Democracy Innovation by Community Assemblies and Journalistic Immunity!
July 7
It is with great satisfaction and pride that we today announce the publication of our two initial Policy Briefs: ‘Addressing Democratic Disenchantment Through Community Assemblies: A Complementary Approach to Representative Democracy’ and ‘Truthkeeping Through Protecting Journalism’. These publications mark the culmination of our efforts over the last two years; for the first time we now have fully completed the infrastructure for developing democracy promoting policy proposals that we call the IYTT Bottom-Up Policy Advise Loop. From the initial brainstorming sessions at our Youth Conferences in 2019 and 2020, the ideas of our Youth Fellows have been developed over months and years in dialogue with our affiliated scholars, with our own barometer the IYTT European Youth Panel, and with a local Citizens’ Panel.
Both policy briefs are presented today at 3.30-5pm in the public online event Almedalen Democracy Summit which include a distinguished set up of speakers with experts and world leaders, including Madeleine Albright, former U. S. Secretary of State. The policy briefs will also be presented and discussed thoroughly in our own lunch event series Lindholmen Democracy Talks, the Citizens’ Assemblies brief on September 3, and the Truthkeeping brief on October 6. Both policy briefs will also be presented at the Athens Democracy Forum September 29 – October 1.
We wish to extend the warmest thanks to our dedicated Youth Fellows that have graciously borne the full responsibility for the initiation, development, and completion of their innovative ideas on democracy. We also wish to thank our eminent IYTT Research Fellows Jonathan Geib and Joshua Habgood-Coote for their dedicated scholarly work in providing the necessary academic thrust to the policy briefs. Furthermore, we thank the participants in our European Youth Panel for their invaluable contributions to two barometers rounds in May and June. Finally, we give our very deepest thanks to the participants in the Citizens’ Panel which we organized in the evening of June 16 in Lövgärdet, Gothenburg. The participants’ both personal and highly insightful scrutiny of the ideas in the Policy Briefs drafts that we presented to them, have truly elevated the final Policy Briefs, and we cannot stress enough the importance of this final step in the policy advise loop.
