Collective Intelligence for stronger democracy

Vetted methods, key principles, and inspiring stories from around the world

Citizens’ Collective Intelligence is an untapped resource for policy makers to:

1

Design better public policies and make more informed decisions

2

Foster trust between citizens and encourage change

3

Innovate by including different ideas and spreading what works

4

Achieve actionable consensus and smoother policy making

Our goal: renew democracy

Smarter Together is a non-profit whose purpose is to study, design, develop and evaluate democratic innovations and collaborative governance mechanisms.

Our goal is to renew democracy and empower groups to better respond to collective issues.

Handbook of Collective Intelligence

Discover the latest science at the intersection of politics and Collective Intelligence from the world’s leading academic publisher in Humanities and Social Science.

Democracy is in crisis because today’s governments largely fail to capitalize on their greatest untapped resource: the collective intelligence of their citizens.
The cases in this book show the way to the smarter, more open democracy that humanity deserves.

Prof. Helene Landemore

Yale University, author of Open Democracy (2020)

None of this century’s hardest problems will be solved by a single stroke of genius –rather, we can only make progress by inventing new and better forms of collaboration. This book gives an essential guide to our emerging field.

Prof. Thomas Malone

Founder, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

The extent of the movement toward deliberative democracy has been poorly understood until now. This book enhances our understanding of the breadth of activity across geographies and social institutions, while providing a valuable resource for insights from a host of experiments in collective intelligence.

Dawn Nakagawa

Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute

Experts collective

A global and diverse network of 60+ experts, contributors and mentors, from the world’s best academic and consultancy teams. Our network helps public officials, NGOs, and all those seeking to develop innovative and impactful processes that deeply renew democracy.

Key CI methods

Explore our democratic innovation toolbox and make it your own.  Use these curated methods to get your own projects off the ground ans solve public problems together more effectively. Don’t forget to adapt them to your own context.

Smarter Crowdsourcing

Optimise the quality of crowdsourced input by combining it with expert validation
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Supermind

An AI assistant to make sense of large amounts of human expert input
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Citizen Science

Inclusive, frugal science to quickly test and spread good ideas
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Stories

Get inspired with 30+ curated examples from around the world.
We’ll be breaking down what works, and why, by adding new featured case studies every week.

Featured story

Understanding the levers of public opinion: Deliberative polling and self moderated platforms

A new way for governments to reduce polarization and uncover how citizens change their mind about policy

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Slagelse citizens sitting on a bench

Featured story

Citizen sourcing health policy with AI

How Slagelse technology crafted local policy on health and well-being thanks to citizen insights and technology

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Featured story

How a small French town reduced unemployment with citizen led innovation

Dreaming, remembering, scaling and innovating boldly to spread good ideas

Read more

Partners

Our funders care about making democracy smarter.

Interested in becoming a partner ? Let’s connect

News and events

The easiest way to get smarter is to get together. Join our free events, chat with the experts and meet like-minded democratic innovators from around the world.

How to mobilize creativity skills to fight climate change

The world is changing faster than your lobbying strategies. Creativity has become an essential skill for climate lobbyists. Join this 2-day masterclass to learn from collective intelligence and creativity experts.
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How to harness Smarter Crowdsourcing for stronger EU policies and democracy

The complex challenges that our democracies are facing require fast and creative thinking. Discover the latest science and methods to tap into stakeholders’ and citizens’ insights and the famed “wisdom of crowds”.
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Let's get in touch

Smarter Together Association
130 avenue des Cottages,
1180 Brussels, Belgium

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