• Apéro Votations: DemocracyNet.eu at La Dérivée (3)

    Members of DemocracyNet.eu organized an “Apéro Votations” on September 3, 2017, in the frame of the participatory festival La Dérivée. This third event of DemocracyNet.eu at La Dérivée aimed at providing an innovative space for the public to get informed and actively discuss about two issues put to the popular vote of September 24, 2017. “Experts” provided the information; the “Apéro” format provided the relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Origin of the project The concept of this event emerged from discussions between the two project leaders, Alice el-Wakil and Vasco Gamboni. The original idea, which was to organize a dinner to discuss one or more popular vote issues in a friendly…

  • DemocracyNet.eu workshop: “Citizenship and Democracy”

    The research workshop “Citizenship and Democracy,” organized by DemocracyNet.eu and the Doctoral Program Democracy Studies (DPDS), took place at the University of Zurich on September 11-12. It enabled all 17 participants to engage in interdisciplinary academic discussions with other DPDS students, members of the association DemocracyNet.eu, and other researchers working in the field of democracy studies. Three panels The academic discussions were structured in three panels: Citizenship in (Non-)Democracies, Patterns of democratic participation, and Challenges to democracy. The 7 papers presented offered a variety of approaches and focused on different issues regarding citizenship and democracy. Each speaker received detailed and constructive feedback from their discussants and from all the participants to the workshop,…