Digital Open Local Democracy

with Wietse Van Ransbeeck

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Show notes episode #32

Schedule:

  • 00:00 Introduction 
  • 03:37 Personal questions 
  • 05:07 Main discussion 
  • 39:02 Recommendations by Wietse Van Ransbeeck

Summary

With Wietse Van Ransbeeck I discuss citizen participation at the local government level. Wietse was discouraged by the existing possibilities to participate in local political processes in his home town in Belgium, and he didn’t want to become a politician. So he founded CitizenLab that provides digital tools and services for local governments that want to integrate the citizens’ opinions and knowledge in local policies. Digitalization is substantially lowering the costs for citizens to have their voices heard. There is great potential in digital tools and we discuss the opportunities they offer, but also some of the risks.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck is the Co-Founder and CEO of CitizenLab, a company that provides a community engagement platform made for local governments that makes it easy to engage their residents, manage inputs, and make informed decisions. He is an impact entrepreneur and determined to rebuild our democracies from the bottom-up. He was recognized as Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe leader, and was a Young Transatlantic Innovator Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2018. He graduated with a Master’s Degree in Business Engineering from Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.

References to books, papers, and other contributions:

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

Hello and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, where it is my job to discuss and compare democratic institutions. 

I believe local democracy is key for democratic evolution. If we don’t have strong local governments, we can’t have functional and balanced national governments. At the local government level, there is room for experimentation, trying different institutional arrangements and policies. And of course, it is more straightforward to include citizens in the deliberation and decision making processes.

With Wietse Van Ransbeeck I discuss citizen participation at the local government level. Wietse was discouraged by the existing possibilities to participate in local political processes in his home town in Belgium, and he didn’t want to become a politician. So he founded CitizenLab that provides digital tools and services for local governments that want to integrate the citizens’ opinions and knowledge in local policies. Digitalization is substantially lowering the costs for citizens to have their voices heard. There is great potential in digital tools and we discuss the opportunities they offer, but also some of the risks. 

This conversation with Wietse is also my attempt to integrate more voices in my podcast that directly solve political problems and work really hard to improve citizen participation and democracy. I want to showcase success stories but also the hurdles political entrepreneurs and activists face when it comes to dealing with existing democratic institutions. 

Wietse Van Ransbeeck is the Co-Founder and CEO of CitizenLab, a company that provides a community engagement platform made for local governments that makes it easy to engage their residents, manage inputs, and make informed decisions. He is an impact entrepreneur and determined to rebuild our democracies from the bottom-up. He was recognized as Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe leader, and was a Young Transatlantic Innovator Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2018. He graduated with a Master’s Degree in Business Engineering Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the thirty-second episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I am always curious to hear your opinion, so just send me an email to [email protected], and please leave a review and share this episode with friends and colleagues. If you find my discussions interesting and you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com and you find the link to it on my website rulesofthegame.blog. 

Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Wietse Van Ransbeeck.

Interview:

Stephan Kyburz: Wietse Van Ransbeeck, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, thank you so much. I’m very excited to be here.

Stephan Kyburz: So my first question is,as always, what is your first memory of democracy?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: First of all I have to say that I really like that question. It’s kind of a new way for me to look at things and I had to give that a deep think. And if I’m honest I think my first encounter with democracy is not with democracy, it’s not with politics but it’s with the politicians. The local politicians who go… I don’t know whether you have that in Switzerland but who would go, like, to the annual village fair, in a way. Show up, listen to what people have to say, they buy them a beer…really the small politics in a very traditional non-digital way. And I don’t know whether there was a positive experience or a positive encounter but that’s at least when I think about when I was six, seven, eight years old, I’m thinking more the people, the politicians rather than the big democracy and the decisions that they were actually discussing.

