The Democratic Odyssey is a crowdsourced, decentralized and collaborative campaign developing a concept and strategy to institutionalise a permanent peoples’ assembly and participatory eco-system in the European Union.
By building on lessons learned from the Conference on the Future of Europe (COFE) and other deliberative experiments, we are organizing a randomly selected transnational peoples’ assembly as a prototype for a permanent Peoples’ Assembly for Europe; showcasing how citizen participation can be enacted in all stages of the EU’s policy processes, from agenda setting and legislative initiative to co-legislation and even constitutional Treaty Change. Our vision is holistic: to demonstrate how to combine the design of transnational assemblies with pre-existing instruments of citizen participation (such as European Citizens’ Initiatives) and how concretely to embed citizen participation and deliberation in the multi-layered ecosystem of representative democracy in the EU.
A consortium of partners led by the EUI’s STG Transnational Democracy Programme leads the crowd-sourced conceptual framework and overall strategy to institutionalise a permanent citizens’ assembly and participatory eco-system in the EU. The aim is to provide momentum to the eventual adoption of such an assembly as a formal part of the EU system of governance. The consortium does so by organising an actionable pilot 2024/2025, that will showcase how deliberation can be enacted in all stages of the EU’s policy processes, from agenda setting and legislative initiative to co-legislation.
The Democratic Odyssey is co-funded by the European Union, Berggruen Institute, ERSTE Stiftung and Salvia Foundation.
The Democratic Odyssey was conceived and launched as a long-term journey through the rugged landscape of democratic contemporary pathologies. As a decentralised, collaborative and transparent exercise of crowdsourcing and co-creation, it seeks to bring together as many contributors as possible in different capacities and with different roles in the form of a Constituent Network.
People
Principal investigator
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![Portrait picture of Kalypso Nicolaidis]()
Kalypso Nicolaidis
Full-time Professor
Florence School of Transnational Governance
Project management and operational team
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![Portrait picture of Andrea Gaiba]()
Andrea Gaiba
Project Associate
Florence School of Transnational Governance
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![Portrait picture of Ulrike Liebert]()
Ulrike Liebert
Part-time Professor
Florence School of Transnational Governance
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![Portrait picture of Hanorah Hardy]()
Hanorah Hardy
Project Associate
Florence School of Transnational Governance
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![Portrait picture of Irene Alonso Toucido]()
Irene Alonso Toucido
European Alternatives