Brazil’s Participatory Pluriannual Plan
This year saw the initiation of Brasil Participativo, a digital platform provided by Decidim which enables citizens to shape and improve public policies. The first participatory process to use it was the Participatory Plurianual Plan, which gave Brazilians the opportunity to cast votes and set policy priorities at the federal level for the next four years.
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After CoFoE – What’s Next for Digital Democracy in the EU?
We look back at the Conference on the Future of Europe. Asking “What is next?”, we identify ‘expectation management’ and ‘follow-up’ as key areas that need to improve in similar endeavours in the future.
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The Race to Democratise AI
Over the last year, several major AI developers, including Meta and OpenAI, have started taking an interest in deliberative democracy tools. The aim: to collect public inputs on the regulation of AI. We take stock of the developments so far – and ask what it means for the field as a whole.
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Bottom-Up or Top-Down Participation? The Case of Peru
Participatory platforms are increasingly being mandated by governments instead of organically emerging from social movements. The case of Peru shows that top-down implementations can have positive results in terms of improved public services and citizen well-being. Nonetheless, bottom-up participation remains crucial to ensure sustained engagement.
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Parlameter: Increasing Civic Engagement through Digital Transparency
Digital transparency tools make it easier for political institutions to share information with the public – but does transparency lead to a more engaged and politically active public? We looked into the story of Parlameter, an online tool for enhancing transparency, to see how it promotes public engagement at both the national and local level.
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Consensus Building in Taiwan, the Poster Child of Digital Democracy
Taiwan is a world-leader in digital democracy. It all started with vTaiwan, an online participation platform powered by Polis. Launched in 2015, it has transformed how the government brings stakeholders together, allowing for a more inclusive approach to legislation.
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Grassroots Politics and Participatory Budgeting in Poland
Milena Kowalska, Poland’s youngest municipal councillor, tells us about her experiences with participatory budgeting.
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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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Preventing Green Backlashes
The recent ULEZ protests in London were just the latest in a series of backlashes against new climate policies. Green participatory platforms could be the key to ensuring that new measures are fair and meet with widespread public approval.
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Brussels Permanent Citizens’ Assembly on Climate
Brussels is now home to the world’s first permanent Citizens' Assembly on Climate. Can permanent climate assemblies like this one help overcome the short term thinking of representative democracy and make our societies stronger and more cohesive?
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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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Rethinking Participatory Processes and Public Representation in Ireland
With a Master's in Multimedia Systems and a PhD in Political Science, Vanessa Liston founded CiviQ in 2013 to equip Irish local authorities with consultation tools rooted in deliberative democracy. We spoke about her experience of democracy, the values behind CiviQ, and her project to reshape public representation in Ireland.
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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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AI in Digital Citizens’ Participation – Where Do We Stand?
Webinar Recap | On 10 August, democracy-technologies.org hosted the webinar “AI in Digital Citizens Participation – Where do we Stand?” Robert Bjarnason (Citizens Foundation), Bianca Lüders (Agency for Geoinformation and Surveying, City of Hamburg) and Eva Mayer (CitizenLab) joined us to talk about how they are integrating AI into their platforms.
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“Pirate is a State of Mind”
From file sharing advocates and anonymous hacktivists to the halls of power, the global network of Pirate Parties has pioneered the application of digital technologies to democracy and the promotion of human rights.
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