Abstract

The German Bundestag was one of the early pioneers in the use of the internet for citizen participation in political decision-making. For more than ten years, committees and commissions have been testing different formats of online citizen participation, ranging from interactive communication in online forums and social media to consultations and collaboration on documents to electronic petitions. The starting point of the TAB report is the work of the Enquete Commission "Internet and Digital Society" of the 17th German Bundestag, which tested new formats of online citizen participation in parliamentary work as a "field of experimentation", such as live streams of sessions, a Twitter account and the participation platform enquetebeteiligung.de, which was set up according to the principle of "liquid democracy". Against the background of the academic discussion on online citizen participation, the report also analyses the offerings of the 18th legislative period of the Bundestag. The TAB report presents principles for the implementation of online participation offerings at the Bundestag and discusses options for a cautious, gradual further development of these offerings, which include both experiments and the further development of established procedures.

Authors

Oertel, Britta; Kahlisch, Carolin; Albrecht, Steffen