Archive · 24 conversations in Participation
Interviews and field notes from people building new forms of democratic practice.
Thomas Lorenz discusses Brief nach Berlin, an open-source, AI-assisted tool that helps citizens identify the appropriate political representative, draft a letter about a local concern and then copy it by hand. The conversation uses this practical project to examine how civic technology can lower bar
Alvaro Oleart is an academic researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In this episode, he discusses citizen assemblies, EU participation, Big Tech, AI, collective actors, social movements, and why democratic innovation should avoid depoliticized shortcuts.
Anthony Zacharzewski is the founder of Democratic Society, an organization working across Europe to build democratic infrastructure and improve participation in government. In this conversation, he discusses how participation can become part of institutional design, why democracy must engage serious
Kenobit, also known as Fabio, discusses why decentralized social networks and the fediverse are not just a technical alternative to commercial platforms, but a political issue. In this conversation, we talk about Mastodon, ActivityPub, algorithms, engagement, moderation, non-proprietary digital spac
Alice Casiraghi is a systemic designer working on sustainability, circular economy, regenerative systems, and public services. She is a European Climate Pact Ambassador, teaches at Politecnico di Milano and created Climate Cards to educate on environmental impacts. Through her systemic approach, she
Paolo Spada discusses participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies, and the long-term work of scaling democratic innovation. The conversation explores feedback loops, institutional design, political parties, online deliberation, empirical skepticism, and why participatory processes need stronger connections between citizens, public authorities, and wider democratic systems.
Antoine Vergne discusses Missions Publiques, random selection, and the challenge of scaling deliberative decision-making. The conversation explores citizens’ assemblies, global policy, legitimacy, institutional uptake, and how deliberation can move from local experiments toward processes that involve many more people without losing quality.
Cecile Green and Seth Frey discuss the Commoning Standard and the role of self-governance in democracy. The conversation explores commons, standards, collective rules, and how communities can document, compare, and improve self-governance practices without reducing democratic life to a single institutional model.
Wietse van Ransbeeck discusses Go Vocal and how participation can be integrated into everyday governance. The conversation explores civic engagement platforms, government workflows, institutional adoption, and the challenge of making public input useful for officials while keeping participation meaningful for residents.
Vir Sanghavi explains Tilt.vote and its approach to improving democratic debate. The conversation focuses on how structured argument, better incentives, and digital design can help people compare positions, reduce polarization, and make public disagreement more useful for collective decisions instead of turning debate into performative conflict.
Jonathan Moskovic discusses the future of deliberative citizen participation and the practical challenges of making participation influential. The conversation explores citizens’ assemblies, public administration, political buy-in, scaling, and how democratic innovations can avoid becoming symbolic exercises disconnected from actual policy choices.
Carol Romero and Andrés Pereira de Lucena discuss Decidim as a modular open-source participation platform and explain why technology is always political. The conversation explores platform governance, public institutions, digital participation, community control, and the design choices that shape who can participate and how collective decisions are made.
