All other activities in which the predecessor organisations and the Swiss Democracy Foundation have been significantly involved in the past can be found here.
Projects
The Swiss Democracy Foundation is engaged in democracy worldwide with a special emphasis on citizen-oriented, participatory and direct-democratic developments.
Global forum
The «Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy» is the biggest Conference on direct and participative democracy worldwide. How citizens on all political levels can shape politics and which possibilities for global connectedness exist are the central issues discussed at the regularly held international meetings.
direct democracy navigator
The Direct Democracy Navigator is an international research project about the procedures and practices of modern direct democracy globally. It is the biggest online dataset on direct democracy worldwide and currently documents around 2'000 instruments of direct democracy on the national, regional, and local level in over 100 countries. The two founding organizations, the Swiss Democracy Foundation and Democracy International e.V., are joined by the Lichtenstein Institut. The aim of this new collaboration is to further develop the Direct Democracy Navigator to meet the challenges of the 2020s. The four pillars of the Direct Democracy Navigator are its data sets, research, communication, and networking.
publications
The Swiss Democracy Foundation and its predecessor organisations, such as the Initiative Referendum Institute Europe (IRI-Europe), have made significant contributions to numerous publications. An overview of our most important publications in collaboration with our partner organisations can be found here.
Study and information trips
In order to provide a better understanding of how modern participatory and direct democracies work, the Swiss Democracy Foundation organizes study and information trips to places around the world where modern participatory and direct democracy is practiced.