In the USA, direct democracy as a medicine against divisiveness
The fate of Donald Trump’s Presidency and the future of America weren’t the only choices confronting voters on November 3rd. In fact, the citizens in 32 states cast their vote and made their voice heard on 117 statewide ballot propositions. Of these, 41 were placed on the ballot...
Gathering young Europeans online
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic affects us all – that also includes our traveling discussion dome. For this reason, the European Public Sphere team has decided to organise weekly online discussion rounds on various topics, targeted at...
ABSTIMMUNG21 - One step closer to a nationwide referendum
Germany has a myriad of direct demcracy tools at the local and state level, but no instruments exist at the national level. A coalition of democracy organisations want to change that. Gathering for the project ABSTIMMUNG21, they organised a...
Abstimmung21: Results of the of the first nation-wide vote in Germany
Abstimmung21, an initiative by Democracy International, Mehr Demokratie and Omnibus für Direkte Demokratie, organised a test vote in the run-up to the first-ever, self-organised referendum on the national level in Germany, asking citizens about their views on a number of issues...
The Direct Democracy Navigator turns ten!
The Direct Democracy Navigator, a unique platform gathering all direct democracy and citizen participation instruments around the globe, is turning ten today. Over the past decade, it has developed from a small crowd-...
Transnational instruments for transnational issues: The Fridays for Future ECI
While timely and necessary, the measures to halt the spread of COVID-19 have had an enormous impact not only on our daily lives, but also on our democracies. In this series, we try to asses how democratic practice has been affected and how we can make our future democracies more...
German Direct Democracy in Action
Abstimmung21 intends to organise the first nationwide vote on socio-political issues in the history of Germany. The idea is to send a voting booklet along with other documents during the 2021 German federal election so that citizens are able to directly make their voices heard...
Seven lessons from the Corona-crisis: Interview with Tamara Ehs
Krisendemokratie is a book written by Tamara Ehs, which focuses on the Austrian democracy during the Covid-19 crisis. After an in-depth analysis of the decision making process of the Austrian...
Democracy in Crisis Online Discussions: Challenges and Recommendations
Over the last couple of months, we organised several interactive online discussions on pertinent issues related to democracy during the current Covid-19 pandemic. The goal of these discussions was to share ideas between experts and participants from across the world in order to...
The Global forum on modern direct democracy goes online in 2020
This year the Forum will take place online, registrations are open on: www.democracy.community.
The Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy is the largest gathering devoted to direct democracy worldwide. It...