying with one another in their rush to convert long-term ecological capital into short-term political capital.
The problem of territoriality is equally significant when it comes to social issues. Problems such as poverty, crime, the exploitation of women and children, human trafficking, terrorism, ethnic conflict, illegal immigration, refugee flows, and so forth, do not respect national boundaries any more than most ecological problems do. Neither do global health pandemics – as the current Covid pandemic amply demonstrates. Such problems cannot be solved by national governments alone. Yet political competition within nation states undermines effective commitment and coordination among the global community of nation states for the same reasons cited above.
Other problems associated with competitive politics are less tangible, but no less important. These are the moral or spiritual costs of partisanship and political competition. Again, these problems stem directly from the assumptions that underlie the model: that human nature is essentially selfish and competitive; that different people tend to develop conflicting interests; and that the best way to organize democratic governance is therefore through a process of interest-group competition. When we organize human affairs according to these assumptions, we cultivate our basest instincts. In the process, we become what we assume of ourselves. However, these assumptions have no solid basis in the social and behavioral sciences. In these fields, the emerging consensus is that human beings have the developmental potential for both egoism and altruism, competition and cooperation.[v] Which of these potentials is more fully realized is a function, in part, of how our behaviors are incentivized by social institutions and fostered through social norms – including the incentives and norms of political competition.
Toward Democratic Alternatives to Political Competition
Moving beyond Western liberal models of competitive democracy will require sustained commitments to learning and capacity building. No single alternative that can be identified today offers all the answers. But underlying principles can be gleaned from a range of social innovations that point beyond the prevailing culture of contest. If such principles are applied in purposeful and systematic processes of collective learning and capacity building, they will enable Iran to develop more mature approaches to democratic governance.
For instance, in the past few decades, a number of innovative experiments with deliberative democracy – known as deliberative opinion polls – have been run in the United States, China, Brazil, Britain, Denmark, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Northern Ireland, and across the entire European Union.6[vi] These projects have generated rich insights regarding how to engage diverse publics in thoughtful processes of consultation, on complex issues, in ways that foster mature views that can directly inform governmental decision making. Among the insights these projects have yielded are how to include participants that constitute a representative cross section of the wider population; how to foster conditions that encourage the impartial consideration of a range of values and interests, alongside a range of relevant empirical data and varying interpretations of such data; how to ensure freedom of expression within a framework of mutual respect; how to foster deliberative processes focused on the wider public good rather than initial personal preferences or the desires of narrow interest groups; how to shield such processes from the distorting influences of money or sensationalized media coverage; how to encourage processes of genuine learning among the participants, through which initial opinions frequently evolve based on consideration of other views and new information. Moreover, participation in these processes frequently has the effect of increasing a citizen’s sense of political efficacy and engagement. Clearly, much can be learned from these innovative projects, along with parallel innovations such as citizens’ assemblies – another model that engages cross sections of the public in meaningful deliberative processes that inform processes of legislation and policy formulation.[vii] Such assemblies have been held in Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Belgium, the US, France, the UK, and other countries.
Other insights can be gleaned from existing examples of nonpartisan democracy which, though still characterized by electoral competition among individual candidates, demonstrate how the divisive impacts of political factionalization can be reduced in democratic systems. Nonpartisan democracies, it should also be noted, are distinct from one-party systems in which a single ideologically defined party constitutes the permanent state-sanctioned ruling party, which controls who can stand for office. Truly nonpartisan democracies, in contrast, are open to candidates that reflect the full range of views present in a population – provided, of course, they have the means to mount an effective campaign. Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, the Pitcairn Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and some other Pacific nations have nonpartisan democracies. Likewise, some states and territories within democratic nations, such as the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada, the Nebraskan legislature in the US, and other examples in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, have no parties. From 1986 to 2005, Uganda also had a system of nonpartisan democracy. Some other countries have partial nonpartisan systems, such as Indonesia, where the upper house of the bicameral legislature is nonpartisan by design. And some of the most prominent founders of the United States argued against the formation of political parties but, in the absence of legal restrictions on party formation, parties quickly emerged – which constitutes another important insight. Remarkably, nonpartisan systems have received virtually no serious, sustained, fair-minded attention from modern political scientists, due to the prevailing Western liberal consensus that political parties are either desirable or inevitable features of democracy. Iranians would do well to examine the experience of nonpartisan systems if they hope to restrain the divisive and corrupting influences of partisanship.
