People’s Branch of Government: What It Means in Practice

Most democracies already have a “legislative branch,” an “executive branch,” and an “independent judiciary.” Yet day-to-day public life keeps revealing a structural gap: between elections, citizens are largely spectators. Public input arrives late, as protest, outrage, or lobbying pressure, instead of as a routine, inspectable part of governing.

The idea of a People’s Branch of Government is a practical answer to that gap. In JustSocial’s manifesto, Yuval D. Vered argues for modernizing the architecture of the state itself, including adding a dedicated “people’s branch” (alongside other reforms) so participation becomes continuous, not episodic. This article translates that concept into operational terms: what the people’s branch does, what it produces, how it checks power without becoming chaotic, and how governments can pilot it safely.

The People’s Branch, defined (in plain practice)

A People’s Branch is a standing public institution whose job is to:

• Collect public priorities in a structured way (not just “feedback”).

• Run legitimate participation processes (deliberation, co-design, voting, oversight) matched to the stakes.

• Publish auditable public artifacts so anyone can inspect how input became a decision.

• Bind government to a response and follow-through loop, instead of one-off consultations.

If the legislature makes laws, the executive implements them, and courts adjudicate them, the People’s Branch ensures there is an always-on civic interface for:

• agenda setting,

• reasoned public deliberation,

• direct decisions where appropriate,

• and continuous oversight of outcomes.

This is not “everyone votes on everything.” It is “every meaningful public decision has a visible, testable participation and accountability pathway.” That emphasis on continuous direct democracy as infrastructure is a core theme across JustSocial’s writing and prototypes.

Why add a branch at all? The institutional problem it solves

Most “participation” today is treated like public relations: a survey, a town hall, a comment period, then a press release. Citizens feel the result is pre-decided, agencies feel participation is noise, and trust erodes.

Research and practice in open government repeatedly show that trust depends on predictable integrity and follow-through, not just more communication. The OECD frames trust as something built through reliability, responsiveness, openness, and fairness, in other words, behaviors and systems that can be observed and measured (see the OECD’s work on drivers of trust in public institutions).

The manifesto’s claim is institutional: industrial-era governance is missing a dedicated mechanism for continuous civic agency. The People’s Branch is that mechanism, designed as a permanent capability, not a campaign.

What the People’s Branch actually produces (outputs you can audit)

A useful way to understand the people’s branch is to focus on its outputs, because outputs are what make the institution real.

Here are practical artifacts a people’s branch can publish routinely, aligned with JustSocial’s “inspectable democracy” direction:

People’s Branch function	Public artifact (what gets published)	Why it matters	Interface to other branches
Agenda intake	“Issue docket” with eligibility rules, thresholds, and scope notes	Prevents hidden gatekeeping and randomness	Legislature receives a ranked agenda feed, agencies receive scoped problem statements
Deliberation	Evidence library, deliberation record, facilitation rules	Makes “public reasoning” visible, reduces manipulation	Agencies and committees can cite the record, courts can review process fairness
Decision mechanisms	Decision pack (method, electorate, timeline, results)	Prevents “black box” decisions	Legislature can adopt, amend, or formally reject with reasons
Oversight	Implementation tracker, outcome metrics, incident reports	Closes the loop, keeps accountability alive after the vote	Executive must report progress, legislature oversees performance

Notice what is missing: vague promises. The People’s Branch is not defined by a slogan like “let people decide.” It is defined by a consistent trail of civic artifacts.

How it relates to existing institutions (and why it is not just a referendum office)

Many countries already have pieces of this puzzle: petition systems, public consultations, ombuds offices, participatory budgeting programs, and in some places direct democracy instruments.

The people’s branch differs in four ways:

It is continuous, not event-based

Referendums and consultations are usually rare. The people’s branch makes participation a routine civic service, the way courts provide justice continuously and audit agencies continuously.

It is lifecycle-based, not vote-only

The manifesto’s emphasis is not “digital voting first.” It is participation across the civic lifecycle: agenda, deliberation, decision, oversight.

It is procedural, not performative

It does not exist to “measure sentiment.” It exists to run legible processes with published rules, including appeals and integrity safeguards.

It is designed to be governable

“More participation” can fail if it becomes overload, inequality, or mob dynamics. A people’s branch is explicitly designed to manage:

• proportionality (match the mechanism to the stakes),

• inclusion (multi-channel participation, accessibility),

• integrity (identity, anti-manipulation, transparency),

• and rights protections (minority safeguards, constitutional boundaries).

