Relational Infrastructure

The Challenge

Erosion of Trust & Top-Down Governance

Many democracies and organizations suffer from erosion of trust, siloed decision-making, and top-down processes that leave people feeling unheard. Traditional systems ask for input only during elections or after problems escalate.

Broken Social Fabric: Trust between citizens, institutions, and communities is fragile.
Power Concentration: Decision power is concentrated in too few hands, often disconnected from lived experience.
Consultation Theater: Public engagement is often performative rather than genuinely empowering.

The challenge: how do we shift from extractive, transactional relationships to lasting public infrastructure based on trust and co-creation?

Our Approach

Co-Creation & Continuous Dialogue

We reimagine governance and civic life as participatory, co-created processes. Rather than "engaging" the public occasionally, we build continuous dialogue and partnership:

Inclusive Co-Creation

Involving citizens and stakeholders end-to-end - from framing problems to deliberating options to monitoring results - producing wiser solutions with broader support.

Redistributing Power

Moving toward "deep democracy" by shifting authority from institutions to the people, giving marginalized groups real voice and even veto power in decisions affecting them.

Always-On Democracy

Continuous engagement outperforms periodic input. Real-time dialogue, feedback, and iteration catch issues early and integrate local knowledge into governance.

Network Weaving

Diverse, well-connected networks can self-organize solutions. Removing gatekeepers and connecting stakeholders directly enables faster innovation.

Interventions

Methods & Initiatives

Participatory Governance Hubs
Physical and virtual spaces where communities practice self-governance. Example: Urban Indigenous Governance Hub using Two-Eyed Seeing to honor both Western and Indigenous governance approaches.
Deliberative Democracy Pilots
Citizens' Assemblies on climate action, Participatory Budgeting where residents directly vote on funding allocation. Proving ordinary people can tackle complex trade-offs and produce nuanced decisions.
Digital Civic Infrastructure (Polity)
Online platforms for large-scale public engagement using consensus algorithms to find common ground. Deployed in regional climate plan consultations, identifying proposals with broad support and minimal opposition.
Systems Mapping for Social Cohesion
Revealing relationship dynamics and network health. Identifying choke points, gatekeepers, and opportunities to distribute roles more evenly for system resilience.

Complexity

Managing Risks

Relational work involves social complexity -values, emotions, power dynamics:

Avoiding Theater: Designing clear pathways for how input will be used, securing commitments from decision-makers upfront.
Preventing Fatigue: Emphasizing quick wins and regular progress communication so participants see tangible effects.
Ensuring Inclusion: Actively reaching out to underrepresented groups using multiple formats (interviews, focus groups in various languages) alongside open forums.
Quality Deliberation: Providing balanced information, neutral facilitators, and structured processes to prevent hijacking by extreme views.

We treat trust as the currency of systemic change -protecting and nurturing it is our foremost risk mitigation strategy.

Learning

What We're Learning

Scaling Participation: How to take methods like citizens' assemblies and apply them to larger populations while retaining quality.
Sustaining Engagement: What conditions (feedback loops, tangible benefits, recognition) keep people participating year after year.
Measuring Trust: Developing indicators to gauge changes in trust between community and government, cohesion among participants from different backgrounds.
Decision Quality: Comparing outcomes of co-created policies vs. traditionally created ones -do participatory processes yield better innovation and implementation success?
Ensuring Equity: Understanding who's not at the table and why, refining methods to flatten hierarchies and elevate quieter voices.