Democracy Without Politicians

A "search and read the book" MCP server for Terry Bouricius, Democracy Without Politicians: Government By the People (Routledge, 2026).

How this respects the author

The book is CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Open Access — free copy at Taylor & Francis). The author, Terry Bouricius, gave express permission (2026-06-23) to build a question-and-answer / indexing tool over it, on one condition:

"the search tool find relevant text within the book, and display my actual words, rather than AI-generated summaries."

This server is built to honour exactly that. Every tool returns verbatim passages from the book — nothing is summarised or paraphrased:

• search_content, get_chapter return the book's text directly.
• get_principles and get_multi_body_design are curated entry points: a short topic/body label (navigation only) plus a verbatim excerpt the server retrieves from the book at request time. The labels orient you; the substance is always Bouricius's own words.
• Every response carries attribution to the author.

If you build on this, keep that contract: surface his text, attribute him, and never present paraphrase as his words.

Tools

Tool	Returns
get_book_info	Title, author, license, free-copy link, table of contents
list_chapters	The 17 chapters (numbers + titles)
get_chapter	A chapter's verbatim text by number (1–17) or title (paginated)
search_content	Keyword search → the most relevant verbatim paragraphs + chapter
get_principles	12 key topics, each with a verbatim excerpt and its chapter
get_multi_body_design	The seven bodies of the multi-body sortition design (Ch 16), each with a verbatim excerpt
get_glossary	~20 terms he coins or relies on (index)
define_term	The verbatim passage where he introduces a given term
find_cases	Real-world examples he cites (Athens, Ostbelgien, BC, Paris, Oregon, Fishkin, …), each with a verbatim excerpt
get_chapter_highlights	A chapter's verbatim anchor passages

Every tool returns Bouricius's own words; the topic/term/case labels are navigation only. A build test (scripts/verify-enrichment.mjs) asserts every excerpt any tool can return is a verbatim substring of the book.

Build

git clone https://github.com/zhiganov/democracy-without-politicians-mcp
cd democracy-without-politicians-mcp
npm install
npm run gen     # (re)generate src/book-data.ts — optional; the text is already committed
npm run build   # tsc -> dist/
node scripts/smoke.mjs          # end-to-end tool test
node scripts/verify-rework.mjs  # dump the retrieved verbatim excerpts to eyeball

Use it in Claude

It's hosted — no clone, no Node, no build. Point your client at the remote server.

Claude Code (user scope — works from any directory):

claude mcp add --transport http -s user democracy-without-politicians https://democracy-without-politicians-mcp-production.up.railway.app/mcp

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "democracy-without-politicians": {
      "url": "https://democracy-without-politicians-mcp-production.up.railway.app/mcp",
      "transport": "http"
    }
  }
}

Restart the client after adding.

Run it locally instead (dev / offline)

Clone and build (see Build above), then register the local stdio server:

claude mcp add democracy-without-politicians -s user -- node "<abs-path>/dist/index.js"

Or in claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "democracy-without-politicians": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["<abs-path>/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

What you can ask

• "What's Bouricius's case that election reform can't fix democracy?"
• "Show me what the book says about Review Panels vs Policy Juries."
• "What does the book say about objections to sortition?"
• "Pull the passage where he describes the Rules Council."

Attribution & license

Democracy Without Politicians: Government By the People by Terrill "Terry" Bouricius (Routledge, 2026), CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Open Access). This tool is shared with the author's express permission (2026-06-23) and displays verbatim text only.

Dual-licensed (see LICENSE + NOTICE): the server code is MIT; the embedded book text in src/book-data.ts remains © Terry Bouricius under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — non-commercial, with attribution, no derivatives of the text. Generated with the book-power pipeline.