Interviewed by Jūratė Gattini (JG)
Imagine that decisions affecting your children’s education, your healthcare, your community, and even the future of your country are made by people you have never met.
You may vote every few years. You may express your opinion on social media. You may attend meetings, sign petitions, or submit comments.
But what if none of those activities gives you a meaningful role in finding better solutions?
What if the greatest democratic deficit of the 21st century is not that people cannot vote, but that they cannot effectively participate in the search for decisions that shape their lives?
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, it established one of the most important principles of modern civilization: the inherent dignity of every human being.
Article 21 states that everyone has the right to participate in the government of their country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
At the time, this was a revolutionary idea.
But the world of 1948 could not foresee the internet, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence systems, or technologies capable of organizing large-scale human collaboration.
Today, a new question emerges:
If people have a right to participate in governance, should they also have a right to participate in the search for solutions and in the final decisions that affect their lives?
According to independent Lithuanian researcher Dr. Saulius Norvaišas, the answer is yes.
He proposes a new human right:
The Right to Participate in Decidement.
By decidement, Dr. Norvaišas does not mean merely voting or making a final choice.
He means the entire process through which society identifies problems, generates alternatives, evaluates ideas, refines solutions, and ultimately makes decisions. (Read full explanation by Dr. Norvaišas below)
If the twentieth century expanded humanity’s rights by recognizing the right to vote and participate in governance, could the twenty-first century expand them further by recognizing the right to participate in decidement?
That is the question we explored in the following conversation.
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What Is the Right to Participate in Decidement?
JG: You argue that one of the most important new human rights could be the right to participate in decidement. What exactly do you mean?
Dr. Norvaišas: I mean that people should not be merely recipients of the consequences of decisions.
If decisions shape a person’s life, environment, opportunities, and the future of their children, that person should have a pathway not only to elect decision-makers but also to participate in the search for solutions.
This distinction is crucial.
Most people equate participation with voting.
Every few years, citizens choose representatives and transfer decision-making authority to them.
But that is not decidement.
That is delegation.
Decidement is the broader process through which solutions are discovered.
A problem is identified, examined, broken into components, discussed from different perspectives, and transformed into competing alternatives. Those alternatives are then tested, compared, improved, and refined until the strongest solution emerges.
Consider a simple analogy.
Imagine entering a restaurant and being allowed to choose from three meals already prepared by someone else.
You can select one of them, but you are excluded from the kitchen. You cannot help create the recipe, choose the ingredients, or improve the menu.
Afterward, someone says:
“You participated.”
Technically, yes.
But you did not participate in creating the meal.
Much of modern governance works in a similar way.
Citizens often choose among alternatives created by others without participating in the process through which those alternatives were developed.
My argument is simple:
People should have the right not only to participate in choosing those who govern, but also to participate in the search for the best solutions and in the final decisions whose consequences they themselves will experience.
JG: In the introduction, we already mentioned Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which speaks of the right to participate in the government of one’s country. Am I correct in understanding that the right you propose is not entirely new, but rather an extension of this already existing right?
Dr. Norvaišas: Yes, exactly. I need to emphasize that the right to participate in decidement does not emerge out of nowhere. It extends the already existing human right to participate in governance.
The difference is that, in 1948, participation was understood primarily as participation either directly or through representatives, and the will of the people was expressed through periodic elections.
This was historically understandable. At that time, there were no technological, algorithmic, or collective-intelligence tools that would allow society to participate in a structured way in the search for solutions itself. The Declaration could therefore establish the right to participate in governance, but it could not fully articulate a right to participate in decidement.
Today, however, the situation is changing. We now have the possibility to organize human knowledge, experience, and reasoning not as a chaotic stream of opinions but as a structured process of solution discovery.
That is why I believe that the right to participate in governance should evolve into the right to participate in decidement—the search for solutions and the final selection of decisions on matters whose consequences people will actually experience.
This is not a rejection of the human rights tradition. It is a civilizational extension of it.
JG: You draw a very clear distinction between voting, the search for solutions, and final decision-making. Why is this distinction so important?
Dr. Norvaišas: Because voting is often merely the final act.
People are presented with alternatives that have already been formulated, and they choose one of them. Yet they usually have little or no role in defining the problem, exploring possible solutions, evaluating arguments, or refining alternatives.
It is similar to being allowed to choose one dish from a menu of meals that have already been prepared, while being excluded from the kitchen, the recipe creation, and the selection of ingredients. Afterwards, someone says, “You participated.”
Formally speaking, yes. But in reality, the person did not participate in the creative process through which the solution was developed.