Stephan Kyburz: My first memory or one of the first memories also of a local assembly. So the local politics really I think matters.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, at least you were thinking about the assembly and what they were actually discussing. I was thinking more about probably the beers that they were buying for the neighbors to get their vote.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, so it’s more mixed feelings in your case.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Kyburz: You have founded and you are the CEO of Citizen’s Lab which is a company, an organization that helps local governments to implement, to let citizens participate in the political process. But first of all I’d like to know what was your motivation to found that company and also to… You know, maybe it was related to that first memory?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Well, yeah, that’s what I kind of discovered just by you sending me the script that maybe I had a trauma there that brought me to founding Citizen Lab. No, yeah, my motivation was really also for people like me. I was a student in Brussels. When I was 18 I wanted… I had ideas for the city, I wanted to improve my neighborhood. And then I started actually looking at age eighteen for those different options, and by the way that’s now about seven years ago. So… I need to correct myself. I was age 20 and I started looking for the different options for me to engage with my government, with the city. And all I could find online was literally a pdf, a form that I could download, that I could fill out. Where I could share and write out my idea and then it was expected to send it per mail to council. Back then, I mean, of course seven years ago we were using social media and you’re constantly connected and you have such a kind of means available on the internet to communicate with fellow citizens but not to talk about politics. Of course you have all those ecochamers, social networks, Twitter and Facebook. But I was… I thought okay government, the way and the tools that they are using to engage with their residents is just so outdated. I can send this now, my idea per mail. Or I could go on a Tuesday night, I could go to town hall meeting and probably get 30 seconds maybe, to just say something really really briefly. But there are no means for me to, in an easy, accessible way to make my opinions heard, to feel represented, to share my ideas and to actually be part of building the city together. Because at the end of the day, the residents, the citizens, they are the eyes of the city. They experience the city, they experience the neighborhoods. They have lots of ideas on how to actually improve our neighborhoods and how to make our cities more livable. And that’s how it originally came to be, for my own experience in Brussels. But also a bit more broadley… Actually as I was talking, I was born in a small village in Belgium where there are still, kind of the small local politics dynamics if you get what I mean. But going to the city was eye opening in terms of having to think and having my own space and having to think about, okay, how do we all live together. And just the whole diversity of the populations and just getting more invested and more civically engaged. And I was really disappointed by the means at hand. But also from a larger perspective, just the idea that a democracy would consist of every 4, 5, 6 years going to the ballot box and submitting your votes is kind of… I felt it was kind of disappointing. What about those 4, 5, 6 years in between? How do I make my voice heard? And I don’t want to get into politics and go to those annual affairs. I want to participate in public life. I want to discuss with fellow citizens. I want to share my opinions and we didn’t or I didn’t really find an appropriate forum or platform to do so. And that’s how Citizen Lab came to be. So Citizen Lab, to expand, but you… I thInk you presented, already pretty well. Citizen Lab is a digital platform that enables governments to enter into a dialogue with residents and residents with one another and actually engage on all the topics that they care about. Local topics, so we work a lot with local governments. We work today with about 400 local governments worldwide. Mainly in Europe and in the US. And there’s both a top-down and bottom-up participation dynamic. On the one hand as a resident you can participate in the projects that your government is currently working on, the policies that they are currently building. But on the other hand, you can also more from the bottom up come with your proposals and bring something to the agenda of your council.

Stephan: Kyburz: You kind of had the options of becoming a politician or starting something new and you decided to start something new. So you thought about going into politics but you felt like that’s not really what you want to do. Is that right?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Right. I was always interested in politics but I thought okay, being able to take part in politics should be easier as a participant. You should be able to participate in politics for the small “p” and not only like in the political theater with the capital “P”. There should be other options than becoming a politician. There should be easier ways for a resident to feel represented and to be heard rather than only being the representative. That was the initial thought, where I came from. So that’s why I embarked into this whole mission of: how can we lower the barrier for people to become part of politics and public life. To feel engaged, to feel that their opinions matter, that they are heard and to actually at the end of the day, to impact the policies that are being shaped. Not just every six years at a discrete moment but on a more continuous basis. How do we create a more continuous participatory democracy? That’s kind of the mission that I thought was more interesting than getting into politics under representative democracy.

