On 11 May 2026, researchers and practitioners met at the University of Bucharest for the Bucharest Workshop on Digital Democracy and Inclusivity, organized by the PERYCLES consortium. The workshop examined how digital democracy can expand democratic participation while also creating new challenges for inclusion. Its program covered liquid democracy, online citizens’ assemblies, digital deliberation, artificial intelligence, digital inclusion, and democratic legitimacy.
In the opening panel, Anna Mikhaylovskaya of the University of Groningen and Andreas Nitsche of the Association for Interactive Democracy presented “Liquid Democracy and the Challenge of Inclusiveness.” The contribution was prepared together with Élise Rouméas of the University of Groningen.
The presentation addressed a fundamental question for liquid democracy: how can flexible forms of representation enable broad and meaningful participation without reproducing or reinforcing inequalities in political influence? Inclusiveness is particularly important for systems that allow participants to choose dynamically between direct participation and the delegation of their vote.
The workshop placed this question within a broader discussion of digital democracy. Other contributions examined what citizens and governments expect from digital participation platforms, public support for online citizens’ assemblies, inequality in gamified deliberation, methods for measuring digital inclusion, bottom-up democratic innovations, and the relationship between inclusion and democratic legitimacy.
The event concluded with a roundtable on “Digital Democracy Tools: Opportunities and Challenges.” Andreas Nitsche joined Andreea-Iuliana Leonte of the Bucharest General Council, Olivia Vereha of Code4Romania, and Ovidiu Voicu of the Center for Public Innovation. The discussion was opened by Victor Negrescu, Vice-President of the European Parliament.
Bringing these perspectives together was an important feature of the workshop. Questions of digital democracy cannot be addressed solely through the design of democratic mechanisms or through technology in isolation. They also require attention to who can participate, how political influence is distributed, and how digital participation works under real institutional and social conditions.
The workshop was part of PERYCLES – Participatory Democracy that Scales, a Horizon Europe research project investigating how digital democracy can support meaningful democratic participation at scale.
This event was supported by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Perycles project (Participatory Democracy that Scales).
