"Anticipatory democracy" is the public's active, conscious engagement in collectively shaping the future of their community, state or nation. It is usually applied to instances where future-visioning processes or telecommunications technologies are being used to support or shape public engagement. The term was coined by futurist Alvin Toffler.
The abortive 1992 U.S. presidential candidacy of Ross Perot was a dress rehearsal for raising all the right questions about democracy's future. Yet in the millions of words written on the Perot phenomenon, few examined historical experience with electronic town meetings (ETMs) and public opinion polling, or efforts already underway to prevent abuses and perfect such new feedback channels provided by technology. Much has already been learned from ETM experiments in New Zealand in 1980 to clarify that country's goals and values as well as a similar electronic referenda conducted in Hawaii by political scientist Theodore Becker. Many such experiments in anticipatory democracy have been documented by Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave (1980), David Loye in The Healing of a Nation (1971), Thomas E. Cronin in Direct Democracy (1989), Clement Bezold in Anticipatory Democracy (1978), Christa Daryl Slaton in Televote (1992), and my own Creating Alternative Futures (1978)....
Another useful form of anticipatory democracy is the "future search" conference,
pioneered by Eric Trist and Fred Emery and described by practitioners
Marvin R. Weisbord and Sandra Janoff in Future Search (1995).
Search conferences were originally used by organizations, but
their application to cities, counties, and states was fostered
by the Washington-based Institute for Alternative Futures, and
many local efforts have been documented by its founder Clement
Bezold. Another approach is that of the Idaho Centennial Conference
and Survey Visualizing the Future: Idaho's Second Century,
which surveyed voters' quality-of-life preferences on a broad
range of issues in 1990. (Conducted by the Survey Research Center,
School of Social Sciences and Public Affairs, Boise State University,
1990. Sponsored by and available from the Idaho Centennial Commission,
217 West State Street Boise, Idaho 83702. )
"Anticipatory democracy" as a term was picked up by Clem Bezold from futurist Alvin Toffler who, in Future Shock (1970), envisioned "anticipatory democracy" involving a "continuing plebiscite on the future" where citizen feedback on "what kind of a world do you want ten, twenty, or thirty years from now?" would allow the public and decision-makers to collectively shape the future. Bezold, in his Anticipatory Democracy (1978) defined it as "an approach to problem solving that combines future consciousness with broad-based public participation..."
See also Scenario and Visioning Work and Future Search Conferences.