Can Citizens Influence Europarty Manifestos?
As the 2024 EU election campaigns loom, the question arises: How can ordinary citizens play a more active role in shaping the activities of Europarties? To shed light on this vital issue, we spoke to Alberto Alemanno, founder of The Good Lobby.
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Growing A Culture of Participation in Luxembourg
When Luxembourg set out to simplify its administrative procedures, the country’s Ministry for Digitalisation launched an online platform to allow citizens to get involved. We spoke to Martine Kerschen and Paula Almeida from the Ministry for Digitalisation about the platform.
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Participation Needs Better Storytelling
Participative processes are often depicted as a quick and easy way of achieving political change. This makes them attractive to the public – but it can lead to frustration when results don't follow immediately. Gianluca Sgueo argues that citizens' participation needs to develop a new kind of storytelling that acknowledges the complexity of political processes.
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Learning By Doing: A School of Participation is Being Launched in Germany
Interview | The School of Participation will teach theory and practice of participation using a hands-on approach. Its first academic year is due to commence in October 2024. We spoke to two of the school’s founders.
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“We Want More and Better Participation”
Interview | In Germany, a new professional association for citizen participation is being founded. Starting with a membership of around 400 people working in the field, they want to set quality standards for participation and influence government to change its mindset on participation.
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Don’t Use Deliberative Democracy to Distract From Regulation
The idea that AI regulation should be shaped by a global citizens' assembly seems to be gaining in popularity. But when tech companies themselves are behind these deliberative processes, it can end up looking less like a credible effort to democratise, and more like a distraction from the effort to regulate quickly.
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One Third of Eligible Youth Participates in Helsinki Youth Budget
Interview | The Helsinki Youth Budget allows young people in Helsinki to have a say in how the city's money is spent and also to take part in the implementation of projects. We spoke to Johanna Laukkanen, Interaction Specialist at the City of Helsinki about the project.
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From Consumer to Creator: Experiencing Digital Democracy in Schools
Democracy Technologies: With the aula project, you implement digital participation projects at schools. What is the motivation behind doing this digitally? Marina Weisband: I would say that the digital app is a means to an end – that as many students as possible get involved. For that, digital tools are useful on several levels. Firstly, […]
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Scan a QR-Code and Participate – The Story of PLACEm
Interview | PLACEm, an easy-to-use, location-based participation app is a finalist in the Innovation in Politics Awards in the category of Democracy Technologies. Gregor Dehmel co-founded Politik zum Anfassen, which published PLACEm. We talked to him about his experiences in the project, from hiring developers to bringing the app to the users.
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Democracy Technologies at the Innovation in Politics Awards Convention
On 11 May, leaders and political innovators from across Europe will gather at the Palace of Culture in Warsaw for this year’s Innovation in Politics Awards. This year they are held as a day-long convention with a special focus on Democracy Technologies.
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Bringing Private Sector Innovations to Government
Michael Mascioni recently published his book "Reinventing Government Through Political Entrepreneurship and Exponential Innovation". He talked to us about how innovation strategies and tools could be adapted from the private sector to the public sector, why he uses the term crowdsourcing rather than participation, and about gamification in government.
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Climate Democracy – Can Participatory Approaches Help Tackle the Tough Decisions Ahead?
Climate change policy requires citizen participation. The Climate Democracy Action (CDA) by People Powered seeks to prepare its participants to make that happen. Clara Bois, Program Manager at People Powered explains how.
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The World According to AI
Politicians are automatically men, and women are overtly sexualised: Our experiences with the biases of AI image generators.
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Job Opening: Copy Editor & Proofreader (w/m/d)
We are looking for a copy-editor and proofreader to support our editorial board by preparing articles, guest contributions, and interview transcripts for publication.
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The team tested how ChatGPT could be useful for Democracy Technologies
ChatGPT is the latest natural language chat program out of AI research lab OpenAI. Having taken the internet by storm with a surprising array of capabilities, we decided to see what the impact on democracy (and our work) might be, by asking it a few questions of our own.
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