Book: Making Democracy Fun. How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics

“Making Democracy Fun”, by Josh Lerner, promises to apply game design techniques to make democracy more engaging. From the blurb: “Anyone who has ever been to a public hearing or community meeting would agree that participatory democracy can be boring. Hours of repetitive presentations, alternatingly alarmist or complacent, for or against, accompanied by constant heckling, often with no clear outcome or decision. Is this the best democracy can offer? In Making Democracy Fun, Josh Lerner offers a novel solution for the sad state of our deliberative democracy: the power of good game design”. Josh Lerner is Executive Director of The Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit organization in New York City that empowers communities to decide how to spend public money.

It could be interesting, but it could also be a new twist on the gamification fad. I guess what Michel Foucault would think of it…