Citizens and politics

Are the ballot box and the perfectly organised campaign by well established NGOs the only ways for citizens to take part in the national political decisions? What about the spontaneous groups, the weird ideas circulating in the blogosphere or YouTube, or the twittering Iranians, or the Iraqi bloggers, the online petitions and the Facebook groups? Are we heading towards a global citizens republic? Are we turning the Earth into a global parliament with several billion MPs? In 20 years the people born under the computer buzz will be middle aged English speaking global citizens. Will they change completely the way politics works? Is this change already happening or our old voting nature will prevail? Or probably the world will split into two halves – millions of activists and billions of passive citizens? Join me at the round table Citizens and Politics to discuss all these questions and to try to find a few answers.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Julian Popov is a journalist, writer and adviser on media and policy issues with over 20 years experience in Eastern Europe working on projects funded by EBRD, the World Bank, EC, Open Society Foundation, CEE Trust, Open University and others in more than 20 European countries. He was the founding CEO of the New Bulgarian University (currently 13,000 students) and is currently Chairman of the Bulgarian School of Politics (leading institution training politicians and civil society leaders from Bulgaria and South East Europe). He sits on the boards of several Bulgarian and UK NGOs. His political comment pieces have been published in the Independent (UK), The Scotsman, Gazeta Wyborcha, Dziennik, EU Observer and other leading European publications. He has published two books.