Stephan Kyburz: And how did you look at the democratic institutions in your village or in your town, in Brussels. Did you feel the people were represented well and it was more a problem of participation for the citizens? Or do you think that the political institutions were not really working very well at all?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: I felt that a lot of people were, are still today, apatic and are not… are indifferent, are… For such important decisions that impact your life. And there’s things about shaping your neighborhood and how lovely and healthy a city is. Those are really important decisions that really impact your lives. People should be involved in the decision making process. And then I found it striking that actually today, a lot of people, they do want to participate but they don’t feel represented. So in other words like the root problem that we have there is a lack of trust that can turn into apathy and indifference. So that was a key problem. But 7 years ago when I started reaching out to governments and to citizens to actually talk about this problem and see whether we could provide or develop a solution to help them actually, they also strongly recognized that. They said yes we are hosting, indeed those weekly or monthly council meetings, the town hall meetings. And typically we see the same 10 or 15 people showing up. Typically it’s also the same persona, older people who have the time. And those people, they have loud voices but they really skew the public opinion and for policymakers the whole cost of that is that they get a very skewed and biased image of what the public opinion is. And they misjudge, often the public opinion because there’s a whole silent majority that goes unheard. their opinion is not heard and that whole misrepresentation is quite a big problem. So that’s when I get… Yeah I started thinking… Okay, how can we actually engage younger people? How can we engage young families? People who are not representing politics today in an easier way and then I thought technology can actually offer a solution to lower the barrier for people to participate anytime and anywhere. So they don’t have to go to that town hall meeting. That was kind of the initial idea. And to also come back to your question, Stephan, of like what was that motivation? I just want to quote Hannah Arendt, it’s one of my favorite quote, who said: “Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians” and I think it captures really pretty well how I felt back then. Like, okay this is way too important to only leave that to our representatives and to the politicians. We should be able to enter into a dialogue.

Stephan Kyburz: I think it’s interesting that there was actually a process, right? These town Hall meetings. They were an option for people to participate but they were not really… especially for young people I guess, not the way to go right? It probably would have even felt almost awkward to turn up as a young person in this town hall meeting.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Right, yeah.

Stephan Kyburz: So I imagine you thought about new solutions, technology to make it more open and more accessible. Did you then find a group of friends or a group of people who were interested in or saw the same problems? And then you started your organization?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: I think what’s interesting is, 7 years ago we really had to convince, still the governments and the politicians and the policymakers of why to do citizen participation. These days we never talk about it anymore. It’s a good thing. We don’t have to talk about: What is the value of citizen participation? We’re beyond that and now we can talk about: How do you do it? How do you do it in the most effective way? How do you institutionalize it? How do you make it part of how you make decisions? So back then it took a lot of like, evangelization and storytelling. We were actually 3 co-founders. So I found 2 other co-founders who really were convinced of these problems. Had the same problem experience, had the same problem themselves in their personal lives. And that’s how we got started. And then yeah, a lot of… It was almost that citizen participation back then had a political color. You know, like for some of them, it’s almost a choice whether you want to do it or not. So I’m really glad that we’re beyond that stage and that we can now talk about: okay, how do we do it most effectively? And how do we get from this? Because it’s still like, early stage. Especially online citizen participation. I think, if you would ask governments. Today, probably I would imagine, of European cities, maybe, 70, 80% would say they’ve done this before but if you would ask them how successful do you think you? Then I think the answer rate is rather going to be around 20%. So there’s still a lot of work to do on like, how to do this effectively? And how to really… Also for the citizens… Make this a more… Something that really matters to them and not make this something in the margins. I don’t know whether you have already participated on an online platform? But I think there’s still a lot of work to do on making this more mainstream and making this really a public space, a public forum where you’ll already have, like, that automatic Impulse or reaction. Okay I will go there to actually make myself heard. I don’t think that’s really mainstream yet, today.

Stephan Kyburz: Not yet. I think it’s up and coming. And I think for me, one question is like, how to combine it with existing institutions? And whether… There is still the element of political power, right? So you know politicians have their own interests. There is local interests that maybe capture the local politics, etc, etc. I’m always so curious to hear how do you deal with the existing institutions? And are you sometimes kind of rejected in a way? Or are local politicians welcoming you? How do you deal with political power?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Our goal is to make the representative democracy more representative, rather than replace it. It’s not our mission and it’s also not my vision to say: Okay, policymakers that don’t play a role in this new democratic system… I do think they play a very important role. To have professionals, to have people who represent us and they go out, inform themselves to make the right decisions, who set the long-term political vision and leadership, who built consistent decisions, again, like think about are those things long-term rather than just making it up to the people to vote yes or no. So it’s more about: how do we make sure that we feel better represented? And how do we make sure that our representatives see diversity of opinions they have there, within a society rather than just simply going for majority opinions. How do we make our democratic system more inclusive, more participatory and more responsive? That’s really where we come from and the message that we also share with governments when we start working with them. It’s important to show like, okay, what’s also in it for you to do more citizen participation. So in short, no, we’re not coming in to replace and we’re helping them to actually better inform their decisions and to better understand the needs and wishes of the population. An interesting report came out about a month ago, in Belgium of the University Of Antwerp in collaboration with Oxford University and they pulled, with policymakers they actually asked them: Okay, what do you think is the public opinion on this matter or that matter or that matter and then they actually asked also, the citizens, they asked the public and what came out is that there was quite a strong mismatch. They always taught the politicians that the public opinion was leaning more to the right than how they had or they judged that that it was leading more to the right than how it actually was. So there was quite a misjudgment and for me at least, on a local level, going back to my youth trauma with the politicians, it’s also about giving them the tools to get a better hold of what is the public opinion and what are people saying beyond hearing from your neighbor what they have to say.

