Democracy is certainly one of humanity's best inventions, but in order to function it is necessary that the people express themselves and participate in political choices. Even today civil society seems to be governed by a strong desire to participate more actively in political life.

The answer to this need is provided by participatory democracy.

By participatory democracy, today, we mean a large set of procedures, institutions, methodologies that provide for the involvement of citizens in the construction of a political decision.

Digital technology intervenes in this sector with very promising solutions that allow popular, direct and certified consultation.

These specialized technological infrastructures use blockchain or DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) protocols for the regular conduct of elections and referendums, both national and municipal, ensuring the simplification of the authentication procedures of the participants and allowing the validation of the certified remote voting (e- vote) very quickly.

Digitization of the Public Sector with blockchain and participatory democracy

The public administration has changed much of its actions thanks to the technological adaptation implemented in recent years.

This modernization of the structures facilitated above all the archiving and recovery of data and documents, which in turn allowed for greater cooperation between public offices, also ensuring greater transparency of administrative procedures.

Digitization, in fact, has made it possible to increase the services offered to citizens with a significant increase in the productivity of the public sector, reducing duplication of obligations and checks.

Among the emerging digital technologies, the blockchain has some qualities for which it is discussed its adoption and implementation in the Public Administration.

The blockchain, in fact, is an IT protocol distributed and shared among all the participants of the network that allows you to register and verify documents distributed among users participating in a selected network.

The information contained therein, in fact, is recorded within packets called precisely blocks connected to each other, like the links in a chain, by a consensus algorithm that binds the blocks together in an unchangeable way.

Therefore the information entered within a block can no longer be changed.

These qualities attribute to the blockchain the qualification of digital technological tool capable of creating reliability and above all trust (Trust) in its users, as it possesses the quality of potentially being an incorruptible register.

The qualities described above integrate all the requirements necessary for the functioning of the tools useful for participatory democracy.

In fact, the blockchain could be used, both nationally and locally, as a register for the collection of participants' signatures and as a voting platform.

Blockchain and electronic voting

Electronic blockchain voting (BEV) could change the approach to today's dominant policy and encourage the development of electoral consensus on a technological basis.

This new system of electoral participation could be implemented by creating a new blockchain platform dedicated and specially designed for consultation.

Or, alternatively, it could also proceed through the possibility of supporting the data to an already active and existing control chain, such as that of Bitcoins.

In this second case, the security of the blockchain ledger would be guaranteed by the amount of users that are already part of the control chain. This would make it possible to guarantee legitimacy and security even in elections involving a very small number of voters or whose resources are limited to develop a specific voting system.

Considering a more restricted context, the BEV could provide concrete help to the creation of a more participatory company while offering a relatively safe and cheap voting system.

Traditionally, elections are managed by the authorities and the electoral process is organized as a poorly transparent, centralized and top-down system.

A BEV electoral system, on the other hand, is managed by people and is transparent, decentralized and from below.

Participation in traditional elections strengthens the central authority, while participation in the distributed electronic system determines the primacy of people, just as desired by supporters of participatory democracy.

  So the real implementation of blockchain technology in the area of the electronic electoral system will depend above all on the values and principles that society and politics will be able to transmit and communicate to convince us that the time has come to be together responsible for our choices and our future.  

Participatory democracy in the Treaty on European Union

The value attributed to participatory democracy is highlighted already in the first article of the Lisbon Treaty (TEU).

In defining the legal and operational foundations of the Union, art. 1, 2nd paragraph, identifies the aims of the European project by emphasizing the need to involve citizens in political decisions through popular consultation: “..the process of creating an ever closer union between the peoples of Europe , in which decisions are made in the most transparent way possible and as close as possible to citizens ".

The rules that establish the functioning and exercise of participatory democracy are written in articles 10 and 11 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU).

Article 10 states that: "Every citizen has the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union". And also that: "Decisions are made as open and close to citizens as possible."

Article 11 recognizes the individual citizens and representative associations the right to exchange views with the European institutions on the sectors of action of the Union and discipline and requires that the dialogue between citizens and institutions be guided and governed by the rules of opening and transparency and that the Commission proceeds, before adopting a measure, with extensive consultations with interested parties; finally paragraph 4 indicates how citizens can directly affect the political life and choices of the Union through a collection of signatures for the proposal of legislative proposals on agriculture, environment, transport, energy or trade to be submitted to the evaluation of the European Commission and also called ICE "European citizens' initiative".

The procedures and conditions necessary for the presentation of a citizens' initiative are contained in art. 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

To simplify some procedures, the Commission itself, also thanks to the push from civil society, intervened directly offering solutions to make the ICE more accessible and effective. Therefore, in light of these difficulties, the Commission has offered extensive assistance with the electronic collection envisaged by the ICE. The Commission has made open source software available free of charge, which organizers can use with or without modification. Organizers can also use other software of their choice.

Furthermore, the Commission has made a host server available for the identification of supporters to install the software, which will solve the recurring problem for the organizers in terms of costs but above all in terms of coordination, delaying the start electronic collection.

With the adoption of EU regulation 2019/788, which repeals EU regulation no. 211/2011, from 1 January 2020 the new regulations to be followed to activate and support a bill of law to be submitted to the European Commission through the ICE instrument came into force.