Dynamic Tools for Digital Democracy: From Static Aggregation to Process Design

Digital democracy practitioners have built important infrastructure for civic participation over the past decade. Platforms like vTaiwan, Polis, and Decidim have demonstrated that technology can facilitate large-scale deliberation. Yet these initiatives consistently encounter similar challenges: difficulty scaling beyond pilot projects, outcomes that fail to translate into sustained change, and occasional unintended consequences such as polarization or capture by motivated minorities. This paper identifies a common root cause: current theoretical frameworks—inherited from equilibrium-based approaches exemplified by Anderson's 'More is Different' (1972) and formalized in Landau-Ginzburg theory—describe static states rather than dynamic processes. These frameworks can compare endpoints but cannot represent transitions, instabilities, or path dependence. We introduce an alternative: the Stuart-Landau equation, a mathematical framework that describes how order emerges dynamically through critical transitions. This framework enables practitioners to detect approaching instabilities, design temporal structures for deliberation, and understand when and why democratic processes succeed or fail. Rather than replacing existing work, this tool extends it: the infrastructure already built becomes more powerful when guided by dynamic theory.