Stephan Kyburz: Can you say something about the formats you offer? You know what are the tools you actually offer? And how do they work?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Our platform is a toolbox of different participation methods. We follow the concept that is called the Letter of Participation or another way to look at it is a participation spectrum, which follows the degree of influence that you want to give in a certain decision. So it starts from, at the bottom of the letter, you would just inform residents about the projects that you’re currently working on as a government. Then you have more classic consultations, traditional consultation which is a survey or a poll. More open formats are open dialogues where you capture ideas where you collect bins on a map for spatial projects. Where you get feedback on a couple of different options that you might have developed in different scenarios. And then, highest up on that letter you have newer methods, newer concepts such as participatory budgeting that is very often used by local governments, where they allocate a fund of often like hundreds of thousands of euros or millions of euros to develop into neighborhood projects and to make people vote on these. So then they give the voting power to the residents. But also more from the bottom up citizen proposals. That a citizen can come up with a proposal and get her a minimum number of support signatures or votes and then actually the council commits to getting it on the political agenda. So those are a couple of the different tools that we have in place. But yeah, the focus is really on open dialogue, giving us the opportunity for residents to communicate with one another, to deliberate, to exchange opinions and arguments rather than being too close-ended. Because that’s also where we’re at right now. Governments, they are often going back to a survey because it’s a safe way of doing things but it’s not the most transparent way of participation. Because you fill out a long survey but you don’t really know what’s going to happen with that input. And that’s really a critical dimension of successful participation. Is creating the transparency so that residents know once I give my input I know what’s going to happen with that input or how it’s going to contribute to the final decision making process.

Stephan Kyburz: And are you usually reaching out to governments and promoting your tools or do you also get approached by government? I guess you’re quite well known by now, right?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, especially during covid we saw a very rapid digitalization of government. And it was quite interesting to see that governments were suddenly scratching their heads and saying: damn, how are we going to replace those good old town hall meetings? Because they needed those town hall meetings for approval and for the, for the…

Stephan Kyburz: Legitimacy.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Exactly, to have the legitimacy. So how can we guarantee that democratic continuity? And then it was quite impressive to see how only in a couple of weeks and months governments went digital and suddenly started adopting those tools. So I think it was certainly quite an earthquake, the covid situation. But there were also some very positive by effects that the digitalization and the adoption of digital tools has really spiked in just a couple of weeks. That made that a lot of governments came to us directly but also still today, it’s mix of us following their work and reaching out when we think it’s relevant and them coming to us when they think it’s the right time for them to start digital participation.

Stephan Kyburz: Do you feel differences from where you work in Belgium or somewhere in Europe, in the US or or now even in Chile? Do you feel the local institutions matter for how well you can implement your tools?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, totally. It’s an interesting question because there are differences in terms of, like, how government is organized. But also differences when it comes to the public opinion and attitudes from the citizens and how they look at government. Especially between the US and Europe. So first focus on the first part, the different institutions. Working in Europe, it’s interesting to see how the more up north you go the more you work with the administration of the government and you work on their projects and it gets, in a way, less political because there is more of The New Public Management Theory. There’s a focus on efficiency. You work with a lot of contractors. The good thing about it is that there is a lot of continuity. So a lot of projects, they are being managed and run by the administration. So typically in the Netherlands or in Denmark, Scandinavia, you will always work with the administrations whereas if you go more to the south of Europe it becomes often more political. For instance, France, we more easily work, actually, with the representatives and elected officials directly. So that is one thing that we noticed as we started working in different European countries. That people that we work with, they differ. But then with regards to the public attitudes…I was earlier this year, I was for six months in the United States because we started also working or doing more and more work in the United States as well. And what’s interesting is, sometimes in Europe we take it almost for granted that citizens have a relatively high level of trust in government and they see government as an institution that wants to bring a positive change. That initial attitude changed a lot already when it comes to citizen participation. Because that is the first barrier for governments in the US that they need to overcome. They need to make sure that their residents that they trust them, that they want to enter into a dialogue. But also secondly there’s way more of a polarization, way more of a bifurcation of society. It’s way more difficult to have healthy debates. And so quite a focus is also on that. On how do we bring people together and have a constructive conversation here? And then lastly one point I want to add is when it comes to what the United States does particularly well compared to Europe is their focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. At least in the main… or the cities that we work with. I’m not going to generalize this but we see that there is a very big focus on making sure that all groups of the population are represented. They’re thinking about putting different ways in place to reach out to residents to make that inclusive. Think about for instance, texting that is still being used quite often in the US that we don’t really use in Europe anymore. But as a way to reach groups, they wouldn’t reach otherwise.

