Democracy Innovators Podcast
democracyinnovators.com
Publishing Details
Contact & Outreach
About This Podcast
The Democracy Innovators Podcast is an independent publication launched in February 2025 by Alessandro Oppo and Carlo Michaelis.
Society is complex, and technology is evolving rapidly. Today, we use technology extensively in governance, and in the future, it will become even more pervasive in the political sphere. This podcast provides a space to discuss these changes, explore possibilities, and ultimately shape the future together.
Our mission is to share insider stories about civic tech by interviewing those working on new forms of participation. We aim to highlight and add value to the incredible projects created by civic hackers.
Podcasting 2.0 Features
Explore Statistics
Recent Episodes
Paolo Spada on participatory budgeting, citizen assemblies, and scaling democratic innovation
Paolo Spada is a political scientist at the University of Southampton working on participatory budgeting, citizen assemblies, and democratic innovation. In this episode, we talk about feedback loops,…
Antoine Vergne from Missions Publiques on scaling deliberative decision-making and random selection
Antoine Vergne is the co-director of Missions Publiques and the co-author of the ScaleDem Analytical Framework. His passion for innovating democratic processes is reflected in his academic background…
Paul Zeitz about permanent citizens' assemblies in the US and using technology to scale it
Paul Zeitz is an author and advocate for global justice and human rights, among other things. With over 35 years of experience and several publications he is addressing systemic challenges.…
Ben Nelson on the Minerva Project, reforming higher education and its role for democracy
Ben Nelson is founder and CEO of the Minerva Project and founder of the Minerva University. His mission is to reinvent higher education by utilising a systematic and evidence-based approach to…
Cecile Green & Seth Frey on the Commoning Standard and the role of self-governance for democracy
Cecile Green is a social entrepreneur and Seth Frey is a computational social scientist. They share a mission to enable healthy self-organization and improve relationships in society, which naturally…
Sylvain Le Bon from Startin'blox about Data Spaces, Democracy and Interoperability
Sylvain Le Bon is co-founder of Startin’blox, a company that helps building data spaces. Drawing on his extensive entrepreneurial experience, Sylvain provides an overview of data spaces and their…
Jorge Lagarto about LabX and human centric design in the public sector
Jorge Lagarto is director at LabX, a center for public sector innovation. With many years of experience in the field, Jorge provides clear guidance on making services more citizen-friendly by…
Wietse van Ransbeeck about Go Vocal and how to integrate participation into governance
.Wietse van Ransbeeck is the CEO and co-founder of Go Vocal, a leading platform for community engagement. The company partners with over 600 municipalities and cities worldwide to facilitate citizen…
Marcello Coppa on the Feel Community, the Govtech Forum and accelerating innovation
Marcello Coppa has a background in economics and communications. He has 15 years’ experience in innovation management and consultancy. As the CEO of the Feel Community and curator of the GoVTech…
Stefaan Verhulst about governance, decision-making and how to ask good questions
.Stefaan Verhulst is Co-Founder of the Governance Laboratory (The GovLab), a research center that is focused on transforming decision making by using advances in science and technology. Stefaan…
Yuting Jiang on the Agora Citizen Network, Polis and bridging-based algorithms
Yuting Jiang is CEO and co-founder of the Agora Citizen Network. The Agora tool was inspired by the well-known Polis platform. Yuting understands how modern technologies can improve democratic…
Hélène Landemore about deliberative democracy, citizens' assemblies and the future of democracy
Political theorist Helene Landemore joins us to explore what democracy could look like in the age of AI. We discuss citizens’ assemblies, sortition, digital participation, global governance, and how…
Nathan Schneider on protocols, modular politics and the governance of online communities
Nathan Schneider is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has worked for many years on democratic ownership and governance for online platforms, and is…
Matt Stempeck on the Civic Tech Field Guide and why projects succeed or fail
Matt Stempeck is founder and curator of the Civic Tech Field Guide, which lists civic tech projects from all over the world. With 20 years experience in civic tech, Matt has seen projects passing and…
Samuel Vance-Law on how digital transformation gives space to governance innovation
Samuel Vance-Law is Senior Researcher at the Decentralization Research Center and excited about governance and blockchain. He sees technology, especially blockchain, as an opportunity for governance…
Cross-podcast dialogue on governance, democracy, and institutional innovation
In a joint live stream between the Democracy Innovators Podcast and Governance Futures Podcast we wrapped up our learnings from last year and gave a perspective on the next year. We examined the…
Simone Maria Parazzoli about the Agentic State and how algorithms can transform governments
Simone Maria Parazzoli is part of the Agentic State project and previously worked for the OECD and the ISI Foundation. His experience on the digital transformation of governments gives interesting…
Marco Cappato & Francesco Vecchi discuss how AI can empower democracy
Marco Cappato and Francesco Vecchi from the pan-European Eumans movement engage for a more transnational democracy and a more long-term orientation. In this episode we talked about the Civic AI…
Vir Sanghavi about Tilt.vote and how it can improve debates in democracies
Vir introduces Tilt.vote, a platform that uses AI to rank comments based on a “Logic Score” rather than just popularity or rage bait. We discuss how the AI detects fallacies, the future of AI agents…
Bruce Schneier on democracy in the context of cryptography, security, e-voting, AI, power and trust
.Bruce Schneier is a well known cryptographer, security expert, and privacy advocate who deeply cares about society. Recent books like “A Hacker’s Mind” or “Rewiring Democracy” reflect his engagement…
Frequently Asked Questions
Democracy Innovators Podcast has published 51 episodes since March 2025, covering topics in News, Politics.
Democracy Innovators Podcast is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 55m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for Democracy Innovators Podcast, including email and social media links.
