Anticipatory democracy

Anticipatory democracy is a range of models of democratic decision making[?] that take into account predictions of future events[?] that have some credibility with the electorate. Prediction markets[?] and other risk management techniques may be embedded into bureaucracies and agencies to overcome the groupthink inherent in such bodies, that makes it quite difficult for them to anticipate uncomfortable future events. The Total Information Awareness program of the US government proposes such measures.

Newt Gingrich, Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler[?], K. Eric Drexler, and Robin Hanson[?] are well known advocates of the anticipatory approach. All advocate approaches where the public, not just experts, participate in this "anticipation". It is questionable whether the US TIA program is, or can be, open enough to satisfy any of them.

Deliberative democracy is an alterative that relies less on formal models and a market system for betting on future events, and more on discussion. Both the deliberative and anticipatory approaches are considered variants of participatory democracy with different thresholds of ease of participation, burden of proof, and reflection of participants' tolerances versus preferences or ideals of truth. Sometimes a deliberative model is described as more "left" and an anticipatory model as more "right". Those who wish to avoid this debate and see merits to both approaches, e.g. Greens, usually prefer the generic term "participatory democracy."

There are other terms which likewise have more specific associations with advocates or methods: grassroots democracy, semi-direct democracy, consensus democracy.