Stephan Kyburz: So when you say represented you mean in these processes at the administrative level in a way? Or… because I also know in some US cities there are institutions, the local councils or the local parliaments are actually quite small. But obviously, I mean, I have just some specific examples in mind. But I think it also matters how big a parliament, a local parliament is. Or a local council. Or how are those governments organized.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Typically you will see that people have more trust on the local level than the higher up you go, the more there’s a distance. And at the less they can also relate to the policies being shaped, whereas if it’s… And that’s also why we focus on local governments. Because in your neighborhood and your city and your municipality, political colors, in a way ideology matters less. It’s about how can we create this? A good place for us all and it’s way more actionable. It’s way more tangible. And it’s way easier to connect people around those very actionable items instead of like those way bigger and larger policy items such as migration or climate or the economy, which are way more abstract. I mean I’m not going to say that climate is abstract these days but you get what I mean. Those are like bigger themes that will take much more time to shape those policies as opposed to like a playground in your neighborhood can be there next month so to speak.

Stephan Kyburz: Do you feel that you face obstacles in countries that are very strongly centralized? You know where a lot of political power is at the national level, not at the local level.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: That’s the case in the UK actually. Where there’s a very strong centralization. But also in… I was earlier referring to like this New Public Management Theory. They often see in government, in the public sector and for instance,let’s take the Netherlands as an example. They have a lot of… and actually in a lot of European countries at the moment there are mergers going on in different municipalities to get to a bigger scale. But for people it’s difficult to relate to their new government, their new local government. Often they get a new name. Because they care about what happens in their neighborhood. They care about what happens around them. And then suddenly they become part of a government that they don’t feel any connection to and that makes it more difficult for that government to reach out to their residents and to get involvement from their residents. That’s for sure something we’re seeing.

Stephan Kyburz: So local political power really matters.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Kyburz: In terms of the digital tools, do you feel like people easily adapt to those tools? I mean, I guess the young people are very easy to include in those processes but maybe older people are a bit harder to convince?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Right. And that’s why it’s so important to make those tools accessible. To test them also with… Something that we’re doing, often, is we’re also going to test some of the new functionalities and some of those tools with different groups of people. Whether it’s about age or any possible disabilities. We need to make sure that it’s inclusive for all because that’s one of the promises and the goals and the mission that we’re going after. How can we include more people? But more people also means how do we build it in an inclusive way. For sure there are still some challenges. I think on the web it’s very textual today, the participation. So we’re also thinking about how can we also get other ways, maybe in a more verbal way for people to communicate more easily. Or in a more visual way. It takes a lot of testing, a lot of conversations. But it’s I think most important in the first place to really put it as mission to make it accessible and to make it inclusive. But it’s of course not enough.

Stephan Kyburz: One more question I have about your organization. So you’re a company right? So you’re not like an NGO. What was the thinking about founding a company instead of an NGO? Was that like an argument of effectiveness? Or what was the thought process?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, the thought process there was both my cofounder and I, we also studied – I mean this shouldn’t be a direct link but we studied management or business engineering. Always interested in entrepreneurship and the belief that true innovations, the belief true of like okay, I want to develop a new product. I’m going to see if there is any interest and if so would they want to pay for that. Like that starting from a private company you can bring innovation also to a public sector without having any dependency on others. Without having dependency on grants or subsidies. That was I think the initial kind of approach that we took which I think is still the right one because for me, it’s a firm belief that there can be such a thing as social for profit. You can both have a social mission and at the same time be a for profit company. We always say profit serves purpose. We make money as an instrument for us to get closer to our mission and to achieve our purpose. To get to a bigger scale. So that’s been the thinking mainly.

