How four countries practise direct democracy today

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bruno Kaufmann: “We are the people,” protesters on the streets of East Germany shouted back in 1989 as a challenge to the then-communist one-party state. One year later, they had succeeded in overcoming half a century of dictatorship and establishing a united democratic country with West Germany.

Since then, hundreds of millions of people around the world have demanded the fulfilment of a fundamental human right, set out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21.1): “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.” 

“The idea of having ordinary people capable of governing themselves is much older than the UN Human Rights Declaration”, says John Matusaka, a finance professor at the University of Southern California and the author of several books on the role of modern direct democracy in representative government systems. “Popular self-government is an experiment that continues to shape the modern world.” 

Although this experiment has sometimes ended in a populist or even autocratic backlash, a growing number of political communities – cities, regions, nation-states and even continents – have been able to establish and implement a large variety of people-led initiatives and referendums in recent years. Some countries, like Switzerland and the United States, have been practising citizen-lawmaking for more than a century. Others, like Taiwan, are relative newcomers to the field and showcase the breadth of participatory democracy tools being applied today…

The island of Taiwan (36,000 km2, population 23 million) has moved from a democracy on paper to a functioning democracy run by the Taiwanese people, through a process that has accelerated since the 1980s. Today it is a vibrant multiethnic society with 18 official languages.

In 2003 Taiwan introduced its first law on initiatives and referendums. In the last 20 years, the text has undergone improvements and amendments that include a relatively low threshold for forcing a popular vote on proposed legislation. These changes mean that today the people of Taiwan are able to have a genuine say in politics – both at the local and national levels. 

In November 2018 alone, more than ten citizen-led proposals, on issues ranging from environmental protection and marriage equality to the international status of the island, were put to a general vote. In 2021 the Taiwanese decided to amend their direct democracy law in a way that voting on candidates in elections and on issues by referendum were separated. 

One weakness in the process, however, is the legal requirement for a minimum 25% approval rate among the whole electorate for a proposition to pass. This  allows opponents of a proposal to influence the outcome of the vote by simply not participating. In 2021 four referendums were invalidated as they did not reach the approval of 25% among all voters…(More)”.

One Year Since the Invasion of Ukraine, Let Citizens Lead

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Ieva Česnulaitytė: “One year ago, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, suddenly throwing into jeopardy decades toward democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. But as Ukraine fought back, its neighbours have rallied to its defence. 

The war still rages and it is easy to feel despair. But as a Lithuanian democracy expert, I feel confident that our region’s future is bright. It is possible, if we take the right steps, for Ukraine and its neighbours to emerge as more resilient democracies than before.

First, we must recognise the extraordinary outpouring of support for Ukraine from everyday people. Polls show that as of January 2023, two out of three Lithuanians had donated to the Ukrainian defense effort. People in the region welcomed millions of fleeing civilians, crowd-funded millions of euros, and mobilised to penetrate the propaganda wall by sending text messages to Russian citizens.

This is remarkable because, paradoxically, these same countries have abysmal voter turnout and low levels of trust in government. People are still learning to trust one another, to hold their governments accountable, and to embrace their own agency. Thirty years of democratisation has yielded varying levels of success. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania score at the top 20 per cent on V-DEM’S Liberal Democracy Index, while Bulgaria and Moldova are still classified as electoral autocracies. 

It turns out that a transition to party politics and elections is fairly easy to undermine through corruption and foreign influence. This has led to “hybrid regimes,” with democratic and nondemocratic features. 

At the same time, the region has undergone a paradigm shift from communist regimes, successfully implementing reforms and building democratic institutions. Grounded in values of liberty and self determination, there is a palpable openness to innovate and ambition to make up for the years lost under Soviet oppression.

How can we tap into our innate capacity to collaborate and care for others—so apparent over the past year—to build resilience and accelerate our democratic renaissance? When the war ends, how can we help Ukraine do the same?..(More)”.

European Citizens’ Virtual Worlds Panel

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Many people believe that virtual worlds, also referred to as metaverses, might be a change comparable to the appearance of the internet and will transform the way we work and engage with each other in the future. In the last couple of years – and particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic – numerous public and private actors have been investing massively in these so-called “extended and augmented realities”, speeding up changes in our workplaces and habits.

Despite this increased attention, such a transformation will not happen suddenly. Virtual Worlds will take many years to develop into a high-quality, realistic digital environment, and there is no clear picture yet of what metaverses could and should become.

The EU and its Members States are committed to harness the potential of this transformation, understand its opportunities, but also the risks and challenges it poses, while safeguarding the rights of European citizens. The European Commission has therefore decided to convene a citizens’ panel to formulate recommendations for the development of virtual worlds.

Find out more in the information kit that is available in the document section below….(More)”.

Mapping Civic Measurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars: “…a comprehensive civic measurement landscape review and a first-of-its-kind framework for mapping civic readiness and opportunities.  

