In recent decades Europe’s political landscape has been marked by a notable rise in the use of mechanisms of direct democracy such as the referendum and the citizens’ initiative. Of the two it is perhaps the national referendum that has captured the most attention, especially when it has had extra territorial effects. Many such referendums have been triggered by the increasing salience of the European Union on the one hand, and by the regime changes that accompanied the break-up of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia on the other.

While the former have provided an important brake on the process of European integration, most notably around the ill-fated European Constitution, in the successor states of the Soviet Union direct democracy instruments have been formally introduced yet have proved to be an illusion for the enhancement of people’s power, as they have mainly been used to serve as a tool for political elites to accumulate or consolidate power.

In Switzerland, the uncontested world leader of direct democracy, a new ideology that considers the people as an ultimate power, unbound by constitutional constraints and international human rights conventions, poses a serious threat to the rule of law and indeed to democracy as a whole. On a different and more experimental level, information and communication technologies (ICTs) tend to promote democratic innovation by replicating the traditional mechanisms of direct democracy in the form of top-down e-consultations and bottom up e-petitions.

The objective of this International Conference is to bring together scholars and practitioners specialised in the field of democracy and democratic innovation to discuss and to critically evaluate the state of direct democracy across the European polity.

To address these concerns the international conference will be structured around four panels:
- direct democracy and european integration: the trap of national referendums;
- direct democracy in the Balkans and CIS countries: illusions of direct democracy;
- direct democracy and ICTs: democratic innovation and new modes of participation
- direct democracy and the threat of the people’s ultimate power ideology: the case of Switzerland

INFO:
Research Centre on Direct Democracy (C2D)
ZDA, University of Zurich
Villa Blumenhalde
Kuttigerstrasse 21 - Aarau (CH)
Telephone: + 41 (0)62 836 94 44
Fax: + 41 (0)62 836 04 66
e-mail: jonathan.wheatley@zda.uzh.ch
web: www.c2d.ch