Beyond the Bureaucracy
Modeling Scenarios of Non- Mediated Governance with Liquid Democracy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59490/dgo.2025.1052Keywords:
Liquid democracy, self-governance, nonmediated governanceAbstract
Nonmediated Governance (nm-Gov) refers to a visionary state of a society in which members of the society steer their government through Liquid Democracy. This for now purely theoretical concept assumes that every citizen is represented in a digital form, that all assets of the society are represented digitally, as well as that rules that govern the community are digital. This paper summarizes nm-Gov and Liquid Democracy and describes a diagraming technique used to model use-cases to better understand how data in nm-Gov can be translated to concrete governance action. Deeper exploration of nm-Gov through modeling further use-cases with this diagraming technique is the theme of the Beyond Bureaucracy workshop at the dg.o 2025 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Downloads
References
Berners-Lee, T., Cailliau, R., Groff, J.-F., & Pollermann, B. (1992). World-Wide Web: The Information Universe. Internet Research, 2(1), 52–58. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047254
Blum, C., & Zuber, C. I. (2016). Liquid Democracy: Potentials, Problems, and Perspectives: Liquid Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 24(2), 162–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12065
Bovens, M., & Zouridis, S. (2002). From Street-Level to System-Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control. Public Administration Review, 62(2), 174–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/0033-3352.00168
Butterworth, G., & Booth, R. (2023). A Contribution to the Defense of Liquid Democracy. Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 244–250. https://doi.org/10.1145/3598469.3598496
Caragiannis, I., & Micha, E. (2019). A Contribution to the Critique of Liquid Democracy. Proceedings of the 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. IJCAI-19.
Curtice, J. (2018). Buyer’s Remorse: Has Britain Changed Its Mind on Brexit? Political Insight, 9(1), 12–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041905818764700
Diekjobst, R. (2025). Editorial #43: The Ides of March. Völkerrechtsblog. https://doi.org/10.17176/20250313-000814-0
Kogan, V. (2016). When Voters Pull the Trigger: Can Direct Democracy Restrain Legislative Excesses? Legislative Studies Quarterly, 41(2), 297–325. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12115
Kopetz, H., & Steiner, W. (2022). Internet of Things. In H. Kopetz & W. Steiner, Real-Time Systems (pp. 325–341). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11992-7_13
Krieger, N. (2025). Buyer’s Remorse, Betrayal, and Blame: Who Will Be Held Responsible for the Adverse Health Impacts of the US Elections? American Journal of Public Health, 115(3), 324–325. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307985
Matthew, T. W. (2019). Ignoring the Courts: A Contextual Analysis of Administrative Nonacquiescence. https://doi.org/10.15779/Z387W6762V
Paulin, A. (2014). Through Liquid Democracy to Sustainable Non-Bureaucratic Government—Harnessing the Power of ICTs for a novel form of Digital Government. eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 6(2), 216–230. https://doi.org/10.29379/jedem.v6i2.307
Paulin, A. (2015). Towards a sustainable system for non-bureaucratic government: Doctor of science thesis [Doctoral thesis, University of Maribor]. [link]
Paulin, A. (2018). Digitalisation vs. Informatisation: Different Approaches to Governance Transformation. Central and Eastern European eDem and eGov Days, 331, 251–261. https://doi.org/10.24989/ocg.v331.21
Paulin, A. (2019a). Controlling Citizens or Controlling the State? In Smart City Governance (pp. 61–79). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816224-8.00003-0
Paulin, A. (2019b). Controlling Through Technology. In Smart City Governance (pp. 143–158). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816224-8.00007-8
Paulin, A. (2019c). Describing Legal Rules Through a System of Electronic Legal Acts. In Smart City Governance (pp. 237–250). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816224-8.00013-3
Paulin, A. (2019d). Model for Nonmediated Governance. In Smart City Governance (pp. 187–201). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816224-8.00010-8
Paulin, A. (2019e). Smart City Governance. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2017-0-04241-6
Paulin, A. (2020). An Overview of Ten Years of Liquid Democracy Research. The 21st Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 116–121. https://doi.org/10.1145/3396956.3396963
Paulin, A. (2025). CBR shapes for Draw.io [Dataset]. [link].
Sabel, R. (2024). Israel, the ICC, and the Arrest Warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 18(3), 320–325. https://doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2024.2440838
Valsangiacomo, C. (2021). Clarifying and Defining the Concept of Liquid Democracy. Swiss Political Science Review, spsr.12486. https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12486
Valsangiacomo, C. (2025). Six arguments in favor of liquid assemblies. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2025.2478729
Valsangiacomo, C., & Zuber, I. (2025). Should a citizens’ assembly complement the European Parliament?. Publications Office. [link]
van Steen, M., & Tanenbaum, A. S. (2023). Distributed Systems (4th ed.). distributed-systems.net.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Conference Proceedings Volume
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Alois Paulin

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