The report features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society. You’ll come away from the report with new ways to think about measuring civic learning impact, new research to inform your work, and new opportunities to connect with other practitioners. 

Now is the time to come together to cultivate people as informed, engaged, and hopeful citizens. Creating a common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and opportunities will enable us to chart the course to a healthy and robust democracy that works for all…(More)”

Reflections on the representativeness of citizens’ assemblies and similar innovations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Paolo Spada and Tiago C. Peixoto: “For proponents of deliberative democracy, the last couple of years could not have been better. Propelled by the recent diffusion of citizens’ assemblies, deliberative democracy has definitely gained popularity beyond small circles of scholars and advocates. From CNN to the New York Times, the Hindustan Times (India), Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), and Expresso (Portugal), it is now almost difficult to keep up with all the interest in democratic models that promote the random selection of participants who engage in informed deliberation. A new “deliberative wave” is definitely here.

But with popularity comes scrutiny. And whether the deliberative wave will power new energy or crash onto the beach, is an open question. As is the case with any democratic innovation (institutions designed to improve or deepen our existing democratic systems), critically examining assumptions is what allows for management of expectations and, most importantly, gradual improvements.

Proponents of citizens’ assemblies put representativeness at the core of their definition. In fact, it is one of their main selling points. For example, a comprehensive report highlights that an advantage of citizens’ assemblies, compared to other mechanisms of participatory democracy, is their typical combination of random selection and stratification to form a public body that is “representative of the public.” This general argument resonates with the media and the wider public. A recent illustration is an article by The Guardian, which depicts citizens’ assemblies as “a group of people who are randomly selected and reflect the demographics of the population as a whole”

It should be noted that claims of representativeness vary in their assertiveness. For instance, some may refer to citizens’ assemblies as “representative deliberative democracy,” while others may use more cautious language, referring to assemblies’ participants as being “broadly representative” of the population (e.g. by gender, age, education, attitudes). This variation in terms used to describe representativeness should prompt an attentive observer to ask basic questions such as: “Are existing practices of deliberative democracy representative?” “If they are ‘broadly’ representative, how representative are they?” “What criteria, if any, are used to assess whether a deliberative democracy practice is more or less representative of the population?” “Can their representativeness be improved, and if so, how?” These are basic questions that, surprisingly, have been given little attention in recent debates surrounding deliberative democracy. The purpose of this article is to bring attention to these basic questions and to provide initial answers and potential avenues for future research and practice…(More)”.

The Emerging Field of Political Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Johanna Mair, Josefa Kindt & Sébastien Mena: “In 2020, amid a global pandemic and a wave of antiracist protests inspired by the US Black Lives Matter movement, the young German nonprofit JoinPolitics prepared its first group of motivated citizens to enter politics. The organization follows a typical social-venture model through which it scouts, selects, and supports political talents with innovative ideas to strengthen democracy across different regions and levels of government. The handpicked cohort undergoes a curated six-month program that includes funding and training in a variety of skills, such as how to run a campaign, as well as access to an extensive network of politicians, entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, and foundations.

In the program, participants can pursue their ideas, such as drafting legislation to empower stateless people, establishing a lobby group to represent the interests of an underrepresented community, or consulting government agencies to recruit staff from minoritized groups. The solutions they develop address a host of sociopolitical problems that have made German democracy vulnerable to deterioration, including increasing polarization, right-wing populism, social injustice and inequality, and stagnant processes and structures. JoinPolitics is explicitly pro-democratic, but nonpartisan. It supports talents that belong to a spectrum of political parties, as well as those with no party affiliation, but it does not engage with non- and anti-democratic parties.

Caroline Weimann founded JoinPolitics in 2019 after working at a German foundation to address societal challenges. Her transition from grant maker to social entrepreneur was sparked by the realization that “the big questions of our time, be they social inequalities, climate change,” she says, “will have to be solved on a political level.”

For Weimann, as well as others, social innovation must enter politics to unlock its full potential. JoinPolitics departs from conventional social-innovation practice, which recognizes the role of policy in creating a favorable environment for the sector but does not prioritize changes in the political system. Traditionally, the practice of social innovation has stopped at the gates of political systems. Instead, JoinPolitics promotes innovation to fix or reconfigure elements in the political system, effectively liberating social innovation from the dominant narrative that has divorced it from the political realm. The focus of the nonprofit and its political talents is on finding solutions to mounting threats against democratic principles of justice, equality, representation, and civic participation in Germany….(More)”

The Underestimated Impact of School Participatory Budgeting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by the Participation Factory: “Participatory budgets (PBs) are in use in countless communities around the world, giving residents the chance to decide how to allocate parts of the public budget. They are usually open for the entire community to take part – but there can be real advantages to starting with a smaller-scale school participatory budget.

