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Dimension: Representativeness

Include voiceless perspectives

Ability to fairly include the perspectives of those that are not represented in the process, including people who are not present (future generations, young people or other representation constraints), and non-human entities (natural phenomena or animals).

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Maturity
Opportunity
Importance
Neglectedness
Transnational
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Process organizers
Process organizers can ask participants to critically reflect on the hypothetical views of those not present. There are some exercises that prompt participants to consider or even role-play views that are not present in the room (Deliberative Democracy Digest).

Related Product Gaps

There are no related product gaps at the moment.

Related Goals and Research Questions

Goal: Legitimately include important absent perspectives into deliberative processes.

What are the different methods for representing non-humans/future generations and how do these methods compare?

Ethics & Philosophy Political Science
Related Capability: Include voiceless perspectives

How do we evaluate any moral philosophical or efficacy-based justifications for trying to include the voices of non-humans/future generations in deliberations?

Ethics & Philosophy
Related Capability: Include voiceless perspectives

How can virtual and augmented reality technologies help participants experience the perspectives of animals or future generations?

AI/ML Ethics & Philosophy
Related Capability: Include voiceless perspectives

How do we best track and identify important voices that are currently missing?

Statistics & Sampling Political Science
Related Capability: Include voiceless perspectives

Related Resources

Animals in the Room

A project exploring how to include non-human perspectives (animals and nature) in democratic governance and deliberation. Part of the growing "more-than-human governance" movement examining how governance can draw on more-than-human intelligences and consider our relationship with the living worl...
Experimental Practice
Mélanie Challenger

More-than-human governance experiments in Europe

A DemocracyNext research project exploring how governance and policy design can draw on more-than-human intelligences, examining emerging experiments in Europe around rights-based, representation-focused, and artistic approaches. The project identified key concepts like entanglement, relationalit...
Experimental Practice
DemocracyNext

Radicle Civics — Building Proofs of Possibilities for a Civic Economy and Society

An experimental project by Dark Matter Labs exploring the use of large language models (LLMs) to represent non-human entities like rivers in democratic deliberation. Part of their "Radicle Civics" initiative, it experiments with AI as a medium for giving voice to natural systems in governance pro...
Experimental Practice
Dark Matter Labs

Institutions for Future Generations

Extensive work in political theory and political philosophy exploring the opportunities and challenges of representing future generations and non-human animals in democratic processes
Research
Iñigo González-Ricoy and Axel Gosseries

How can AI and Civic Tech Build Consensus for Climate Policy and Include the Voices of Future Generations?

A TICTeC 2025 workshop by MIT GOV/LAB and Stanford HAI exploring how AI and civic tech can build consensus for climate policy while including future generations' voices using the deliberation.io platform. The platform employs AI chatbots following a Socratic dialogue model to help users reflect o...
Experimental Practice
MIT Gov/Lab and Stanford HAI

deliberation.io

A citizen engagement platform facilitating large-scale democratic discussions through AI-powered facilitation identifying common ground, inclusive participation mechanisms, and transparent verifiable methodologies. Used by Washington DC for AI Public Listening Sessions in collaboration with MIT G...
Product
Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, Lily Tsai