Finally, as alluded to earlier in this paper, the worldwide Bahá’í community has developed a unique system of governance, characterized by electoral processes that are entirely free of competition, from which many insights can be gleaned. With a current membership of over eight million people, drawn from over 2000 ethnic backgrounds and residing in every nation on the planet, the community is a microcosm of the entire human race. This diverse community has constructed a system of democratically elected assemblies that govern Bahá’í affairs in over 6000 localities and over 190 nations throughout the planet.[viii] Significantly, in many parts of the world, the first exercises in democratic activity have occurred within Bahá’í communities.
The Bahá’í electoral system is entirely non-partisan and non-competitive. In brief, at this stage in the evolution of this system, all community members 18 years old and older are eligible to vote in annual local elections, and every adult member 21 years or older has the duty to serve if elected. At the national level, elections occur annually through a two-stage delegate system in which locally elected delegates elect members of their respective national assembly from among the entire adult Bahá’í population in the country. Those elected to serve on national assemblies also serve as delegates, every five years, to elect the Universal House of Justice, which is the Bahá’í community’s global governing body.
At every one of these levels, there is an unambiguous prohibition against all forms of nomination, campaigning, partisanship, and competition. Voters are guided only by their own consciences as they exercise true freedom of choice in voting for those individuals that they believe best embody the qualities of recognized ability, mature experience, and selfless service to others. Voters are also encouraged to maximize the diversity of those they are electing. And voters do not discuss among themselves who they will vote for. Through a plurality count, the nine individuals that receive the most votes are called to serve as members of the governing body – even though none of them sought such service.
Because no one seeks election, and because governing decisions are made by elected bodies as a whole rather than by individuals, elections are not pathways to personal power and privilege. On the contrary, elections are calls to service and self-sacrifice. The elected sacrifice their time and energy, and often their career aspirations, at the bidding of the community. No one calls attention to themselves or solicits votes in any way. On the contrary, a culture has developed in which Bahá’ís interpret any solicitation of votes as an indicator of egoism and a lack of fitness to serve.
All decision making within these governing bodies is, in turn, guided by consultative principles that enable decision making to be a collaborative and unifying process rather than a competitive and divisive one. These principles include striving to enter the process in a spirit of detachment from preconceived views; regarding diversity as an asset and soliciting the perspectives, concerns, and expertise of others; striving to transcend the limitations of one’s own ego and perspective; striving to express oneself with care and moderation; striving to raise the context of decision making to the level of principle; striving for consensus but settling for a majority when necessary; and supporting the majority decision even when one did not hold it, so that unified implementation will reveal any shortcomings in the decision and adjustments can then be made based on the experience generated.
Unlike competitive systems in which decision makers must continually negotiate the demands of constituents, campaign contributors, lobbyists, and activists, the Bahá’í system is shielded from external lobbying and other pressures to influence decisions. This is accomplished in at least two ways. First, as discussed above, those who are elected did not seek election and they have no interest in re-election. In this regard, elected members are not political entrepreneurs seeking to build or retain political capital and political careers. Thus, campaign financing opportunities do not exist because there are no campaigns. Second, elected members decide matters collectively through the application of principle, according to the promptings of their own consciences (one of the primary qualities for which they were elected) and not according to the dictates or pressures of competing interest groups. In this regard, elected members are expected to weigh all of their decisions in a principled manner, even if this means forgoing immediate local or short-term benefits out of consideration for the welfare of distant peoples or future generations.
As the Bahá’í community has grown in experience, capacity, and prominence, its electoral model has attracted the attention of outside observers such as the United Nations, which has recognized its potential as a system from which emerging democracies might draw significant lessons.[ix] As another contemporary observer wrote about the Bahá’í model, “Humans can be nudged to demonize – or to cooperate… In this way, Bahá’í elections are to politics what mediation is to the legal system: a different game altogether. One designed to exploit the human capacity for cooperation, rather than competition.”[x]
It is also important to note that the Bahá’í system, by design, cannot be imposed on a population. It only functions when participants enter, in a supremely voluntary manner, into a covenantal relationship and the mutual obligations it entails. Furthermore, the structural dimensions of this model have been evolving for over a century within the Bahá’í community in tandem with a corresponding culture that enables and supports it. Such a culture cannot be created overnight. It has to develop organically through a systematic process of education and training, learning and capacity building, pursued over generations. Nonetheless, any nation that aspires toward meaningful democracy must take seriously these kinds of considerations. Structural change and cultural change must go hand in hand to sustain each other. And a just political constitution can be sustained only on the basis of an underlying moral covenant.