That is why I say that voting is not decidement.
Voting may be one method of confirming a decision, but it cannot replace the process of discovering solutions itself. Solution discovery involves creating alternatives, testing them, comparing them, and refining them until the strongest option emerges.
The final decision, meanwhile, should belong to those who will actually live with its consequences and who understand the issue at hand.
A good decision does not arise simply from choosing among pre-packaged alternatives. A good decision emerges when the search for alternatives is intellectually rigorous and when the final choice is connected to those who will live under its consequences.
JG: Would this right mean that everyone should decide everything?
Dr. Norvaišas: No. It is important to make that clear immediately.
The right to participate in decidement does not mean that everyone decides everything with equal weight. It is not mob rule, not comment-section culture, and not the noise of social media.
The decidement architecture I propose consists of two distinct stages.
The first stage is the search for solutions. It involves people who have demonstrated specialized competencies in a particular field. These competencies do not arise from job titles, academic degrees, or one-time examinations. They reveal themselves dynamically through participation in open clusters, where it becomes evident how a person understands a problem, proposes ideas, evaluates the proposals of others, and contributes to refining the strongest solutions.
The second stage is final decision-making. Here, the participants are the stakeholders—the people who will actually be affected by the decision.
However, what matters is not merely formal membership in a group, but an understanding of the issue itself. Such understanding may be verified through AI-generated statements or questions.
As a result, even a child could participate at this stage if they understand the issue and can responsibly choose among the alternatives refined during the first stage.
Decidement is therefore not a chaotic system in which everyone participates everywhere. It is a two-stage architecture: first, the best solutions are identified through demonstrated expertise; then, stakeholders who understand the issue participate in making the final choice.
JG: But a critical question arises here. If stakeholders participate in the second stage, is there not a risk that they will simply choose whatever benefits them personally—a solution favorable to their group but harmful to others?
Dr. Norvaišas: That risk would exist if the second stage were merely a vote based on competing interests. But that is not how decidement works.
First, stakeholders in the second stage do not choose from an unlimited range of proposals. They choose from a set of alternatives that has already been refined during the first stage.
The first stage is the stage of specialized competence. Its purpose is not to identify solutions that selfishly benefit the group that will later make the choice, but to identify solutions that are superior in a broader sense—solutions that create added value, avoid zero-sum dynamics, and do not allow one group to win at the expense of others.
Second, even during the final stage, biased evaluation is not advantageous for participants.
The evaluation process is based on resonance with collective wisdom. Participants are not asked simply to identify what is narrowly beneficial to themselves. Rather, they are challenged to recognize which solution is most likely to be regarded by the collective as the strongest.
Because most participants are oriented toward honest and wise evaluation, those who judge solely according to narrow self-interest move away from that resonance.
In decidement, therefore, narrow self-interest is not prohibited on moral grounds. It is neutralized through architecture.
The system is designed so that the best strategy for participants is not manipulation, but the recognition of solutions that are strong from the perspective of the whole.
JG: Another possible concern might be this: if people are given the right to participate in decidement, does that mean they will have to constantly follow every issue and participate in everything?
Dr. Norvaišas: No. A right is not an obligation.
The right to participate in decidement means having a genuine opportunity to participate, not a duty to be involved all the time.
If I trust the architecture of decidement, trust those who are searching for solutions, and trust those who are participating in the final selection, I can calmly focus on what matters to me—doing my work, caring for my family, creating, learning, and living my life.
However, if I see that my contribution could be meaningful, if I possess specialized competence, or if the consequences of a decision will directly affect me, then I can choose to become involved.
This is where harmony emerges: everyone may participate, but in practice participation comes from those who have motivation, competence, or a direct connection to the decision.
For that reason, a majority of society does not necessarily need to participate in decidement. It may involve only a few percent of the population—or even fewer.
The goal is not to force everyone to participate. The goal is to create a trustworthy architecture into which anyone can enter when their participation is meaningful.
JG: This opens up a fascinating technological topic—how exactly a person demonstrates specialized competence, how open clusters function, how AI can verify understanding of an issue, and how all of this can be protected from manipulation. That probably deserves a separate conversation.
For now, however, I would like to return to the idea of the right itself. How is it connected to human dignity?
Dr. Norvaišas: Human dignity means that a person is not merely an object that experiences the consequences of decisions.
A person should be recognized both as a potential participant in the search for solutions and as a stakeholder in the final decision-making process.
It is important here to distinguish between two things.
If a person possesses competence, they should have the opportunity to participate in the search for solutions.
If a decision will directly affect their life, they should have the opportunity to participate in the final decision.