Powers and “decision linkage”: the make-or-break design choice

A People’s Branch only matters if its outputs connect to real authority. That connection does not have to be fully binding from day one, but it must be pre-committed and enforceable.

Below are practical “linkage models” governments use (or can adopt) without rewriting the entire constitution overnight.

Linkage model	What government commits to	Best for	Main risk	Typical mitigation
Duty-to-respond	Publish an official response and rationale within a fixed timeframe	Consultations, service design, early pilots	“We listened” theater	Require a response matrix (what changed, what didn’t, and why)
Agenda-setting trigger	If a proposal crosses thresholds, it must be scheduled for committee hearing or debate	Legislative relevance	Low-quality or spam agenda	Eligibility, threshold design, and clear scope rules
Budget allocation mandate	A defined budget portion is allocated through participatory processes	Municipal PB	Capture by organized groups	Inclusion strategy, identity controls, deliberation stage
Conditional binding vote	Decisions are binding within a defined domain and constraints	Local bylaws, institutional rules, movement governance	Overreach into rights or complex tradeoffs	Constitutional guardrails, deliberation requirements

The manifesto’s “people’s branch” concept aligns strongly with a hybrid approach: preserve representative governance, but institutionalize continuous public authority over defined decision spaces, with transparent constraints.

Governance design: who runs the People’s Branch?

A common fear is that a people’s branch becomes either a politicized bureaucracy or a tech platform captured by whoever controls it. In practice, the design needs separation of powers inside the people’s branch itself.

A workable model looks like this:

A small professional operations unit

This team runs the process, not the outcomes. It manages:

• intake triage,

• facilitation and moderation operations,

• accessibility and multilingual delivery,

• publication of public artifacts,

• and process analytics.

An independent oversight body

To match the manifesto’s emphasis on transparency and legitimacy, oversight should be real, not ceremonial. Oversight can include:

• approving participation rules and major changes,

• reviewing incident reports,

• auditing integrity and inclusion metrics,

• and hearing appeals about process violations.

Clear boundary rules with other branches

The people’s branch must be able to say, “This is in scope, this is out of scope, this requires a different mechanism,” and publish those decisions.

Safeguards that make a People’s Branch safe enough for real power

A people’s branch is only as credible as its protections against predictable failure modes: manipulation, exclusion, privacy harms, and outcomes that violate rights.

Rights and minority protections

The people’s branch should operate under explicit constraints:

• constitutional boundaries and non-negotiable rights,

• anti-discrimination principles,

• and a method for judicial review when process fairness is challenged.

This is one reason the manifesto frames the people’s branch as a branch, not a social feature. Branches exist inside a constitutional ecosystem.

Identity and eligibility with privacy

Not every civic action requires the same level of identity assurance. A low-stakes poll is different from a binding vote.

For identity systems, governments often anchor to established standards like NIST Digital Identity Guidelines (SP 800-63), then choose proportional methods. The key is to separate:

• eligibility and uniqueness (one person, one participation right) from

• opinion privacy (how someone voted, argued, or contributed).

Anti-manipulation and process integrity

The people’s branch should treat manipulation as a design problem, not just a moderation problem. That means:

• publishing decision rules in advance,

• slowing down viral dynamics for high-stakes topics,

• separating mobilization spaces from deliberation spaces,

• and issuing public transparency reports when interventions occur.

Accessibility and multi-channel inclusion

Continuous democracy must work for people with disabilities, low bandwidth, limited language fluency, or low civic confidence. Accessibility is not cosmetic, it is legitimacy.

At minimum, digital participation should align with WCAG principles, plus non-digital pathways (paper, phone, in-person) for essential processes.

The technology stack (and why tech is not the institution)

The manifesto is explicitly technology-forward, referencing product ideas like TakeAction!, rParliament, and rConsensus as enablers of continuous participation. In practice, a people’s branch needs a civic stack that supports the lifecycle, but the institution is still defined by governance and public artifacts.

A practical stack typically includes:

• Intake and agenda system (structured proposals, eligibility, deduplication).

• Deliberation environment (evidence library, facilitation tools, argument mapping or structured prompts).

• Decision mechanisms (voting, ranking, budgeting, delegation, depending on context).

• Transparency layer (public packs, changelogs, audit exports).

• Operations layer (moderation workflows, appeals, incident handling, analytics).

Operational reality: what “running a People’s Branch” looks like month to month

The biggest misconception is that participation is a single event. The people’s branch runs as a loop.

