omniharmonicLiquid Democracy
Liquid democracy is a hybrid governance model that combines elements of direct and representative democracy. Participants can vote directly on any issue, or they can delegate their vote to a trusted proxy — who can in turn delegate to another proxy — creating fluid chains of delegation. Crucially, delegation is topic-specific and revocable at any time: you might delegate your vote on energy policy to a trusted expert while voting directly on housing issues.
This fluidity addresses two persistent failures of democratic governance. Pure direct democracy overwhelms citizens with decision fatigue and assumes everyone has time and expertise for every issue. Pure representative democracy concentrates power in elected officials who are accountable only at election time and can be captured by special interests. Liquid democracy creates a dynamic middle path where representation is earned through trust rather than campaign spending, and where authority flows to those with demonstrated competence and community confidence.
Liquid democracy is enabled by digital infrastructure and connects naturally to ethereum-localism and blockchain-based governance tools. It relates to quadratic-voting as a complementary mechanism design for collective decision-making, and to participatory-democracy as a practical way to scale participation beyond the limits of town-hall meetings. As collective-intelligence research demonstrates, the quality of group decisions depends on information flow — liquid democracy creates pathways for expertise to inform decisions without concentrating authority.