Stephan Kyburz: So it’s kind of sustaining your own processes right? And growing with your organization right?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Exactly without any dependencies. Because also those subsidies or grants that you might depend on, they will often depend on like a certain policy that is in place or certain funders. We are totally autonomous and that’s something that I really think for us was the right choice and helped us build our success today.

Stephan Kyburz: So from my Swiss perspective, obviously I also have to bring in the direct democracy perspective. So how do you think about actually making local participatory democracy part of the official institutions? How do you think about linking your work with direct democracy?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: When I think about direct democracy, I think about a group of people making binding decisions, right? Like where you often express through a referendum. I don’t think that participatory democracy has its biggest promise there for also the reasons that we discussed earlier on political leadership and the role their representatives still play. There is the opinion of the people… Actually I would like to refer to a book that I really liked from David Van Reybrouck who’s a Belgian writer, Belgian author. He wrote the book against elections. And in that book he talks about two concepts, very simple concepts. On the one hand there you have the technocracy that you have the expertise of the administration and the expertise of government. On the other hand you have populism, you have legitimacy, you have the people expressing their will and that actually affecting directly decisions being made. And in participatory democracy you want to combine the best of both worlds. People need to feel represented, policies need to be legitimate but on the other hand you want also experts in the game who can deep dive into certain topics, who can come up and build certain solutions, who manage our budgets and so on. So an ideal democracy for me combines both. And that’s why again, like I think representative democracy is a system that works at least if it’s really representative. So that’s why the focus is for us on like how do we get more people involved to make it more representative? Rather than trying to replace the representatives. And also I think about the role that technology could play. In my vision on like how should digital democracy look like? I think a direct online democracy would also lead to a whole individualization of political participation whereas our goal is actually to bring people together. To have them discuss, to have them deliberate and only then start voting. So the concept is often called like a deliberative poll where at least the conversation and the dialogue is happening. Is at least as important as the voting because it’s true to dialogue that I will start empathizing with your perspective. I will start understanding your perspective and that might have transformative effects on my attitudes. And that is also the strength of a democracy. That we go into dialogues. That we listen to each other. And that’s something that at least in their democracy models that I’ve seen is often not in place. Where with a Referendum you would reduce a complex issue to just 2 choices and that doesn’t capture that whole complexity of like the diversity of opinions and constructive debate that you could have in a more participatory democracy. So that is a long answer to your question on like, what is your vision on like direct versus more representative democracy.

Stephan Kyburz: I totally agree in the sense that, I think we need both, actually. Because on the one side representative democracy can solve a lot of the more tricky political processes like writing legislation. And there is a lot of know-how, there is a lot of processes involved that I think are necessary in a political system. But on the other side direct democracy allows for the people to have a check on government, and to bring in their preferences. And especially new technologies, obviously,I think they are quite promising in bringing in those preferences of the citizens. Bringing in also you know the bottom up… I think the bottom up democracy is important, that people who have great ideas or who want to change something that they can come up and bring in those ideas, so that they are deliberated and finally also decided on.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: But when you refer to direct democracy, what would you say is a direct democracy as opposed to a representative democracy? Because I think there’s also different shades of like how direct it is, if you see what I mean. Because I totally agree on what you shared, like a bottom-up democracy where people can put their ideas and proposals on the agenda but it’s still going to be the agenda of the representatives who will discuss it. Which is… You could argue it is a bit of direct democracy but I don’t see it as: okay, it’s not the citizens who directly decide on the policies and on the decisions being made. It’s more suggesting. They’re not binding.

Stephan Kyburz: In the Swiss case, obviously the decisions by the people are binding, right? So you have like, for example, Representative Democracy working on a law. They pass a law. And then you have a possible referendum. So people collect signatures and if enough signatures are collected then there will be a referendum. So the people decide on that law. Whether they accept it or not. And obviously the law can be quite substantive, can include a lot of regulations. But if the people as a whole decide that this law is not in their interest then they can reject it. Or on the other side. Also I mean the initiative process where people bring up, you know, possible changes to the constitution, for example. And then people vote on that as well.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Just out of interest, would in that case, in the Swiss democracy, how’s the adoption of digital tools for that today? And also where is the debate taking place before the vote? Obviously I guess in the media but are there gatherings or are there online forums or platforms where people can exchange opinions?

