Thursday, 24th February at 7pm
YouTube Live Stream
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».