Democracy under the trees

Democracy is often told as a European invention: Athens, parliaments, elections, parties. But if democracy is understood not only as voting, but as deliberating together, a different history emerges. 

In Botswana, people gather at the Kgotla; in India, entire villages deliberate in the Gram Sabha; among the Māori of New Zealand, the Hui serves as a forum for collective decision-making. And in parts of Africa, for centuries the shade of a large tree was what a parliamentary chamber was elsewhere: a place where people talked until a common decision became possible.

Perhaps the history of deliberative democracy does not begin in a building. Perhaps it begins under a tree.

The Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu pointed out that political decisions in traditional African societies were often not made according to the principle of majority versus minority. People came together, talked, disagreed and searched for a solution that everyone could ultimately live with. A study by International IDEA sums up this picture in unusually vivid terms: in traditional African societies, people gathered under trees in villages and deliberated until agreement was reached.

The parliament in the open air

To this day, such a tradition can be observed particularly clearly in Botswana. Almost every traditional village has a Kgotla: at once an assembly place, a political forum and, in some cases, a court. Those who speak are supposed to be allowed to finish. Traditionally, decisions are not simply made by vote, but developed through consensus wherever possible.

The Kgotla system continues to exist alongside Botswana’s modern parliamentary democracy. Ministers and other public officials use Kgotla meetings to deliberate with citizens and answer their questions. In political-science terms, Botswana can therefore be seen as a hybrid: at the national level, there is a parliamentary system, while traditional public deliberative forums continue to exist at the local level.

Other names are found in other parts of Africa. In southern Africa, such institutions are known not only as Kgotla but also as Kuta or Zango, while in East Africa the term Baraza is used. In West and Central Africa, the term palaver is widespread. Historically, these assemblies were places where the affairs of a community were discussed publicly and decisions prepared through deliberation.

The art of palaver

In German, the word “Palaver” has acquired a negative connotation. Someone who “palavers” talks a lot without getting to the point. In its original political context, however, the term describes almost the opposite: talking is not a delay to decision-making, but the path towards it.

The ideal is not to end a conflict by allowing 51 per cent to overrule the remaining 49 per cent. Participants are supposed to set out their positions, listen to arguments and continue searching for a common solution until a viable consensus emerges. This is precisely why democracy researchers are increasingly examining palaver as a form of public deliberation. In political theory, palaver and consensus are studied as distinct conceptions of a public sphere in which different perspectives can be expressed and conflicts addressed through words.

The image of a peaceful village beneath a tree should not, however, be romanticised. Traditional assemblies were by no means automatically egalitarian. Women, younger people, members of lower social strata or outsiders could be excluded or have less influence. Some assemblies were dominated by older and wealthier men. Consensus itself can also conceal power relations: people with little social power may refrain from objecting even when they disagree.

840 million people and a conversation

A very different example can be found in India. There, the constitution has transformed an old idea of local deliberation into a modern democratic institution: the Gram Sabha.

In principle, it comprises the eligible voters of a village or the respective local area. Since the constitutional reform of 1992, Gram Sabhas have been part of India’s system of decentralised democracy. The OECD estimated that the rural population covered by this system amounted to around 840 million people.

The Gram Sabha is not a randomly selected small group like a modern citizens’ assembly. It is an open assembly. Citizens discuss local problems, public services and community priorities. Political scientists Vijayendra Rao and Paromita Sanyal therefore call this system “oral democracy”. Their research draws on almost 300 transcripts of such village assemblies. Even under conditions of severe social inequality and low levels of education, they argue, Gram Sabhas can create spaces in which people publicly articulate their interests.

Research into 127 village assemblies in southern India also challenges the simple assumption that such meetings are merely inconsequential talking shops or entirely controlled by local elites. The actual distribution of speaking opportunities and influence remains unequal – but deliberation can visibly change political priorities.

Democracy without voting

On the other side of the world, too, there is a conception of democracy in which conversation comes before voting. In traditional Māori society in New Zealand, Hui – gatherings and assemblies – are important spaces for collective decision-making.

Research into this practice explicitly describes Hui as forms of deliberative democracy. Decisions emerge through extensive discussion, oratory, the weighing of arguments and the search for consensus. What is particularly striking is that democratic deliberation is not understood as something that begins only when people become adult citizens. Children experience and learn it by participating in social life.

The Pacific region also has the tradition of Talanoa: a form of dialogue in which relationships, reciprocity and the particular social context play an important role. Talanoa is now also used in political and climate-policy deliberations. The aim is less to establish opposing positions as quickly as possible than to allow shared knowledge and possible solutions to emerge through conversation.

The other history of democracy

All these processes are different. A Kgotla is not a Gram Sabha. A Hui is not a palaver. And none of them is simply a historical citizens’ assembly.

That is precisely what makes them interesting. They challenge a widespread story about democracy: that political participation essentially consists of periodically choosing between competing alternatives.

Deliberative democracy follows a different logic. A political opinion is not regarded as something already fully formed in a person’s mind that merely needs to be counted at an election. People can receive information, encounter other experiences, weigh arguments and change their minds. Democracy then consists not only in determining what people want, but in thinking together about what should be done.

From the village tree to the citizens’ assembly

It is at this point that centuries-old traditions of deliberation meet the contemporary wave of citizens’ assemblies. Here, too, a small society is created for a limited period. People who might otherwise never have met receive information, hear different perspectives, talk to one another and try to develop common recommendations.

The connection has now become more than a historical analogy. A 2026 study by DemocracyNext on deliberative democracy in Africa explicitly recommends that modern citizens’ assemblies should not simply be transferred as a European or North American model. Instead, they could build on existing African traditions of extensive deliberation and consensus-oriented decision-making. The study examines, among other things, recent citizens’ assemblies in Mali, Malawi and The Gambia.

In The Gambia, the connection is even physically visible. There, the traditional communal meeting place is called a Bantaba. It is often a shaded space beneath a large tree where people exchange news, resolve conflicts and deliberate on common affairs. DemocracyNext sees this as a cultural point of connection for modern deliberative processes.

No democratic paradise

It is tempting to turn this into an appealing counter-narrative: on one side, cold Western voting democracy; on the other, the communal wisdom of Indigenous cultures. But that story would be wrong as well.

Consensus can be just as problematic as majority rule. It can express genuine agreement – or social pressure not to dissent. Traditional authorities can facilitate discussion, but they can also dominate it. And an assembly in which everyone is formally allowed to speak is far from necessarily being an assembly in which every voice carries equal weight. These questions are the subject of intense debate in research on African consensus democracy.

The lesson of these traditions is therefore not that elections and parliaments should be abolished. It lies in a simpler insight: democracy is older and more diverse than its present-day institutions.

What happens under the tree

Perhaps that is why the tree is such a striking image for deliberative democracy.

Beneath it, there is no spectators’ gallery and no lectern. People sit facing one another. Anyone who wants to persuade others has to speak. Anyone who wants to decide has to listen. And a political decision does not emerge only at the moment when hands are raised or votes counted, but already during the conversation that comes before.

Modern democracies have professionalised this conversation and largely transferred it into parliaments. Citizens’ assemblies attempt to bring part of it back into society. India organises it in hundreds of thousands of villages. Botswana has preserved the Kgotla as a traditional institution alongside parliamentary democracy. Māori and Pacific societies remind us that deliberation can also be rooted in relationships and collective storytelling.

The history of democracy therefore does not lead only from the Agora in Athens, through the European revolutions, to the parliaments of the present day.

Another path leads through a village.

And sometimes there is a tree.