Making Transnational Digital Democracy Work + How to Link ‘We’ and ‘The State’
Description
Entering new territory – making transnational digital democracy work
Time: 14:00-14:45
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) requires the EU commission to act when it receives a request from over 1 million citizens. It is the first attempt for a transnational, participatory and digital democracy ever having entered into force April 2012. But for all the optimistic pre-implementation debate, the EU’s new democracy instrument has gotten off to a poor start. A key question is how the promised ECI infrastructure for digital participation can be developed to make this instrument work in an efficient, robust and fully transparent fashion.
Open Democracy: How to link ‘we’ and ‘the state’
Time: 14:45-15:30
When people move, structures move. None of the previous incarnations of democracy have evolved without a preceding emergence of new citizen movements. The same is happening as we speak. During the past decade we have witnessed a parallel development of Open Democracy initiatives and p2p citizen movements. At the same time, government is opening up and people are organising themselves. One thing seems to be missing – the living connection between Open Democracy and new paradigm of citizen movements. Looking for the missing link are professor Henri Vogt from University of Turku and researcher Outi Kuittinen from Demos Helsinki.
Session Host
Joonas Pekkanen
Contributors
Carsten Berg, General Coordinator of the ECI Campaign; Democracy International
Henri Vogt, University of Turku
Outi Kuittinen, Demos Helsinki, (FIN)
Bios
Carsten Berg: Carsten Berg is a trained Political Scientist and obtained a degree in Political Sciences from the University Potsdam and an MA in Education from Alanus University Bonn. He has campaigned for participatory and direct democracy at regional, national and transnational levels. In 2002-2003, Carsten Berg worked for Mehr Demokratie e.V. in the Convention on the Future of Europe (European Constitutional Convention) and successfully campaigned for the inclusion of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) into EU law. The ECI is the first transnational and digital instrument of participatory democracy in world history. Since then he continues to contribute to the emergence of the European Citizens’ Initiative as Director of the ECI Campaign.
Henri Vogt: Henri Vogt is professor of Political Science, especially International Politics, at the University of Turku. His special fields of interest are democratisation, the process of European integration and global governance.
Outi Kuittinen: Outi Kuittinen is researcher at Demos Helsinki. By education she is a Master of Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki. Her special fields of interest are low-carbon lifestyles, social innovation, peer production, social enterprises and future cities. In addition to Demos Helsinki she ponders and experiments on these issues in urban environmental NGO Dodo and Cycling Consultants.
Details
Location: INSPIRE auditorium
Date & Time: Thu 20th, 14:00-15:30
Target Group:
Topic Stream: Open Democracy and Citizen Movements
Session Etherpad page: