Brussels Voice – Can Participatory Democracy Replace the Right to Vote?
One in three people living in Brussels is non-Belgian. This means they cannot vote in regional elections. This year, Commissioner Brussels is working with the regional parliament to set up a citizen panel of international citizens of Brussels. The goal: to give them a voice in how the city where they live is run. Democracy Technologies spoke with project officer, Bryn Watkins, about what they hope to achieve and why it’s complicated
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Can EurHope Involve 1 Million Young People in EU Politics?
EU Public Affairs Manager, Nahr, is upbeat in spite of the polycrises Europe currently faces as it looks towards next year’s European elections. “The good news is that destiny is in our hands – we’re not doomed, there is space for hope and destiny”, he says. Nahr is referring to the EurHope project that launched […]
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FIDE Event: The Deliberative Wave is Here to Stay
Head of Cabinet of the Vice President for Democracy & Demography at the European Commission, Colin Scicluna, put it simply, “We have adopted the deliberative approach”. He acknowledges that their experience with the Conference on the Future of Europe convinced the Commission to “trust in these types of processes” and has helped them realise the […]
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From Clicktivism to Hacktivism
New technologies provide a range of different participation levels that may favour a broadening, rather than a deepening of engagement. Yet this, according to Dr. Bas Baccarne, senior researcher at imec-MICT-Ghent University, is not necessarily a bad thing.
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What Makes Participatory Budgeting Work in Rybnik?
DT: What motivated you to start Participatory Budgeting in Rybnik? Piotr Kuczera: Participatory Budgeting in Rybnik started in 2013. But the initial idea came in 2009-2010 when a local NGO – the Social Initiatives Development Centre (CRIS) – implemented an innovative citizen participation project aimed at two very different districts of Rybnik. The goal of […]
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EU Citizen Participation — What needs to change?
Democracy Technologies: The Bertelsmann Stiftung published an extensive study last year, 2022, calling for an EU framework for citizen participation. What was the inspiration for this study? Dominik Hierlemann: New forms of citizen participation have become a hot topic with interesting developments all over Europe. We have been involved in the field for quite some […]
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Lessons from Ghent
The city of Ghent in Belgium has a long history of citizen participation and have found that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to participation.
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Finding Shelter, Voting on Petitions and More – The Kyiv Digital App
In 2018, city leaders agreed on an ambitious plan to digitise Kyiv. A twenty-one-point transformation plan was created, including everything from cyber security to big data. The Kyiv Digital app was part of this broader push to digitise, aimed specifically at increasing accessibility for citizens. To date, the app has over 2 million downloads out […]
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