Not only do they empower pupils to get involved in local government; but they can also play a crucial role in the students’ civic education. Unlike other educational tools like mock elections, the children actually get to see how the work they put in leads to concrete results. They demonstrate the power of political engagement to children at an early age, leaving them well-placed to become active, engaged citizens in later life….

The basic setup of a school PB should allow children to get a grasp of a whole range of what we call participatory skills – including project development, public speaking, voting, running a campaign, and engaging in deliberative democratic discussions. Younger children can start out just voting for their favourite projects – but as they get older, they can begin to get more involved in the entire process, gradually building their confidence, project management skills, and their understanding of how participation works. 

Participatory budgeting improves the children’s participatory skills. We have learned from our experience in Czech and Slovak schools that every year, more children feel comfortable enough to propose a project and run a campaign. They realise that there are techniques and methods to the process that they can easily learn and use, making the whole process less intimidating. They realise that debating and taking initiative doesn’t hurt, but rather leads to real results…(More)”.

Participatory budgeting and well-being: governance and sustainability in comparative perspective

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michael Touchton, Stephanie McNulty, and Brian Wampler: “Participatory budgeting’s (PB’s) proponents hope that bringing development projects to historically underserved communities will improve well-being by extending infrastructure and services. This article details the logic connecting PB to well-being, describes the evolution of PB programs as they spread around the world and consolidates global evidence from research that tests hypotheses on PB’s impact. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues…

The authors find evidence for PB’s impact on well-being in several important contexts, mostly not only in Brazil, but also in Peru and South Korea. They also find that very few rigorous, large-N, comparative studies have evaluated the relationship between PB and well-being and that the prospects for social accountability and PB’s sustainability for well-being are not equally strong in all contexts. They argue that PB has great potential to improve well-being, but program designs, operational rules and supporting local conditions must be favorable to realize that potential…(More)”.

Letting the public decide is key to Big Tech regulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Rana Foroohar: “Complexity is often used to obfuscate. Industries like finance, pharmaceuticals and particularly technology are rife with examples. Just as programmers can encrypt code or strip out metadata to protect the workings of their intellectual property, so insiders — from technologists to economists to lawyers — can defend their business models by using industry jargon and Byzantine explanations of simple concepts in order to obscure things they may not want the public to understand.

That’s why it’s so important that in its second major antitrust case filed against Google, the US Department of Justice last month asked not only that the company break up its advertising business, but that a jury of the people decide whether it must do so. This is extremely unusual for antitrust cases, which are usually decided by a judge.

It is a risky move, since it means that the DoJ’s antitrust division head, Jonathan Kanter, will have to deconstruct the online advertising auction business for lay people. But it’s also quite smart. The federal judges who hear such complex antitrust cases tend to be older, conservative types who are historically more likely to align themselves with large corporations.

As one legal scholar pointed out to me, such judges are reluctant to be seen as people who don’t understand complexity, even when it’s in a realm far outside their own. This may make them more likely to agree with the arguments put forward by expert witnesses — the Nobel laureates who construct auction models, for example — than average people who are willing to admit they simply don’t get it…

There are, of course, risks to policy by populism. Look at Britain’s departure from the EU after the 2016 referendum, which has left the country poorer. But that’s how democracy works. Allowing important decisions over key issues like corporate power and the rules of surveillance capitalism to be made by technocrats behind closed doors also carries dangers. The justice department is quite right that ordinary people should be able to hear the arguments…(More)”.

Citizens’ assemblies: are they the future of democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Eva Talmadge: “…Citizens’ assemblies, a phenomenon that is gaining in popularity around the globe, date back to ancient Athens, where legislative panels, courts and councils were chosen via random selection. In a practice known as sortition, Greek citizens over the age of 30 were enlisted to debate governmental matters from city finances to military strategy. More recently, citizens’ assemblies have convened to hammer out solutions to such issues as homelessness in Los Angeles, the allocation of a $5bn budget in Melbourne, Australia, and the longstanding ban on abortion in Ireland.

In 2017, after meeting over the course of five weekends for deliberation, an Irish citizens’ assembly came up with a recommendation to legalize the procedure. Sixty-six per cent of Irish voters later approved the referendum, ending more than four decades of fruitless political debate.

Modern citizens’ assemblies are typically convened by legislative bodies, which work alongside non-profit groups to reach out to large numbers of citizens at random – sending letters like the one Bajwa received in the mail – then sorting the respondents who express interest according to social and economic factors. The result is a group of people who are randomly selected and reflect the demographics of the population as a whole.

Sortition, a word that might evoke the next chapter in the Hunger Games franchise, offers a revived spin on democracy. Instead of leaving the decision-making up to elected officials, citizens’ assemblies can offer a special interests-free alternative to politics as we know it.

The system is not unlike jury duty. With facilitators in place to provide background information on the issue at hand and encourage everyone’s participation, the group meets over the course of several days to learn about a problem, hear from a range of stakeholders and experts, and come up with recommendations for new legislation…(More)”