#CrowdLaw — On the Verge of Disruptive Change | Designing to Scale Impact

This post is third in series of four “reports from the field” on #crowdlaw

On September 24th, The GovLab held its third online global conference on Crowd Law. The goal of these peer-to-peer learning events are to deepen the collective understanding of what works, connect practitioners across the world and accelerate the implementation of more effective and legitimate participatory lawmaking practices. GovLab presented several research questions for input on how practitioners design projects to scale impact: What kinds of opposition and support have practitioners faced? What types of project designs and tools have enable projects to overcome barriers? What are the enabling conditions that define a successful Crowdlaw engagement?

Crowdlaw, or open, collaborative crowdsourced lawmaking, is a tech-enabled approach for drafting legislation or constitutions, that offers an alternative to the traditional method of policymaking, which typically occurs behind closed doors and with little input from the people it affects.

The aspiration of CrowdLaw practitioners and advocates is the creation of laws that are the following:

• more effective because they bring in more diverse ideas
• more legitimate because they are done with broader participation
• more accountable because the lawmaking process becomes subject to greater scrutiny

This session included lightning talks about #crowdlaw projects underway in Austria, Brazil, Chile, Finland, United States, Morocco, Libya and Spain, which we wrote about here. The GovLab then moderated a group discussion with over 45 global practitioners that covered three themes: Outreach strategies, Designing to overcome barriers; and Measuring impact. The full video is available here

Read more about the major takeaways from the session here.