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In addition to the above, you can also recall the jamahiriya in Libya. With all the conventions of Gaddafi's authoritarianism, the system was built on the principles of popular congresses.
I would also like to point out that Novgorod is not a very good example for direct democracy, since it is rather worth talking about an oligarchic republic, since a narrow group of the wealthiest residents determine the city's political agenda.
It is possible to organize, but as soon as we begin to analyze such a model, it quickly turns out that the condition for its stability will be very significant differences from what is now called “democracy”. These differences are at least two: the rejection of secret voting (which is typical for small forms of direct democracy – rural gatherings somehow do without damage and bills) and the restriction of universal suffrage (again, in small forms it is present in the form of the authority of certain members of the community, most of which vote in accordance with the opinion of authoritative people).
What do these changes do? First, the ability to correct decisions made by revoking a previously submitted vote. Yes, it is necessary to introduce a hysteresis, and a significant one at that (it is even greater the lower the quality of human material, and, accordingly, the quality of decisions made). Purely empirically, today I would determine the width of the loop at 25%. In other words, 75% support is required for making a decision; to cancel it, the level of actual support must fall below 50%. Further, roll-call voting will allow applying a soft restriction of the right to vote, not in the form of qualifications (educational and property), but in the form of a rating that is individual for each voter for each group of issues.
Under these conditions, direct democracy will be effective. But meeting these conditions also increases the effectiveness of representative democracy many times over.
You can and should. PD itself may well start at the small level of systems-right up to the management of an apartment building. So go ahead with the song. The Internet now provides such an opportunity. The main condition is the openness of the system and verification of accounts. By the way, those who say that this is the end of anonymity are fundamentally wrong. An account can be verified without being linked to a person's full name . It only needs essential components – for example, the area of residence-if voting is based on the district. And the house and apartment are completely unnecessary. Etc.
Technically, this is possible. For example, this is how the government is administered in the Swiss canton of Glarus, where the legislative body since the 14th century and still is the Landsgemeinde – a general meeting of residents, where decisions are made by a simple majority vote.
One of the local parties in Sweden, Demoex, votes in the local parliament based on a survey of all party members on the website.
In a number of other countries (Switzerland is usually at the forefront), the state is experimenting a lot with direct e-democracy.
However, the expansion of these experiments is hindered not only by professional politicians, lobbyists and other figures who feed off “intermediary” operations, but also by the reality of human psychology – direct democracy requires citizens to have an incredible level of political culture, a willingness to study all the pros and cons of proposed initiatives, delve into legal and economic details, and spend time thinking and discussing. Otherwise, all decisions will be made in favor of the party that is able to conduct a more effective marketing campaign, and this depends mainly on the budget and creative talent, and not on the rationality of arguments and thoughtfulness of consequences.
This is a little easier to implement on a small scale, but even the budget of a small region is a complex document with a lot of nuances, ignorance of which by the broad masses will lead at best to the same results as in a representative democracy, and at worst – to the complete dominance of populists and collapse. The same problem awaits many minorities and groups of influence (which include not only economic elites, but also, for example, scientists), who find it easier to defend their interests in front of representatives than to “re-vote” the majority in a referendum.
However, some aspects of direct democracy – free access to the legislative process, putting forward new initiatives, commenting on existing laws and draft laws, and discussing them in an open platform – are certainly beneficial to society and will gradually develop in countries where the state is not too afraid of its population and is at least slightly interested in its opinion.