February nanoTalks: Direct Democracy and Digitalisation

Zum Livestream: YouTube öffnen

Talk 1: E-Collecting: Risks and opportunities

Presented by Irina Lehner, PhD Candidate at the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau

For its proponents, e-collecting promises increased accessibility of democratic processes and reduced resources necessary to launch and handle direct-democratic initiatives and referendums. For its critics, this could lead to an overburdening of democracy and to more imprudent decisions. This contribution will discuss opportunities and risks of e-collecting from a legal perspective and further examine possible changes to the existing legal regulation.

Talk 2: Digital Democratic Innovations – A Swiss Example

Presented by Giada Gianola, PhD Candidate at the Année Politique Suisse, University of Bern

Although digitalization offers numerous opportunities, digital participation formats are still very limited, involve risks and often have a bad reputation. This contribution discusses the potential of Digital Democratic Innovations (DDIs) in Switzerland. Concretely, the talk will show a project ran in the municipality of Köniz (Canton Berne) where citizens had the chance to develop a questionnaire for the Swiss Voting Advice Application smartvote using a self-developed asynchronous digital platform dubbed «Demokratiefabrik».