These are not the same thing.
In one case, the basis for participation is competence; in the other, it is stakeholdership.
Therefore, in the twenty-first century, human dignity should mean not only the right to be protected from unjust decisions, but also the right to be included in the search for and adoption of better decisions.
JG: Whenever we speak about dignity, the word decidement keeps reappearing. It seems to encompass more than the conventional phrase decision-making. Why is it important to you to use this particular term? Why are the usual words—decision-making, participation, consultation—not sufficient?
Dr. Norvaišas: Because those words do not encompass the entire process.
“Decision-making” often refers only to the final act—someone makes a decision.
“Consultation” implies that people may be asked for their opinion, but their contribution does not necessarily become a real part of the decision.
“Participation” is too broad and too vague.
For me, decidement means the entire journey: from recognizing a problem, generating and refining alternatives, all the way to making the final decision.
It includes formulating the question, generating ideas, evaluating arguments, comparing alternatives, depolarizing disagreements, incorporating competencies, and ultimately preparing a decision for action.
One could put it this way: decision-making is a moment, while decidement is a process.
The right I am proposing is the right to participate across the entire field of decidement: according to competence, in the search for solutions; and according to stakeholdership and understanding of the issue, in the final decision-making stage.
JG: As we discuss this, the question of responsibility naturally arises. While reading human-rights documents, I have often thought that rights are declared very clearly, while responsibility for one’s actions seems less emphasized. Is the right you propose simply another right without responsibility?
Dr. Norvaišas: Quite the opposite.
It is a right that brings responsibility back to the center of public life.
In the current system, people can often say, “I only voted,” “I did not make any decisions,” or “Let those in power be responsible.”
In other words, responsibility is delegated together with decision-making power.
The right to participate in decidement changes this logic.
It says that if you want to live in a better society, you should have not only the right to complain, but also the right and opportunity to contribute to the search for solutions.
But this requires the proper architecture.
Simple anonymous commenting does not create responsibility. It often destroys it.
Accountable anonymity works differently.
A person’s identity is protected throughout the process, preventing status pressure, fear, or the influence of authority. Yet their contribution is recorded.
Ideas and evaluations are counted. Participants accumulate competency weight according to how well their ideas and evaluations resonate with collective wisdom.
This is a crucial distinction:
Anonymity should not mean a lack of responsibility.
When it is accountable, anonymity can actually become a condition for responsibility.
JG: Critics would probably argue that people often lack sufficient knowledge to deal with complex issues. How would you respond?
Dr. Norvaišas: I would say that this is partly true, but a mistaken conclusion is often drawn from that truth.
Yes, not everyone possesses equal competence in every field. But that does not mean society’s intelligence should be switched off and decisions left to a narrow circle of people.
Within a collective-intelligence architecture, competence is not ignored. On the contrary, it is measured more accurately.
Competence is not merely a diploma, a position, or public authority. It reveals itself through the ability to contribute strong ideas, evaluate the ideas of others accurately, and recognize what is aligned with collective wisdom.
Furthermore, we must distinguish between experts and stakeholders.
Experts may understand technical relationships more thoroughly. But the people who will live with the consequences of a decision often possess forms of knowledge that outside experts cannot see.
The best architecture, therefore, combines both competence and lived stakeholdership.
In other words, the question is not, “Does everyone know everything?”
The question is: How do we organize diverse forms of human knowledge so that they produce better decisions?
JG: Could it be said that this right is becoming especially relevant because of the rise of artificial intelligence?
Dr. Norvaišas: Yes.
Artificial intelligence makes this issue even more urgent.
If the search for solutions is increasingly delegated to technical systems, algorithms, expert groups, or closed institutions, people may become even more disconnected from the formation of decisions.
But another possibility exists.
Artificial intelligence can help organize collective human intelligence rather than replace it.
It can assist in structuring ideas, detecting semantic similarities, grouping arguments, identifying recurring patterns, and analyzing polarization.
Yet the meaning, values, and social orientation of decisions must remain within the domain of collective human intelligence.
That is why, in the age of AI, the right to participate in decidement becomes even more important.
If we fail to establish it, we may find ourselves in a world where people retain the right to speak, while the actual search for solutions takes place without them.
JG: How might such a right be formulated? Can you offer a definition?
Dr. Norvaišas: I would propose the following working formulation:
Every person should have the right to participate in decidement: in the search for solutions according to demonstrated specialized competencies, and in final decision-making as a stakeholder, provided that they understand the issue being decided and will genuinely experience the consequences of the decision. This participation should take place in a structured, transparent, and accountable manner, so that ideas are separated from status while contributions remain responsible and accountable.
