Legislature 2.0: CrowdLaw and the Future of Lawmaking

By Beth Noveck, Gabriella Capone and Victoria Alsina

(Excerpt)

Re-Imagining Lawmaking

With rates of trust in government at all-time lows, the legitimacy and effectiveness of traditional representative models of lawmaking, typically dominated by political party agendas and conducted by professional staff and politicians working behind largely closed doors, are called into question. But technology offers the promise of opening how lawmaking bodies work to new sources of expertise and opinion and of making lawmakers accountable to the public more than just on Election Day. Around the world, there are already over two dozen examples of local legislatures and national parliaments turning to the Internet to involve the public. We call such open and participatory lawmaking: “CrowdLaw.”

To read the full article, visit http://thegovlab.org/legislature-2-0/.