Abstract

The German Bundestag was an early pioneer in the use of the internet to involve citizens in political decisions. For more than ten years, committees and commissions have been trialling various formats of online citizen participation, ranging from interactive communication in online forums and social media to consultations, collaboration on documents and 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 trialled new formats of online citizen participation in parliamentary work as an "experimental field", such as livestreams of meetings, a Twitter account and the participation platform enquetebeteiligung.de, which is based on the principle of "liquid democracy". Against the background of the academic debate 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 the careful, gradual further development of these offerings, which include both experiments and the further development of established procedures.

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