Technopolitics: Public Digital Infrastructure for Democracy with Decidim

This session explores the intersections of technology and politics. Focusing on democractic participation we will be examining how digital infrastructures can foster democratic engagement and governance. We will focus on technopolitics. Technopolitics is a perspective on the interaction between humans and various forms of power that foregrounds the role of technical objects, systems, and logics in mediating this relation. Public Digital Infrastructe is key in empowering citizens, fostering transparency, and resisting centralized control through open-source tools.

We are focusing on Decidim, a leading open-source platform for participatory democracy, and its role in different open government approaches. Through concrete case studies from Spain, NYC, and Brazil, we will examine how governments and civil society have used open public digital infrastructure to build citizen participation, foster trust, and enable collective decision-making.

Beyond government-led initiatives, we will also explore how all sorts of communities, from Amazonia Indigenous Groups to Open-Source Devellopers use Decidim to democratically organize themselves and collectively decide. These cases illustrate how digital infrastructures can empower self-governance, transparency and trust.

We will explore key questions around decentralization, examining how Decidim interacts with the DAOs and Fediverse ecosystems. We will also delve into why good governance is a critical challenge in decentralized systems, shaping their sustainability, inclusivity, and long-term viability.

Finally, the session will invite participants to reflect on the challenges and opportunities in building democratic digital infrastructures. How can we contribute to strengthening these ecosystems? What are the next steps in shaping the future of digital democracy at our level? Through discussion and shared experiences, we will explore practical ways to support, sustain, and expand participatory governance in an increasingly digital world.