Engage-Envision-Enact: Self-Organised Governance for Self-Improving Socio-Technical Systems

Democracy-by-design is an instance of value-sensitive design in which the qualitative human value targeted by the design methodology, is ‘democracy’. However, this approach to socio-technical systems design is predicated on the assumption that ‘democracy’, as the preferred form of self-organised self-governance, is always fit-for-purpose, immutable, representative, and for the common good. However, literature from anthropology and comparative politics suggests that this assumption isn't necessarily true; moreover, there are multiple drivers for self-adaptation of social systems and these are in tension with one another. These two observations have important implications for the operationalisation of self-improving systems, because now it cannot be assumed that a self-governing system whose political regime is some form of ‘democracy’ cannot be improved, or could not be improved by switching to some alternative political regime altogether. In this paper, we argue that the key requirement is political legitimacy, and consent is given to that by civic participation in iteration over three processes: engagement, envisionment and enactment. We conclude by arguing that this engage-envision-enact cycle empowers communities with the capability for self-conscious reflection on, and meaningful opportunities for intervention in, the form of their social arrangements, and this is a foundation for continuous self-improvement.