Here is a realistic operating cadence for a municipal or agency-level pilot:

Intake and docketing (always on)

Residents submit issues in a structured format. The people’s branch publishes a docket that shows:

• what is under review,

• what is accepted or rejected,

• and which decision owner is responsible.

Sensemaking and scoping (time-boxed)

Staff and subject experts clarify what is actually being decided, what constraints apply, and what options exist. The output is a short, public scope note.

Deliberation and co-design (structured)

Instead of comment chaos, the branch runs a process with clear stages, facilitation, and an evidence library. The deliberation record becomes a public input artifact.

Decision and publication (mechanism-matched)

The decision method is chosen to fit the stakes. Even if the decision is ultimately taken by an elected body, the public can see exactly how input shaped the agenda and the draft.

Implementation tracking (non-negotiable)

The loop only earns trust when “after” is visible. Implementation trackers and outcome metrics are published, with updates.

This is the practical meaning of “continuous direct democracy”: participation does not end when the vote ends.

Funding and administration: the boring layer that decides whether it survives

If the people’s branch is permanent, it needs an operating model that can withstand political turnover. That means stable funding, procurement discipline, and routine reporting.

Even at community or pilot scale, teams often underestimate operational complexity: contracts for facilitation, accessibility services, translations, security audits, outreach, and evaluation. Basic financial hygiene matters, especially when multiple partner organizations are involved. For example, multi-entity initiatives may rely on invoice and receipt workflows, and tools like Kontozz can help teams keep billing, permissions, and reporting organized in one place.

The principle is simple: if you want legitimacy, you need administrative maturity.

Metrics: how you know it is working (without lying to yourself)

Engagement counts are not enough. The manifesto’s direction points toward measurable legitimacy and transparency. A people’s branch should publish a small set of outcome-relevant metrics.

Metric category	Example metric	What “good” looks like	What to watch for
Responsiveness	Time from docket acceptance to official response	Predictable timelines by decision class	Chronic delays, selective speed for favored topics
Inclusion	Participation distribution by neighborhood, language, disability access	Participation matches population over time	Overrepresentation of highly organized groups
Integrity	Incident rate and resolution time, audit findings	Low incident severity, fast transparent remediation	Silent interventions, missing incident reports
Decision linkage	Percent of accepted issues that reach a formal decision point	Clear throughput with published reasons for drops	“Input sink” where issues disappear
Outcomes	Implementation completion rate, service KPI improvements	Visible progress and honest post-mortems	Implementation theater, no outcome measurement

These metrics do not guarantee perfect governance, but they make performance falsifiable, which is the foundation of trust.

A pragmatic rollout plan (how to pilot without breaking trust)

A people’s branch should be piloted like critical infrastructure: narrow scope, high transparency, then expansion.

Start with one domain where follow-through is feasible

Good early domains are those with clear boundaries and implementable outcomes, such as:

• participatory budgeting for a defined fund,

• local service improvements,

• community safety non-emergency priorities,

• or policy co-design for a specific regulation update.

Publish the participation promise

Before running anything, publish what the public can reasonably expect: who decides, what is binding, what is advisory, timelines, and appeal paths.

Run one full loop end to end

Do not scale after “successful engagement.” Scale after:

• published artifacts,

• a real decision linkage,

• implementation tracking,

• and an honest evaluation.

Expand mechanisms, not just audience size

Only add higher-stakes decision mechanisms (including binding votes) after integrity, accessibility, and oversight are proven.

This staged approach aligns with the manifesto’s broader message: reform is not a single app release, it is institution-building.

Where JustSocial fits (without pretending tech alone solves it)

JustSocial positions itself as a political movement and a builder of technology-driven tools for participation and transparency. The manifesto frames these tools as part of a broader modernization of democracy, including the People’s Branch as a structural upgrade.

If you are evaluating what it would take to implement this in a city, agency, or movement, the most important first step is not software selection. It is writing down:

• the decision spaces the people’s branch will govern,

• the linkage model to real authority,

• the artifacts that will be published,

• and the safeguards that will be enforced.

From there, technology becomes the enabler of a governable, auditable system.

If you want a People’s Branch, ask for these three things first

The fastest way to separate serious reform from rhetoric is to ask for three commitments:

• A published participation promise (scope, eligibility, decision owner, and what is binding).

• A duty-to-respond with receipts (response matrices and rationale, not summaries).

• A public implementation tracker (so success and failure are visible after the moment passes).

Those are the practical building blocks of the People’s Branch envisioned in JustSocial’s manifesto: a democracy that is continuous, transparent, and engineered for legitimacy.