Forum: Re-Designing democracy: Spaces, Infrastructures, Institutions + BIFD André Bächtiger + BIFD Maija Setälä
Re-Designing democracy: Spaces, Infrastructures, Institutions
More Details TBD soon. This event may be subject to modifications in schedule and content.
Designing Democracy on Mars and Earth
by André Bächtiger
Prevailing efforts to redesign our troubled governance institutions either focus on radical reform proposals or take a pragmatic, modest approach to institutional reform. I propose a novel utopian approach for current disruptive times, based on citizens´ collective imaginaries. I argue that “Mars” provides an intriguing “metaphor” for imaginative thinking about future governance. I show that a “blank-slate” Mars scenario where participants could reinvent governance from scratch induces citizens around the globe to choose novel, “hybrid” governance systems involving a co-equal mix of legacy (representative) institutions and institutional innovations. Such imaginations can make us rethink our institutional preferences on “Earth”, whereby blending utopian and pragmatic design thinking can strike new balances between the “imaginative” and the “feasible”.
Bio
André Bächtiger is Professor of Political Theory and Empirical Democracy Research at the University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on the challenges of mapping and measuring deliberation, the role of deliberative innovations in democratic systems and the design of future democracy. His ongoing ERC Advanced Grant “DDME – Designing Democracy on Mars and Earth” focuses on how to design future democracy by taking a citizen-centered perspective. His research has been published by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press as well as appeared in journals such as Science, American Political Science Review or British Journal of Political Science.
Democratic myopia revisited: New causes and remedies for a blurry vision?
by Maija Setälä
The democratic myopia argument states that representative democratic institutions give rise to short-termism in policymaking. As a result, representative systems often fail to make policy decisions that are beneficial in the long term. While the democratic myopia thesis is still relevant, I argue that some recent developments further undermine democracies’ capacity to think and act for the future. At the moment, short-termism is aggravated by the deterioration of the public sphere, heightening geopolitical competition, and increasing uncertainties about not just the distant, but also the near future especially when it comes to impacts of AI. While many of these developments seem to be beyond the control of democratic governments, I suggest some pathways of developing the capacity of democratic systems to make decisions and to commit to policies that help address long-term problems.
Bio
Maija Setälä gained her PhD at the LSE in 1997. She is currently a Professor in Political Science at the University of Turku, Finland. Setälä is a political theorist who also likes to conduct empirical and experimental research. She specialises in democratic theory, political trust, direct democracy, and democratic innovations. She has published widely on these topics, for example, in European Journal of Political Research, Political Behaviour, and Policy Studies. Setälä has led several large and multidisciplinary research projects. Currently, she leads Research Group for Innovating Democracy (RIDE) at the University of Turku and is one of the four co-PIs in the ERC Synergy Project Advancing Digital Democratic Innovation ADDI (2025-2031).