Many democracies struggle with political polarization, short-term thinking, and adversarial conflict, which often overshadow collective goals like reducing suffering or addressing long-term risks. This dysfunction can worsen existential threats like climate change or unaligned AI governance while perpetuating avoidable hardships like poverty. One way to address this could be through a set of institutional reforms designed to foster cooperation, evidence-based decision-making, and long-term planning.

Key Reforms to Improve Democratic Decision-Making

The proposed reforms focus on reducing polarization and incentivizing cooperative governance. Some possible interventions include:

• Deliberative citizen’s assemblies: Randomly selected, representative groups of citizens could engage in structured discussions on key issues, informed by experts. Their recommendations might then influence policymaking.
• Voting system changes: Shifting from winner-takes-all systems to proportional representation or ranked-choice voting could reduce zero-sum competition and encourage coalition-building.
• Strengthened public media: Independent, high-quality journalism could counteract misinformation and echo chambers.

These changes could benefit the general public by making politics less divisive, marginalized groups by improving representation, and future generations by prioritizing long-term policies.

Implementation Strategies and Challenges

One approach to testing these ideas could involve:

1. Piloting citizen’s assemblies on less contentious issues, like local climate adaptation plans.
2. Partnering with organizations advocating for voting reform in receptive regions.
3. Collaborating with existing public broadcasters to experiment with fact-based, depolarizing content.

Potential obstacles include political resistance to reforms that disrupt existing power structures. However, solutions might include legally mandating responses to citizen assembly proposals (as done in Ireland) or establishing independent governance for public media.

While not directly monetizable, funding could come from philanthropic grants, government democracy initiatives, or advocacy crowdfunding. The strength of this approach lies in its evidence-based nature—similar reforms have worked in places like Ireland and Germany—and its potential for gradual, scalable implementation.