>>>My vote is for Demarchy.
>>
>>An avid reader of Alastair Reynolds, I presume?
>>
>>Demarchy is exactly what I'd choose - electronic voting at any time, anyone interested gets a go at it, nothing is sacred but the perfection of the voting system, and the liberty to choose a community. Everything else is up to the vote of anyone involved.
>
>
>That's more like direct democracy than what I had in mind:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy

I was more referring to what Reynolds described in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prefect. It's actually a step further - leave only the institutions for which there's a vote to keep them.