Books
A list of books exploring different issues like how civic tech can be used to meet challenges in the cities, how to increase democratic participation, or what are the best ways to combat ethical concerns.
How to Launch a High-Impact Foundation
This book is for anyone who wants to understand how to be an impactful grantmaker.
How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit
In How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit, a team of experts who themselves have helped launch 18 evidence-based charities (and counting) break down what it really takes to build impactful organization...
Good Services - the book
The bestselling book by Lou Downe about how to design services that work
We are Civic Media
We Are Civic Media is a collective manifesto for field builders, stakeholders, educators, creative professionals, and community leaders who want to understand BOTH the deeply personal human as well as...
People-Powered Gen AI: Collaborating with Generative AI for Civic Engagement
Successful integration of generative AI for civic engagement must be powered by people who use their judgment to validate outputs, mitigate potential errors, contextualize results, and build trust bet...
Generative AI for Pro-Democracy Platforms
Online discourse faces challenges in facilitating substantive and productive political conversations. Recent technologies have explored the potential of generative AI to promote civil discourse, encou...
Exploring Parliament
A fresh perspective on the work, impact, and relevance of UK Parliament, combining academic and practitioner perspectives with evidence based case studies to reveal what really goes on behind the scen...
Political Automation: An Introduction to AI in Government and its Impact on Citizens
Book by Eduardo Albrecht
Community Data: Creative Approaches to Empowering People with Information
by Rahul Bhargava
Lottocracy
The first sustained, detailed philosophical defense of using lotteries, rather than elections, to select political representatives
Proudly Serving
A guide to public service in the digital age
Artificial Intelligence in Legislative Services: Principles for Effective Implementation
It provides a comprehensive look at AI applications in legislative drafting, procedural guidance, historical archiving, and citizen engagement, supported by real-world case studies illustrating practi...
New Democratic Initiatives in Authoritarian Twenty-First Century Latin America
New Democratic Initiatives in Authoritarian Twenty-First Century Latin America uses a multidisciplinary approach to understand the coincidence of emerging social movements, seeking more meaningful for...
Decidim, a Technopolitical Network for Participatory Democracy: Philosophy, Practice and Autonomy of a Collective Platform in the Age of Digital Intelligence
Open access book by Xabier E. Barandiaran, Antonio Calleja-López, Arnau Monterde, and Carol Romero
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley
An insider offers a “forceful critique...of Big Tech's steady erosion of democracy” (The New Yorker) and describes what must be done to stop it
The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet)
by Micah Sifry
Party System Change
Mair examines how we interpret the evidence of change and stability in modern parties and party systems
Artificial Intelligence - A Primer for State and Local Governments: Everything You Need to Know Since Yesterday
By Alan R. Shark, with ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity AI
Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy
The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy
Civic Tech Report 2025
Hardcover book and online platform providing an overview of over 80 solutions from the European civic tech ecosystem
Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America
By Aure Schrock. Out in September. The first detailed history of Code for America that examines how democratically designed government systems can collectively improve technology's impact on society.
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya: African Arguments
From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the m...
Der Kampf um das Internet: Wie Wikipedia, Mastodon und Co. die Tech-Giganten herausfordern
Mehr Freiheit und mehr Demokratie waren die großen Versprechen des Internets.
Disaster Management and Information Technology: Professional Response and Recovery Management in the Age of Disasters
Editors: Hans Jochen Scholl, Eric E. Holdeman, F. Kees Boersma
Wir holen euch ab! Wie wir durch Bürgerräte und Zufallsauswahl echte Vielfalt in die Demokratie bringen
Dabei haben sich Katharina Liesenberg und Linus Strothmann vom Team Es geht LOS einer jahrtausendealten, urdemokratischen Methode bedient: des Losens
The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy
How political parties have changed in the age of social media
What Makes an Assembly? Stories, Experiments, and Inquiries
Weaving together the anthropological, aesthetic, and political aspects of assembly-making, What Makes An Assembly? explores the potential of assemblies to reimagine the way democracy is practised in c...
Effective Activist: An Evidence-based Guide To Progressive Social Change
Did you know hundreds of scientists have researched what makes activism effective?
Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama's former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.
Digital Parties: The Challenges of Online Organisation and Participation
This book analyzes how mainstream and new parties are building their digital platforms and transitioning from traditional (offline) organizations into the digital world
Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them
"From the historian Dan Bouk, a lesson in reading between the lines of the U.S. census to uncover the stories behind the data."
Technology and the Public Interest (2022 book)
In this groundbreaking work, Haochen Sun analyzes the ethical crisis unfolding at the intersection of technology and the public interest.
Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation
"Reclaiming Participatory Governance offers empirical and theoretical perspectives on how the relationship between social movements and state institutions is emerging and developing through new modes...
Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy
Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy is the first book that brings together a wide range of methods used in the study of deliberative democracy.
Deliberative Democracy in Asia
Book edited By Baogang He, Michael Breen, James Fishkin (2021)
The Wildcard Workbook
The Wildcard Workbook: A Practical Guide for Jokering Forum Theatre is a resource for facilitators of all kinds looking for new ways to bring fun, creativity, and critical thinking into their work!
Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter What Your Role on Any Team
In this "deeply empowering and practical book"(Cecilia Muñoz), two technology and innovation leaders reveal dozens of tactics that enabled them to accomplish seemingly impossible reforms in organizati...
Sobrevivendo nas Redes: Guia do Cidadão
A free book on how to survive on social media networks
The Turing Way: Community-led guides for data science and open research
Alan Turing has long proved a subject of fascination, but following the centenary of his birth in 2012, the code-breaker, computer pioneer, mathematician (and much more) has become even more celebrate...
The Propagandists' Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy
How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy, by Francesca Bolla Tripodi
Reorganise: 15 stories of workers fighting back in a digital age
"In only a decade, the labour market has changed beyond all recognition - from zero-hour contracts to platform monopolies - meanwhile union memberships are at historic lows."
Artificial Intelligence in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust
A collection of essays edited by Ana Brandusescu and Jess Reia featuring essays from participants of the AI in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust symposium that took place remotely o...
Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics
In Close Up at a Distance, Laura Kurgan offers a theoretical account of these new digital technologies of location and a series of practical experiments in making maps and images with spatial data.
Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix Our Government and Change Our World
How to take advantage of technology, data, and the collective wisdom in our communities to design powerful solutions to contemporary problems
Ask What You Can Do: "Why local government needs more technologists and how you too can serve "
"US governments struggle to keep pace with rapidly advancing technologies and with the expectations of the public for governmental service delivery akin to what they experience in other aspects of the...
The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom
Data Action: Using Data for Public Good
Book by Sarah Williams -- How to use data as a tool for empowerment rather than oppression.
Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online—and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media
The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service into Volunteer Involvement
Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement
The @CivicWhitaker Anthology: Three Years of Organizing, Writing, and Documenting in Chicago Civic Tech
By Christopher Whitaker Edited by Daniel X. O'Neill