Sunset Pledge: Organised Civic Support as a Tool for Democratic Participation
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Can citizens hold politicians to concrete commitments without founding a party, and dissolve their group once the job is done? This conceptual preprint proposes a model of autonomous, temporary civic groups. Members endorse a public programme in full, ask candidates and elected representatives of any party to commit to it publicly, and assess their conduct through periodic reporting and collective judgement. Support stays voluntary: no one promises a vote, and no group monitors or constrains individual electoral choice. The paper includes the founding manifesto (Sunset Pledge), an exploratory comparison with candidate pledges, the European Citizens’ Initiative, Decidim and deliberative processes, a discussion of risks and limits, and five falsifiable hypotheses for independent testing. It presents no original empirical data and has not been peer reviewed.
Author: Lucca, Clemente
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221451758
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