The Athens Democracy Forum, organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation in cooperation with the New York Times, continued and the panelists dwelled into the topic: Shifting Sands: Geopolitics in Crisis Mode.
Zhou Hong, China Forum Expert and Academic Member and Chair of Division of International Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, spoke about democracy evolving over history.
“When society changes, democracy changes. Technology facilitates connections, more voices are heard and decision making has improved. Pretty soon we will see a new kind of democracy and there will be more similarities among democratic systems,” she said.
Dubravka Šuica, Vice President for Democracy and Demography, Athens Democracy Forum 2021- European Commission, talked about the importance of citizen engagement.
“Our first priority is to speed up vaccination. This is the key priority of the whole world. In Western democracy and those in transition, we face a battle of narratives. We have to look and be ready for things as they are – not as we wish them to be. Strategic autonomy is our key goal,” she said.
“Democracy is not static, it has to evolve, we have been changing too. Citizens’ engagement is of utmost importance. We want to make this narrow gap. We think that by enhancing citizens’ roles and by integrating innovation into this process we can do a lot, this is how Europe sees itself as leaders,” she added.
SOURCE: AMNA
