The world’s future depends on its youth. Yet over the past several decades, the election process has suffered from a continual decrease in participation levels, particularly among young people. Democracy of the 21st Century refers almost exclusively to the right of citizens to take part in the official political process. Structured Democratic Dialogue Co-Laboratories in 2012, with young people based in Cyprus and Greece, and representatives of European youth organizations, as well as a series of Structured Democratic Dialogue Co-Laboratories with young people from 10 European countries in 2008 identified (1) Corruption and Lack of Transparency; (2)The Political System is ‘outdated’, and not evolving while everything else is, especially with regards to technology and ICT; and (3) Lack of a humanistic vision and of a feeling of purpose among the youth, in connection with the lack of confidence that they can achieve a change, as the root obstacles. The 160 young participants engaged in these 5-day long Co-Laboratories produced over 400 ideas and invested over 3,000 person hours to explore the relations between these ideas with the aim of collectively identifying the key underlying problems. The current venture, “Reinventing democracy in the digital era,” funded by the UN Democracy Fund, aspires to engage more than a thousand young people and about 100 media-, policy- and science experts from across the world in face-to-face week-long, as well as hybrid and virtual Co-Laboratories with the aim to invent a new system of democratic governance that will satisfy the aspirations of all people and will abide to the requirements imposed by the Anthropocene. The methodological approach is grounded in the science of dialogic design, the principles of third-phase science, and network theory. The dialogues are taking place in Europe, Africa, The Americas, Asia-Australia and the MENA region. The participants will be producing two collectively authored eBooks, one “50 Reasons why youth do not participate in political life” and the second “50 Descriptors of an ideal future system of governance,” as well as a “Manifesto for 21st Century Democracy: Requirements of new system of democracy.” The extensive exploitation of social media technologies will lead to the production of hundreds of 1-min video clips that will serve towards engaging a few thousand people in evaluating and selecting ideas using modern social media and Apps. This is envisioned as the launching of a global mobilization process, which will engage thousands of people in critical and reflecting thinking by sharing and discussing the video clips. The results of the voting process will be disseminated to the media, organizations and decision makers through various communication channels and are expected to make an impact in the global political agenda. The project directors aspire to engage ISSS scientists as mentors for young participants, as researchers and as advisors to the project.