The Path Ahead
The preceding discussion does not constitute a specific prescription for Iran. Its purpose has been to suggest some underlying principles that might inform processes of learning and capacity building in a transition to a more democratic Iran. For instance, the Bahá’í model is not a complete system of governance for society – nor do Bahá’ís make such a claim. Rather, the model was examined as one of many that might offer fresh insights and organizing principles. In this regard, in their system of governance, Bahá’ís are learning how to give expression to principles such as the oneness of humanity, unity in diversity, truth and justice, the equality of women and men, cooperation and mutuality, and the harmony of science and religion in ways that may contain lessons worth reflecting on. At a minimum, the Bahá’í experience suggests that Western liberal models of democracy do not represent the endpoint of democratic innovation, nor the outer limits of what humans are collectively capable of. In this regard, Iran would do well to look beyond Western liberal models and develop a more coherent normative framework to guide its transition to democracy.
Any transition to democracy in Iran will also need to take account of the nation’s distinguished history, culture, and strengths – to build on those. For instance, the Zoroastrian teachings on good and evil, on the eternal life of the soul, and on the refinement of human thought, speech, and behavior exerted a civilizing influence across the entire region – even influencing classical Greek philosophy. By the 6th century B.C., the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which extended across forty percent of the global human population at its height, had established an unprecedented code of human rights under the founding leadership of Cyrus the Great. Likewise, the great Persian poets – Rumi, Saadi, Hafez, and others – responding in part to the ennobling influence of Islam while building on their unique cultural heritage, contributed to a literary tradition that has few parallels in the world. And today, the Bahá’í Faith can be understood as a singularly significant contribution to modernity.
Recognizing such distinctions and accomplishments will help Iranians construct a just, enlightened, and culturally unique system of governance that could serve as a model from which even long established Western liberal democracies might learn in the coming century. Thus, far from constituting an indictment of democracy, this paper constitutes an appeal to expand the horizon of democracy. At the outset of a transition to democracy, this entails taking stock of relevant insights and lessons, wherever they can be gleaned. It will then entail efforts to foster democratic capacities – on structural and cultural levels – for ongoing learning and refinement based on accumulating experience. Were Iran to embark on such a path, it would find itself a leader among nations in its contributions to the advancement of human civilization.
Endnotes
[i] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
[ii] David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) p. 170.
[iii] Sydney Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign (Boston: Beacon, 1980).
[iv] Refer, for example, to Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis, War without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics (New York: Touchstone, 1997).
[v] Refer, for instance, to the ‘Statement on Violence, Seville, May 16, 1986,’ Medicine and War 3 (1987); Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books: A Subsidiary of Perseus Books, L.L.C., 1984); John Casti, ‘Cooperation: The Ghost in the Machinery of Evolution,’ in Cooperation and Conflict in General Evolutionary Processes, eds. John Casti and Anders Karlqvist (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994); Teresa Lunati, ‘On Altruism and Cooperation,’ Methodus 4, no. December (1992); Steven Rose, R. C. Lewontin, and Leon Kamin, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1987); Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield, Super Cooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed (New York: Free Press, 2012); Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); Nicholas Chistakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (Boston: Little, Brown Spark, 2019).
[vi] Refer, for instance, to James Fishkin, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); James Fishkin and Cynthia Farra, ‘Deliberative Polling: From Experiment to Community Resource,’ in The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, eds. John Gatsil and Peter Levine (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
[vii] Refer, for instance, to Larry Patriquin, Permanent Citizens’ Assemblies: A New Model for Public Deliberation (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); Mark Warren and Hilary Pearse, Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
[viii] Department of Statistics, Bahá'í World Centre, 2021.
[ix] United Nations Institute for Namibia, Comparative Electoral Systems & Political Consequences: Options for Namibia, Namibia Studies Series No 14, ed. N. K. Duggal (Lusaka, Zambia: United Nations, 1989) p. 6-7.
[x] Amanda Ripley, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021) p. 95.