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2023 GLOBAL FORUM ON MODERN DIRECT DEMOCRACY
THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS
In spring 2023, the Global Forum returned to the western hemisphere for the first time since 2012: San Francisco hosted the event in 2010, while the world's largest democracy conference focussing on citizen participation took place in Montevideo/Uruguay in 2012.
Why Mexico? The state and the city are currently among the most interesting areas and places for democracy in the world. In recent years, the diverse society of Central America's largest and most populous country has been transformed into a fascinating laboratory for citizen participation.
Increasingly strong independent institutions and a self-confident, lively and free civil society play a central role in the development of democracy in Mexico, the Americas and worldwide. Both of these are present in Mexico today, but at the same time are constantly being called into question from within and without. This is one of the reasons why we decided, together with our local and international partner organisations, to hold the Global Forum in Mexico just over five months after the most recent edition in Lucerne/Switzerland.
The forum took us to the fascinating civic and cultural centres of the hemisphere's largest metropolis, Mexico City, and showed what the city-state's new and innovative constitution means for democracy around the world. We discussed the power of independent, people-centred independent institutions to protect and expand democracy in countries from Latin America to Ghana.
The 2023 Global Forum was prepared and organised in cooperation with the renowned Mexican electoral institute INE. Including a preceding two-day study trip (in the Mexico City area) and the concluding Democracy Cities Summit (in Merida), the forum lasted eight days, from 27 February to 7 March 2023.
The forum brought together 200 speakers and several hundred democracy experts from over 100 countries to address the question: What protection and support does democracy in its most direct form need in order to survive and thrive?