Enhancing democratic principles beyond governments

In order to advance democratic principles we need to expand democracy beyond governments and bring the democratic principles and the public oversight in institutions, organisations and companies – especially those that play key roles in society. These actors (political parties, civil society organisations at large, but also tech companies and other key economic actors) have the power to influence the societies in which we live and the values that we embed. Our work in the next years will focus on ensuring public oversight, transparency and accountability are expanded to key actors of our democratic space, to make sure companies/orgs operate on democratic principles and that these key actors play a more positive role to reinforce democracy wherever they operate.

We will know we are making progress in this field when (from the shorter to the longer term):

• Support and peer-network opportunities are available to those innovators and ‘doers’ that operate within organisations (including social NGOs, civil servants, community groups) and who want to make changes in their workplace/ group/ network to bring more democratic principles and experiment with other ways of doing governance and organisational design;
• More people and organisations are aware of the links of democracy in the workplace and how this impacts democratic principles and engagement overall;
• More organisations (from different fields) are open to change, more inclusive, accountable and people and planet centred.