Strengthen Democracy
The day when the fighting began in Ukraine was the day we created the topic of civic participation in the blog. What has happened in the world since then also shakes us and did not let the blog post flow out of the keyboard as quickly as planned. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, this very day is a good starting point for a post on strengthening democratic citizen participation. We humans need hope.
We'll be addressing the topic of civic participation more frequently on the blog in the future, because strengthening democratic awareness based on freely accessible and factually accurate information is one of the goals that our nascent data tech company B:Tech has set out to achieve. We begin today by introducing two very different projects both of which have only emerged in the last few years.
Bundestag Speech Search Engine
One is the website https://de.openparliament.tv/ <https://de.openparliament.tv/>, which at first glance appears unadorned and sober - a website that has it all. It makes it possible to search videos of speeches from the German Bundestag by keyword. All speeches made in the Bundestag since 2017 are recorded and thus searchable. This is a good and, above all, party-independent contribution to making political debates more transparent for everyone.
Citizen Councils
Another interesting project is the Citizens' Council (Bürgerat). No, the singular falls short, it is about several citizen councils (Bürgerräte). The original "Bürgerrat Demokratie" project was launched in Germany in 2019. This project sees itself as an element of direct democracy that supports parliamentary representative democracy. At first glance, it seems unusual that the members of the citizens' council are drawn by lot from the population. However, there is a system behind this: this type of recruitment is intended to ensure that the diversity of the living conditions of the entire population is represented.
Following this model, other citizens' councils have emerged at the local level to address specific issues. For an overview of citizens' councils and initiatives in cities and communities, visit buergerrat.de/hintergrund/lokale-buergerraete-in-deutschland/.
Inspired by the citizens' councils and the lottery procedure, the LOSLAND initiative also focuses on regional proximity. "LOSLAND accompanies municipalities throughout Germany in shaping a future fit for grandchildren locally," the website says.
Worldwide and internationally, there are similar approaches to more democratic participation, including within the framework of the European Union. These projects are often called forums or citizen's forums or (citizen's) assemblies.
Citizen Participation in Switzerland
In Switzerland, there is a special form of citizen participation, namely the so-called citizens' community assembly. This form of direct democratic participation allows all citizens who are entitled to vote and speak in the respective municipality to participate. Such civic assemblies can make democratic decisions. Incidentally, they do not exist in all municipalities in Switzerland. In some municipalities, voting does not take place in an assembly, but at the ballot box. Still other municipalities also have elected municipal parliaments that make decisions.