Stephan Kyburz: It’s a very good question actually. So the debates, because people have to make a decision right? They are more likely to debate with friends, with family, with people they know. Obviously that might kind of reinforce their opinions or whatever. But I think that is, the deliberation happens throughout society. And obviously the media play a role so you have newspapers that are more right-wing newspapers that are more left-wing and they bring their opinions. You have academics, assessing certain proposals, etc, etc. So it’s really a societal process. But it’s true that obviously there can always be more deliberation and that’s where also I see a possibility for example for Citizens Assembly’s or other gatherings of people where things are discussed. For example in TV, there are like Tv shows that bring up those questions and then you have politicians and people from society or academics. Different people discussing those issues. That’s how it works.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: And also in the digital way then are like the voting and some discussions happening online?

Stephan Kyburz: So there were some trials to use digital tools, to both to gather signatures, so the bottom up process of gathering signatures. But also trials to actually have the actual voting process in a digital mode. And so far the trials haven’t been like, all convincing. Because I think the trust plays an important part. And people actually now vote by mail right? So they can just send in their signed ballot paper. So that’s already quite easy. But obviously I think there is still to come new modes of possibly like digital votes, etc. But that would also change, kind of the game, of how easy it is to vote, etc.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Oh fascinating.

Stephan Kyburz: So there’s a lot in the making but I think it takes a lot of time to build up trust. For the people to really believe in the process.That’s super important.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: I would be curious to see from those experiments how digital could affect the turnout rate for people to actually get more people… I don’t know to what extent in Switzerland that’s an issue today. But to get more people interested in participating in those popular votes.That would be interesting to see.

Stephan Kyburz: I don’t have the numbers in mind. I think they actually looked at that question. Turnout is usually between like 40 and 60 on popular votes at the national level. Which is, you could say okay, that’s not very high. But still if there is an important issue coming up then usually this higher and anybody who really wants to vote, can vote. So I think that’s also important to have in mind. Besides this book you mentioned, are there any other books you would recommend? Related to your work or or anything else?

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: We were talking earlier about or we briefly touched on assemblies. We haven’t really talked about it but a book I really liked, that came out about two years ago I believe, it’s called “Open Democracy” by Hélène Landemore, who’s a professor at Yale. And I like it because in there she develops a concept or a theory of open mini publics and it’s a combination of how you could have on the one hand the large scale transparent involvement of the public through online platforms like ours but on the other hand how you can also work with a smaller group of residents in a more deliberative mode to really deepen their understanding of certain topics and to work more as a traditional assembly. Because I think it’s an interesting question really. Like how do we combine the best of a participatory democracy, of getting very broad and wide people involvement so that they feel represented. But on the other hand, how do we get the depth of a citizen assembly, where especially for more complex issues, that is often needed. So she actually draws a picture of how that could look like.

Stephan Kyburz: I’ll definitely include that in the show notes. And it’s an important question, how we can include more deliberation. Also maybe informing direct democratic decisions and I try to cover actually those topics on my podcast. So direct democracy. I also had one episode on deliberative democracy with Ian O’Flynn, which I thought was very interesting.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Oh awesome. It’s a big question. I think also for online platforms in general like the whole… What is the role that online and digital can play in Deliberative Democracy is I think a huge question that we haven’t cracked yet. Because of course in-person gatherings, they bring certain promises of just being able to empathize with the person in front of you. They’re going to think… Covid was an interesting period because suddenly we all went online. We had lots of video calls. So everything was kind of happening in the digital sphere. I do feel we’re going back to: All right. How do we…? You know like the assemblies are taking place in person again. But then the question is how do you make those assemblies open and transparent enough and how do you have interactions with the larger public so that more people actually feel represented than just people who are on the assembly. So lots of lots of interesting questions for us to explore and I think we’re not there yet but we’re learning more and more as we start implementing new experiments.

Stephan Kyburz: Exactly. Okay, so Wietse, thanks a lot for being a guest on the Rules of the Game podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation and I wish you all the best with your work and for including more citizens in the political process.

Wietse Van Ransbeeck: Yeah, thank you so much Stephan. I had a great time chatting. And thank you so much, have a great day.

Stephan Kyburz: Thank you.