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Reimagining European democracy (with gusto) | Carnegie Europe

Three bold visions for the future of European democracy

In 2018, 2019 and 2020, Dreamocracy CEO Stephen Boucher collaborated with the think tank Carnegie Europe to contribute bold ideas for democratic renewal at European level. The three articles were:

“How Citizens Can Hack EU Democracy”, which came out on May 2, 2018. This article argues that no matter how much we try to communicate better about what the European Union is doing, EU citizens will not be interested, unless we bring it closer to them by introducing forms of direct democracy that make a demonstrable difference. In this spirit, Stephen Boucher offers several “hacks” – quick institutional changes that would short-circuit many obstacles. These hacks, Stephen Boucher argues, could both bring the EU closer to its citizens (and vice versa) and lead to new ways of communicating about it. His three proposals are to set up a “Citizens’ Committee for the Future” in the European Parliament; to organise an EU-wide Participatory Budget; and to put in place a yearly EU Collective Intelligence Forum based on the Deliberative Polling methodology. Interesting to note: these ideas have yet to materialise, although the EU has since developed the practice of regularly organising citizens panels.
“Six Ideas for Rejuvenating European Democracy”, with Richard Youngs, Israel Butler, Maarten de Groot, Elisa Lironi, Sophia Russack, Corina Stratulat, and Anthony Zacharzewski. This was published on November 6, 2019. As part of Carnegie’s “Reshaping European Democracy project”, Stephen Boucher argued in favour of improving direct citizen consultations and democratic participation.
Finally, “Can Europe Be a Catalyst for Democratic Innovation?”, also written by Stephen Boucher, and published by Carnegie on January 17, 2020, argues that we can transform the way we think of subsidiarity at EU level, to turn it into an instrument of democratic and policy innovation at all levels of governance throughout the Union.

How this has been received

The “Six Ideas for Rejuvenating European Democracy” were presented to a wide audience of EU officials and activists at a high-profile event in November 2019 in Brussels’ Bozar museum.

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