everyday social democracy

Expectation, doubt and hope sums up people's minds across France waiting for the 11th February when Segolene Royal will annouce the proposals scaled up from the "participative phase" between November and February. This phase encompassed 6000 participative debates, 600 000 people contributing local ideas and the 135 000 contributing online ideas during the last four months*.

Expectation, because for once we have listened to their needs, their experiences, their ideas - not closed yes/no answers like the opinion polls. We know politics is complex, that's because people's lives are so let's not treat them simplistically and superficially, we explored that complexity.

Doubt, because for never had this been done before by a mass political movement who attributed so much importance to not only listening to people but involving them in designing our manifesto. Doubt for our citizens who are so used to hollow promises, populist narratives and divisive proposals. Doubt for us activists who are so used to single narrative, repetitive message, media-driven campaigning. Doubt for our representatives who feel we have given their voice to the people they represent. Doubt for the leadership as we are down in the polls.

Hope, because we've dropped our guard, we've all risked our election campaign innovating to involve our citizens to shape how we reform the country, whether as activists, representatives or our leadership. We risked it for our internal referendum on Europe and even if for the leadership, this didn't bring the Yes to the Constitution they wanted, the party was transformed for the better, we won successive elections, taking 25/26 regions, we more than doubled our membership in the space of the last year, and involved over 2.5 million people in our debates and more importantly valued their involvement.



Check out the Cahiers d'Esperance which is a synthesis of all the ideas, a stream of consciousness of the participative debates.

Check out the Presidential Pact

Look at what Involve, Demos and the Young Foundation say about participative democracy - the only valuable involvement is involvement that's valued.




Listen and lead
Get informed about what people think, and inform people about what we think

Involve and participate
Get inspired about what ideas and experiences people share and inspire people about what values and proposals we believe will help build the good society

See and be seen
Get involved where people are, whether at the workplace, in the streets, on the web and involve people where they are - collaborating with unions, neighbourhoods and bloggers

* Since Desirs d'Avenir was created less than a year ago, 2.5 million have participated whether online or locally.