Every word in that formulation is important.
“In the search for solutions” — because the first task is not to choose from pre-existing alternatives, but to create, test, and refine those alternatives.
“According to demonstrated specialized competencies” — because the weight of participation in the search for solutions should arise from demonstrated competence, not from status, position, or public visibility.
“As a stakeholder” — because those who will actually be affected by a decision should participate in making the final decision.
“Provided that they understand the issue being decided” — because the final choice should not be a merely formal vote, but a responsible decision.
“Will genuinely experience the consequences of the decision” — because the right to participate arises not from abstract curiosity, but from a real relationship to the consequences of the decision.
“Structured” — because this is not a chaotic accumulation of opinions.
“Transparent” — because the workings of the process must be clear and understandable.
“Accountably anonymous” — because a person’s identity should be separated from their ideas, while their contribution remains recorded and accountable.
JG: This sounds like a very ambitious idea. Could it become a global movement?
Dr. Norvaišas: I believe so.
And not because it is an attractive theoretical concept.
It can become a movement because people throughout the world are experiencing the same problem: decisions are made somewhere above them, somewhere distant, somewhere behind closed doors, while everyone must live with the consequences.
People are tired of a situation in which their vote is needed only periodically, while their minds are never needed continuously.
They see problems. They possess experience. They propose solutions.
Yet all too often, these contributions remain trapped in conversations, comments, meetings, reports, frustrations, or ideas that are never implemented.
That is why the movement’s message could be very simple:
Not only the right to speak.
Not only the right to vote.
The right to search for solutions.
The right to participate in choosing them.
However, this phrase must be understood precisely.
It does not mean that every person participates equally in everything.
In the search for solutions, demonstrated competence is paramount.
In final decision-making, stakeholdership is paramount—that is, a genuine relationship to the consequences of the decision.
That is precisely why this idea can be universal.
It does not say, “Everyone decides everything.”
It says: every person should have a fair path into the search for solutions according to competence and into final decision-making according to stakeholdership.
JG: What should be done in practice? Where should the process begin?
Dr. Norvaišas: First, the idea must be articulated in a way that is understandable not only to academics and technology specialists.
There needs to be a manifesto, a clear article, interviews, short texts, and visual communication.
People need to see that this is not a promotion for some technical platform.
It is a civilizational idea about rights.
The second step is pilot projects.
We need to demonstrate that decidement can work in a community, an organization, a university, a city, or a professional group.
When people see that anonymously evaluated ideas can genuinely reduce the influence of status and bring the strongest solutions to the surface, they begin to understand that this is not a utopian vision.
The third step is an international document.
It could take the form of a Charter of the Right to Participate in Decidement, or The Right to Collective Decidement Charter.
Such a document could become a foundation for academic discussions, petitions, conferences, political initiatives, and the attention of human-rights organizations.
The fourth step is legal and institutional development.
Over time, this right could appear in national strategies, city governance systems, educational frameworks, public consultation standards, and perhaps even international documents.
JG: If you had to explain this idea to someone who does not have time to read a long article, how would you express it in a single sentence?
Dr. Norvaišas: I would say:
Those who must live with the consequences of decisions should have a pathway into both the search for solutions and the final choice among them.
That is the core of the idea.
JG: And if you wanted to express it even more forcefully—as a phrase that could become the center of a manifesto?
Dr. Norvaišas: Then I would say:
The twentieth century recognized humanity’s right to be protected from arbitrariness. The twenty-first century must recognize humanity’s right to participate in decidement.
Or, more briefly:
Human rights cannot stop at the right to be heard. They must extend to the right to participate in decidement.
JG: Looking at the broader picture, are we talking only about a new right, or are we also talking about a new understanding of the human being?
Dr. Norvaišas: I believe we are talking about both.
New rights emerge when the horizon of human possibilities changes.
At one time, it would have been impossible to speak about digital privacy, personal-data protection, or access to digital space as conditions of human flourishing.
Such rights became meaningful only when a new reality emerged.
Today, another new reality is emerging.
For the first time in history, we have the technical ability to organize large-scale participation in the search for solutions and in final decision-making without descending into chaos.
If that possibility exists, then a new right naturally emerges as well.
But at the same time, this changes our understanding of the human being.
The human being is no longer merely an individual who must be protected from power.
The human being is a co-author of our shared world.
Human intelligence, experience, care, and responsibility must be organized socially.
That is why the right to participate in decidement is more than a procedural right.
It is an expansion of human dignity.
