politics - New testing grounds for democratic procedures

"No matter how smart we are, we officials have limited information," he says. "The easiest way to avoid mistakes is by having more democratic decisions.

Howard French describes in the International Herald Tribune how Jiang Zhaohua, an ambitious young local politician in Zhejiang province develops democratic ways of governing. While his descriptions of more violent clashes between the ruling class and their citizens in the article are sometimes missing the point, the experiment is worth noting.

Books on democracy