ABSTRACT
Democracy is a process that is organic and progressive. This chapter focuses on the local community and proposes that human rights and thick democracy are two sides of the same coin. Consensual democracy has flourished in indigenous communities in Africa and the America's, and wherever economic subsistence requires collective efforts. There is an extraordinary surge of interest in e-democracy throughout the world. This takes the form of open community, online discussion forums, rather than face-to-face meetings. These online forums are still in their infancy and they are still far from being inclusive, which is necessary for e-democracy to work at all. More experimentation needs to occur before e-democracy and e-governance take shape as inclusive political processes. If inclusiveness, solidarity, and equality, along with reciprocity, are key features of democratic communities, they also highlight the underlying logic of human rights and, therefore, of human rights cities.