A human being is not merely a holder of rights.
A human being is a participant in the search for and adoption of decisions.
And a society that cannot organize the intelligence of its people effectively renounces the greatest source of intelligence it possesses.
JG: Listening to you, many practical questions naturally arise: How is competence determined? How are decidement clusters formed? How does anonymity function? How is manipulation prevented?
But another, deeper question also emerges: Why should we believe that such a process can produce wiser decisions than a simple aggregation of interests? Is that where our next conversations begin?
Dr. Norvaišas: Yes. This discussion actually opens the door to two separate topics.
The first is technological: how such a system of decidement can be organized in practice.
We will need to discuss how clusters are formed, how specialized competencies emerge dynamically, how stakeholders’ understanding of issues is verified in the second stage, how accountable anonymity is ensured, how ideas are evaluated, and how solutions that resonate with collective wisdom emerge.
The second topic is even deeper:
Why can a group of people who do not even know one another discover not merely what is beneficial to themselves, but what is genuinely wise—a solution that creates added value for communities, societies, and humanity itself?
Today, the most important goal was simply to introduce the idea of the right itself.
The right to participate in decidement becomes meaningful when there is an architecture capable of implementing it, and when we understand that collective intelligence is not merely the sum of individual interests.
It can become a way of organizing human intelligence so that decisions are not only beneficial to participants, but wise in relation to the wider world.
JG: Before we conclude, however, let us touch briefly on that second topic. Why should collective intelligence not be understood as merely the sum of individual interests?
Dr. Norvaišas: This is one of the most important questions. And it cannot be answered in a single sentence, because it takes us to the very foundation of how collective intelligence works.
It is important to understand that a good decision is not simply the one that is most convenient for a particular group. Nor is it merely the sum of individual interests.
People who participate in decidement naturally have interests of their own—their personal well-being, the well-being of their loved ones, and the needs of their communities. Yet true collective intelligence begins when a decision rises above narrow self-interest and becomes a wise decision—one that creates added value not only for the participants themselves, but also for the community, society, and, in some cases, humanity as a whole.
The two-stage architecture is crucial here.
The first stage prevents the second stage from degenerating into a simple vote of competing interests, because stakeholders choose from alternatives that have already been refined by experts. The role of the experts is not to prepare solutions that favor one particular group, but to identify solutions that have broader value and do not create zero-sum conflicts.
The second stage is guided not only by interests but also by a mechanism of resonance.
Participants are asked to evaluate not what is narrowly beneficial to themselves, but what they believe will be recognized as the strongest and wisest solution. If they evaluate proposals in a biased manner for the sake of narrow interests, they fall out of alignment with the field of collective wisdom.
For that reason, the most rational strategy for participants is not to defend only their own group, but to recognize the solution that is strongest from the perspective of the whole.
This requires a specialized architecture of decidement: accountable anonymity, separation of ideas from their authors, resonance-based evaluation, the dynamic emergence of competencies, depolarization mechanisms, and an orientation toward universal values—non-harm, justice, proportionality, care, and responsibility.
But that is a subject for a separate conversation.
For today, we can say this much: the right to participate in decidement can only be fully understood when we understand how collective intelligence can elevate solutions that are not only beneficial to participants, but also wise in relation to the wider world.
JG: So, to summarize, today we discussed the right to participate in decidement—the right to participate in the search for solutions and in the final selection of decisions.
However, two further questions emerge from this conversation.
The first is how such a system of decidement can be organized in practice: how clusters are formed, how competence is identified, how accountable anonymity functions, and how the process can be protected from manipulation.
The second is why collective intelligence may enable groups of people to discover not only solutions that benefit themselves, but solutions that are genuinely wise and create added value for society as a whole.
Dr. Saulius, thank you for this conversation.
Dr. Norvaišas: Thank you.
JG: We have been speaking with Dr. Saulius Norvaišas about the right to participate in decidement—an idea that invites us to rethink human rights in the twenty-first century.
If the language of human rights in the twentieth century was primarily concerned with protecting people from coercion and arbitrariness, a new question emerges today:
Should human beings also be included in the search for and adoption of the decisions by which they themselves, their communities, and future generations will live?
This idea does not imply chaotic participation by everyone in everything.
Rather, it is based on a two-stage logic: the search for solutions grounded in specialized competence, followed by the participation of stakeholders in the final decision-making process.
Two important themes remain for future discussions:
How can such a system of decidement be organized in practice?
And why might collective intelligence produce wiser decisions than the mere aggregation of competing interests?
These are the questions we will explore in future conversations.
Thank you for joining us.
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