Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review explores how new technology, or eDemocracy, can change the way citizens interact with the government, hopefully changing democracy for the better.

• Though SSIR discusses ways investors can support a more dynamic, modern system of democracy, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. It will require time and patience.

• Here's more on how tech and political action can be intertwined.

While in the 1930s and ’40s about three-quarters of Americans said it was essential to live in a democracy, less than one-third of Millennials believe this today. In 1964, 76 percent of Americans had faith in the government to do what is right “always or most” of the time. In 2015, that figure fell to only 19 percent.

The decline of faith in democracies parallels another trend: a 15 year decline in the global spread of democracies is the first significant reversal in this measure of engagement with democracy since the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

eDemocracy (also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy) uses 21st-century information and communications technology to extend community engagement, expand suffrage and citizen agency, create real time decision making, rapidly aggregate opinion data, and pave the way for a shift from representative to more direct forms of democracy.

This emerging movement holds many opportunities for impact investment to support a renaissance in political participation.

Although we see five major challenges to overcome before an Internet-based, democratic system can take root, we have identified some promising solutions. We also propose an “ecosystem approach” for impact investors to deploy capital at a systems change level to optimize multiple returns for shareholder and stakeholder alike.

Read the full article on eDemocracy by John Richardson and Jed Emerson at Stanford Social Innovation Review.